I dunno man, I'm listenin' to Zuma

June 13, 2022 4:20 PM

Now hear me out. What makes this song stink: Beverly Hills. I'm not big on harshing anyone's buzz but that's not what's going on here at all. This video is a journey.
posted by sjswitzer (57 comments total)

Worth it for the first few minutes alone. He has a light now! More amps! An obtained but (SPOILER) quickly forgotten about external microphone!
posted by Shepherd at 4:54 PM on June 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

I am so glad that you posted Pat Finnerty's Weezer video here. This video has received over a half million views. A solid 7-10 of those views are mine personally, and I am completely indifferent to Weezer.

There's something so fundamentally kind about Finnerty's high-effort take-downs of low effort songs. He uses these songs as a springboard to talk about ordinary life and the role that music plays in giving that life meaning.
posted by ferdydurke at 5:05 PM on June 13, 2022 [10 favorites]

He’s got kind of a Philly-filtered Bill Burr energy which is hard to resist. Plus he’s not so much satirizing the songs he talks about as he is “Music YouTube Culture” which can use a little bit of a takedown now and then.

And he’s got some chops too, even if he maybe can’t pick out an Em#13add9sus2 (Beato!) by ear.
posted by wabbittwax at 5:10 PM on June 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to find the other (few so far) videos in this series.

I picked this one because it perfectly captured my feels about Weezer and about a moment in time and about the passing of time. Damnit Kurt.
posted by sjswitzer at 5:12 PM on June 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

I know of the band Weezer, but as to their music, it’s a blank. I started watching this video, and by the time it reached the end, I knew something of the band Weezer. But I knew a whole lot more about the guy who did this video, and I learned something about myself and why certain bands meant something for me. His efforts to make his presentation more YouTube were a piercing bit of mockery of the usual YouTube music commentator. This guy has something to say despite his initial lack of amps and I would like more. Thanks for posting this.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:44 PM on June 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Great video, this guy is the man. Perfect progression & ending too!
posted by stinkfoot at 5:48 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I only started watching this but I will go back to it tomorrow when I have more time. I found it completely charming. I also subscribed to his channel.
posted by edencosmic at 5:54 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ahhhh love this video and the throw back feels to high school. Bonus points for showing Philly trash. Ha.
posted by cabbagesnkings at 6:06 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I liked this... blinds to go always seemed fishy to me as well. Like they expect me to believe it's a legitimate, profitable business.
posted by some loser at 6:18 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think the same damn thing every time I drive past a Boston Market.
posted by mollweide at 6:43 PM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Beato!
posted by schoolgirl report at 6:44 PM on June 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

Holy hell, I just watched episode 4 (Hey Soul Sister) and absolutely CACKLED.
posted by sixswitch at 6:53 PM on June 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

I like this better than Beato (who he compares himself to) because Beato (IMO) makes lots of lousy no-talent songs sound more interesting and complex than they are because they became popular.

I agree that this song is the worst in their repertoire (even worse than the unnecessary cover of Africa), that it was well into their downhill slide, and the lyrics and riff are terrible. Weirdly enough the Kid Rock mashup song (All Summer Long) I actually like better because at least he picked some good songs to ripoff and has a lot more dynamic range.

I also didn't see a single song in his channel he's wrong about.

If you ever wondered how a song is written, watch the 3 Doors Down video.
posted by The_Vegetables at 6:59 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

At the risk of threadsitting, I'd like to direct attention to the masterclass level of editing here. I'm on my third or fourth watch of this thing and I keep finding more perfect editorial decisions.
posted by sjswitzer at 7:24 PM on June 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

"... this is Mordor shit, man."

