Workers are going home

May 10, 2019 8:30 PM

Weezer's self-titled debut (aka The Blue Album) is 25 years old.
posted by Chrysostom (23 comments total)

What's with these honkeys bringing me down? I don't want to be an old man anymore!
I'm so very sorry
posted by es_de_bah at 8:42 PM on May 10, 2019

More retro than Kiss was when In The Garage was written, just to calibrate.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:44 PM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

say it ain't so
posted by entropicamericana at 8:46 PM on May 10, 2019 [14 favorites]

We are father out from the release of The Blue Album than The Blue Album was from the run of Happy Days...

...and we have been for some time. Rivers Cuomo will be 50 next year. He is already older than Tom Bosley was when he took the role of the dad on Happy Days.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:59 PM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

For my money, they never made a better album after this. And before somebody says "but Pinkerton", it's hard to take any of the faux-deep stuff on that record seriously given all of Weezer's subsequent output, but the Blue Album still slaps like I'm back in high school.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:22 PM on May 10, 2019 [14 favorites]

I was at Matt Sharp’s house (my wife and friends were big time into Los Angeles karaoke, and apparently Matt was extremely into it) in Mount Washington when it became clear Trump was going to be President. Everyone became very sad, and my now wife and I had to leave early because everyone was crying. I did get to hold Matt’s MTV award for the Buddy Holly video, so one spot of light on that dark day.
posted by sideshow at 9:27 PM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]

Dear god I'm older than Rivers Cuomo.
posted by hippybear at 9:36 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Saw them two years ago and they sang Buddy Holly and the Sweater Song with just as much rock and enthusiasm as if it was the first time they played them for a crowd. It was awesome.
posted by gryphonlover at 10:23 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

I've always loved that My Name Is Jonas is in 3/4 time, which essentially makes it a waltz. Also, that song always made me picture Fraggle Rock and I have no idea why.

The Blue Album is one of my hands down favorites. Every song is solid BARE MINS, and that I've been enjoying it for the 15 years I've had it is a testament to its artistry.

Plus we got a couple of Spike Jonez videos out of it, so bonus.
posted by gc at 10:51 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed this album at the time, and then just… forgot about it. I didn’t have the CD, my friends weren’t into it, etc. And then, as Weezer grew into this elder statesman band, with muppets and cruise trips, I somehow rediscovered the album, so I had this nostalgic headtrip of going ‘oh, That’s Weezer! Right.’

Also shout out to comic artist Alec Longstreth who wrote a whole comic about his devotion to Weezer.
posted by The River Ivel at 11:48 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

I was the entertainment editor at a student paper at a pretty decent sized midwestern university with a J schoool when that album came out. SPIN or MTV was doing a fall campus tour and was handing out that CD for free. I didn't h ave a CD player so it lived at the paper office and at first, I was the only one who liked it. The Sweater Song got a lot of ridicule.

Then the video for Buddy Holly came out and pretty much took over the newsroom. The song that definitely got shouted along with the most was My Name is Jonas, though.

My favorite was always In the Garage.
posted by taterpie at 12:48 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

do you believe, what I sing, now
posted by mannequito at 1:00 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

I remember the 'Buddy Holly' video shipping as an .avi on the Windows 95 installation CD-ROM, heralding in a new era of 'multimedia'.

Maybe Matt Christman is right, that the 90s really were The Last Decade.
posted by MarchHare at 4:45 AM on May 11, 2019 [15 favorites]

real take: matt sharp was the heart and soul of weezer and this thing we shuffling around now wearing weezer's skin is an unholy abomination
posted by entropicamericana at 6:43 AM on May 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

Such a perfect record. I was a hilariously pretentious ‘90s teenager listening to Marlene Dietrich and reading Nico biographies in school and even I loved this album.
posted by Automocar at 7:34 AM on May 11, 2019

That's a great video, entropicamericana! Thanks for posting that.
posted by glonous keming at 8:32 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Saw them recently when they came to my city. I like to tell younger folks that I owned the Blue album on cassette and it kinda throws them for a loop.
posted by nestor_makhno at 9:44 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

So many years of Weezer thoughts.
posted by limeonaire at 11:24 AM on May 11, 2019

I bought this CD with my birthday money after I turned 13. It got HEAVY rotation. Two years later, the autumn I entered high school, I bought Pinkerton. I listened to it a little less, but the the more raw production and introspective lyrics seemed like a promising new direction, if nothing else.

When the green album came out, I had just turned twenty, and I felt more than a little ripped off. It was my beloved blue album, but worse, slicker, blander, more inane, and with less to say. Utterly mediocre. It will forever remind me of the summer of 2001, because that’s the only period I ever listened to it. Worst of all, it made me go back and listen to the blue album with a critical ear. I came to a conclusion. Weezer was always dumb and boring.

I don’t know if I ever really liked Weezer. Maybe I liked the blue album because at the time it was new and different. Or maybe I just liked being thirteen.
posted by Sys Rq at 12:30 PM on May 11, 2019

I am constantly baffled by the passage of time and surprised at how long ago things were that seem like yesterday. For some reason this is not one of them.
posted by bongo_x at 2:25 PM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Maaaaan, this CD in constant rotation at the co-op I was living in 25 years ago, it seemed to just live in the CD player in the kitchen and most everyone liked it, or at least liked cleaning the kitchen to it

There was one weekend in our co-op which the two of us who were not out of town spent painting the house with the Blue Album & the Nerf Herder self-titled playing incessantly, which is why if you say "baba ganoush" to me to this very day I will scream "AND RICE CAKES, RICE CAKES, RICE CAKES, NOSERING GIRRRRRRRRL" at you even if you're a stranger in an elevator or my gynecologist or my boss.

Got mad at Weezer for a while because as a baby lesbian I found Pink Triangle obnoxious. Got back on board because Hash Pipe is such a banger and come on like who can really stay mad at Weezer am I right

anyway Blue Album still shreds & I got Nosering Girl stuck in my head now what were we talking about
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:16 AM on May 12, 2019

I have such vivid memories of listening to this album in the blue 1992 Dodge Grand Caravan I drove in high school. I am an old now.
posted by Maarika at 7:21 AM on May 12, 2019

I remember the 'Buddy Holly' video shipping as an .avi on the Windows 95 installation CD-ROM, heralding in a new era of 'multimedia'.

A friend of mine at the time was a programmer/computer dude and I remember being excitedly shown this. It's still the first thing I think of whenever I think of Weezer or Windows. And to a young person today, that anecdote must be nearly indistinguishable from the stories my grandparents used to tell me of buying their first television set.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:33 AM on May 13, 2019 [3 favorites]