Think I'll be using this in the days to come.
posted by philip-random at 7:39 PM on June 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

I just want to say thanks for the link and the recommend. I love Zuma. Beato (so far) has pretty much nothing to say about Neil. Thank god.
posted by kneecapped at 7:44 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

that was fantastic! and then i clicked to see his other videos and the most recent is "On Hold With The Gas Company (ft. possibly the worst on hold music I've ever experienced)", which is where i was this morning. same gas company, too. but see, they have this thing where they can keep your position in the hold queue and call you back when it's your turn, and i used it. he did not have to listen to the hold music. he did this terrible thing to himself!
posted by Clowder of bats at 8:34 PM on June 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

what's a Boston Market doing in Philadelphia anyway?
posted by philip-random at 8:39 PM on June 13, 2022

the boston market across from the blinds to go is in mount laurel. he was not having to pump his own gas.
posted by Clowder of bats at 8:44 PM on June 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Holy shit this was so much better than I expected. Kurt on a pogo stick eating combos made me snort out my drink.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 8:56 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I didn’t expect to cry at the end.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:27 PM on June 13, 2022 [12 favorites]

I know, right?
posted by sjswitzer at 9:29 PM on June 13, 2022

I want him to do a collaboration with Jon Bois now.
posted by sixswitch at 10:11 PM on June 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

“Sounds like that coach wants to make some adjustments and win the game, good thing we interviewed him.”

SNORTCACKLE
posted by sixswitch at 10:24 PM on June 13, 2022

Before clicking through to the comments here, I couldn't for the life of me remember who sang it, but I could instantly hear that absolutely half-assed bullshit chorus in my head, and I felt a callback to the anger the song inspires in me every time it surfaces in my head.

So, uh, good job? I'll check the video out on the way home tonight.
posted by Ghidorah at 11:21 PM on June 13, 2022

Aw, that was sweet.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 11:43 PM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wasn’t ready for that ending. Huh.

It wasn’t ever weezer for me, but sixteen is right around the time I discovered the joy of live music, and punk, and ska, and this has me remembers the first time I heard Slapstick. And yeah, the slow and drawn out process of surrender to monotony of daily adult life, and the all too sudden speed up when it hits you that you haven’t noticed how much of the joy you had for things has just sort of faded, and you’d love to jump in the car and drive around listening to the old music with a friend, but they’ve got family stuff, and you’ve got too much work to do tonight, so maybe you just put it on in the background, but not too loud because you have to focus.

I mean, “you” in the general sense. Obviously.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:26 AM on June 14, 2022 [9 favorites]

I don't know much Weezer, but I like that song. It's a silly song, but strikes a particular nostalgia chord in me. It's dumb fun.
posted by SoberHighland at 5:32 AM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Never liked Weezer. Ever. Had a friend who loved Weezer. Never understood why. We’re still good friends. They never play Weezer anymore.

Dude’s mom hit it on the nose. Beverly Hills is Weezer’s Kokomo. Smart woman, his mom. Kokomo sucked.

This video was hilarious. Thank you for this!
posted by Thorzdad at 5:54 AM on June 14, 2022 [8 favorites]

The Simpsons made good use of the song in one episode.

Waverly Hills,
Get educated fraudulently..

Waverly Waverly hills..
posted by ocschwar at 6:18 AM on June 14, 2022

Beato (IMO) makes lots of lousy no-talent songs sound more interesting and complex than they are because they became popular

Absolutely. One of the things that's fun about watching Beato is hearing him strain to find something nice to say about a song that's maybe not so great. I forget what song it was (maybe "All the Small Things"?), but on one video he's listening to the big anthemic chorus, and the thing he highlights is like, the tone of the hi-hat. There's always something, no matter how small.

It helps to realize that "What Makes This Song Great" is actually three different series: one about musicianship, one about songwriting, and one about production. I end up liking the ones about production the most, even though they're usually the worst actual songs, because I don't know anything about production. Now, if you heard me play, you could make the case that I don't know much about musicianship or songwriting either, but at least I know how little I know about those subjects. With production, nearly all of this is brand new.

But yeah, Pat Finnerty is hilarious, and this series is great. I especially love the video where he Zapruders a gig he played because someone yelled "Beato!" during his set.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:25 AM on June 14, 2022 [6 favorites]

If you really like his sense of humor, then you might also appreciate a completely unrelated Youtube channel, "You Suck at Cooking," although it's a bit more absurdist.
posted by kimota at 6:52 AM on June 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Ignore me. I am speaking as someone who has never watched a "YouTube guy" and has never heard a single Weezer song. Are you guessing that I'm, like, an old guy? Bingo! (or Beato, whatever that is)

But, anyway, this is funny. It prompted me to watch a minute of the Sweater Song and a minute of Beverly Hills. They were both awful.

I think I'm on the wrong planet.

What's it like to get old and dislike the stuff you listened to as a teenager? I was a teenager in the 60s and the only reason I don't have a lot of 60s music on my playlist is that they play 60s music any place I go IRL. (I'm talking about 60's white music. Sly, James Brown et al I have to listen to at home.)
posted by kozad at 6:59 AM on June 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

That’s the thing. It’s very much about when and how you first hear a song (or album—remember those?)

For instance, there is a perfect age and time to first experience Pinkerton. Earlier isn’t possible and later, well, all of the objectively horrible things about it ruin it. But in that exact moment, it was and, paradoxically, remains an enduring classic.
posted by sjswitzer at 7:16 AM on June 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

IIRC, Pinkerton was in the window of Other Music on 4th street, and if it was in the window of that shop at that time in my life, it was Worth Interest. The Strokes first album was as well, and I lump the blue album in with Is This It as a ‘guilty pleasure’ because of the people doing the dumb young people things around the time that Other Music was still a thing. (Never really gave Pinkerton a listen? Meh.)

This was a charming video, unfortunately it places myself as slightly older than the host 😅. I’ll sing the heck out of Island in the Sun at karaoke, fukit. I do not like the stories I’ve heard about RIvers Cuomo, or his mustache (not his fault, I dislike most mustaches) or their Song Exploder and I’m fine with expressing those opinions on the internet.
posted by allisterb at 8:21 AM on June 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Okay, I also teared up a little. In the context of the music and the 90's, and the guy who was totally a guy I would have DREAMED about in high school, and the visceral DAMNIT KURT, the thing that skewered me was the pictures.

I have SO MANY shitty vaguely blurry over or underlit physical photographs where everyone has uncorrected red-eye, and no one looks polished, and everyone's wearing dorky jeans and either a t-shirt (probably a free one from a school event) or the bulky college-style sweatshirts or maybe a flannel if it was a day we were trying extra hard to be cool. And there's someone draped over a couch, and someone on the floor and someone's caught making an unattractive face. I probably have on the most unflattering glasses in the world if I'm in the picture, but my hair is shiny and unrepentant and glorious the way it only is when you're less than 20 years old. Almost certainly taken on a garbage cheap camera, possibly 35mm film, but probably 110, and developed when we rode our garage-sale bikes to the local drugstore (high school) or begged for a ride off the one person with a car (college) with money we didn't have.

Nothing important is happening in these pictures.

Everything that was ever important to me is happening in these pictures.

His pictures look like mine (his are cooler of course - he was in a band) and it made me cry.
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 9:03 AM on June 14, 2022 [23 favorites]

I have SO MANY shitty vaguely blurry over or underlit physical photographs

As someone currently wearing a free t-shirt from a high school event a full quarter century after the event in question, I was feeling this too. I just bought a Fujifilm Instax and now I have pictures like that of my kids.
posted by kevinbelt at 9:20 AM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

I want to enjoy this because "what makes this song stink" is kinda my YouTube catnip and I love Todd in the Shadows stuff, but he keeps rambling on so much about any old random thing (Boston Market!) that I totally lose track of everything he may be talking about.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:23 AM on June 14, 2022

I am a mid-40s bald guy who played in bands in high school/college and worked at Blockbuster Video and deeply loved the first two (and only the first two) Weezer records. So this could not have been more on the nose. But it says something about this guy's ability to make something so specific into something more universal that a bunch of appreciative comments upthread are from people who didn't know Weezer at all.

I really liked his grappling with/appreciation of what it means to be a fan of a band when really you are a fan of how one or two of that band's records made you feel and all the fun you got to have with their music as a soundtrack when you were right at that formative age when all the Big Feelings are happening. For me its Weezer, and They Might Be Giants, and Teenage Fanclub, and Matthew Sweet, and The Lemonheads (and to a lesser extent Pavement, and Barenaked Ladies and even Weird Al and the Indigo Girls and Mountain Goats). At some point with all of them I lost the ability to keep up with their new stuff, or I heard an album that didn't click and stopped following. But all of those bands still rule so hard.
posted by AgentRocket at 9:24 AM on June 14, 2022 [9 favorites]

man that was like an arrow right to my heart
posted by zenon at 10:43 AM on June 14, 2022 [4 favorites]

Here for the Jon Bois analogy - I am not a sports fan, and was never a Weezer fan despite being a college radio DJ in the mid-90s. Give me Imperial Teen and Luna over Weezer anyday. But the pacing here is top notch as far as my post-pandimmy ADHD brain is concerned. As a 'burgh resident in the early 90s, I'd always thought Philly was a different universe, but his script definitely hit all my Pittsburgh nostalgia notes, particularly Boston Market.
posted by SoundInhabitant at 10:53 AM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

This was a long way to go to get to "I liked Weezer because I was a kid." This dude has charisma, but this format irritates me. This is not for me, but its clearly for someone.
posted by jeoc at 11:44 AM on June 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

This was a fun video. I normally don't watch these videos, and especially not at regular speed but I sat down and watched the whole thing so Pat Finnerty did a good job. I like Weezer well enough I guess, never bought their albums or anything but I liked a couple of their songs back in the day but find all of their recent stuff extremely uninteresting. I'll agree that there was a marked decline after Pinkerton, even if that's the only album of theirs that I've heard in full and that was in the last couple of years so it isn't an "everything was better when I was a teenager" thing.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:06 PM on June 14, 2022

I assumed Pat had chops but I had no idea how good.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:09 PM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm a few years older than him but in exactly the same boat except that I thought the blue album was a little too commercial when it first came out, I guess largely because "Buddy Holly" was allllll ooooover mtv and radio and I didn't really like it.

I can absolutely imagine hearing the blue album or pinkerton for the first time today and not liking it. Maybe even hating it. At the time it just perfectly encapsulated what I thought and felt and hearing it now will put me back in that moment immediately. There's some other stuff that will do it too, like music so powerful it will conjure smells and sounds and people I never think about. Like the album "Bill" by Tripping Daisy. Give me 3 seconds of "Common Ground" and I am 16 again.

It is vanishingly rare, even among bands that put out some incredible albums, to keep doing it forever. And I think for any band that put out a few amazing albums, and then inevitably less and less good albums, someone who was 16 in the great-albums era will feel sort of personally betrayed and let down by it, as if it were possible for weezer to put out material that is both Pinkerton level AND for you to hear it as a 16 year old forever.
posted by RustyBrooks at 5:37 PM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also this guy's parents are adorable and I love it that they engaged so completely with him. I love their dynamic.
posted by RustyBrooks at 5:39 PM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

If we're going to seriously analyze Weezer, which this video was not really about, the thing is that Weezer took power-pop to 11 in their first album. Then they kinda invented emo in Pinkerton. But these forms are really only authentic for teens and very young adults. (Insert obvious Pete Townsend reference here.) So as much as they had that thing absolutely nailed at that exact point in their lives, the problem was that they, and the rest of us, got older. They never found anything more mature to write about and never quite acknowledged they were a nostalgia act. And I say this as someone who'd see a Descendants reunion with no qualms whatsoever.

The first two albums were good because they came from an authentic place. The rest were trying to make power-pop happen again after Blink-182, et al. drove it into the ground. And, although I don't think they weren't trying hard enough, it's just not something you can do without the exuberance and naivety of youth. It would be fun to be than young and innocent again. And that's why I still like the first two albums.
posted by sjswitzer at 6:11 PM on June 14, 2022 [4 favorites]

Oh hey it's every dude I argued with on a mailing list back in 1997! I love this video and his mom is right about Kokomo.
posted by betweenthebars at 7:40 PM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is the longest YouTube video I’ve ever watched and it absolutely made my day.

One of the many highlights for me was the conversation with the front man for the Weezer cover band. Who fully recognizes that Beverly Hills is not considered a “good” song and is somewhat sheepish but still owns that he loves Beverly Hills cause it is fun and makes him happy. And the host guy can’t even bring himself to argue because because why would you want to shit on a song that’s bringing someone joy?

Wish my teenage indie snob self could have seen this. Dumbass might have learned something. Probably not though
posted by lumpy at 8:33 PM on June 14, 2022 [6 favorites]

Wish my teenage indie snob self could have seen this.

It took me forever too. It was like the ending scene of High Fidelity where the dude realizes that awesome people can have bad [sic] musical taste and still be awesome people.
posted by RustyBrooks at 8:58 PM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

I did "Beverly Hills" tonight at karaoke, just so you know.

..."that's where I wanna be...."
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:19 PM on June 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

I am so happy to be introduced to Finnerty. He has a high horse and is not shy to tell you when he falls off it. Check out the Chilli Peppers vid where he breaks down what makes a rip off acceptable for a masterclass. An alternate title for this series could be “When Millionaires Mail It In” - he mostly can’t forgive the industry for rewarding that.
posted by drowsy at 3:55 AM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

where the dude realizes that awesome people can have bad [sic] musical taste and still be awesome people.

almost immediately after high school, my life took a foolish turn when I decided that what I was looking for in new friends were people who shared my passion for a certain kinds of music and bands (prog rock if you must know). It was fun for a while, I guess, but ultimately a dubious road to nowhere in particular.

Various misadventures and young person dramas later, I did finally stumble upon my "crowd" in the realm of campus/community radio where, far from agreeing on anything music wise, what really united us were the disagreements, the conflicting passions. But (at the risk of simplifying some rather complex human stuff) because we shared a common concern in keeping the radio station functional and relevant (the technical and fiscal infrastructure as well as the community that supported it), we ended up with an underlying respect for each other -- a love even.

And now I'm proud to say, I don't just not mind country music (the good stuff anyway), I love it. And western. Also thrash, hardcore, funk, jazz, hip hop, trance, dub, even disco. Because there really are only two kinds of music out there. Good and bad. And if you're honest with yourself, at some point you're going to have to admit that your particular faves are capable of both ... because, like the rest of us, they're human.
posted by philip-random at 6:31 AM on June 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

where the dude realizes that awesome people can have bad [sic] musical taste and still be awesome people.

I think it's a bit different than that. He goes through the video showing that the Beverly Hills beat is the same as El Scorcho and The Sweater Song, something that's always been a part of the band. So the realization is the tension between 'has this band always been bad?' but I listened during a time I loved, or 'is this just a bad song from a band I love?' which is far more introspective.

I think he finally concludes it is just a bad song from a band he loved while doing things he loved, but it is a bit open-ended.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:35 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Tacking on a belated thank you sjswitzer because in addition to enjoying these vids, now I have an absolute baller cover of Hotstepper on my playlist (via the Soul Sister video).
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 9:23 AM on June 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

He brought up Matt leaving and Pinkerton flopping, but there's another possibility. Back around the Green Album, I recall reading that Rivers Cuomo kept notebooks where he would diagram Beatles and Nirvana (and maybe Oasis) songs to discover the formula for the perfect pop song. I think that's why Weezer music has felt so artificially constructed (All music is constructed dumbass). You know what I mean. It's like Netflix using an algorithm to be HBO.
posted by riruro at 10:00 AM on June 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

My personal philosophy on the matter is that young men want to be mysterious and old men want to be understood and so as a band/musician age their music starts to get more literal. I don't know if this is really true but it sure seems to be when I consider all the musicians where I love their early work and as they age the new stuff seems earnest and bland and uninteresting. Anyway.

I know this thread is prob over but holy fuck I just got so into this guy. I watched all the "what makes this song stink" and "little stinkers" and all that stuff.

I started watching other people's recordings of Pat Finnerty's shows and there's so much gold there. He's legit a great musician and clearly very interested in the history and development of a certain kind of music.

His current shows are what you might call being a stand up musician. They're him playing songs, playing bits of youtube video including parts of his what makes this song stink videos. Bringing people up on stage, picking songs out of the air and doing them, etc. It seems like something with extreme emphasis on seeing multiple shows.

Like I once went to several showings of a major band, i.e. following them around in my state, and I realized, all these shows are scripted, they're all the same. The band is great but the show is, like, a set piece. Finnerty's shows seem like you could watch 4 in a row and get 4 different experiences. I leave you with

a finnerty show in philadelphia

If the dude is ever within driving distance of me I am going to go see him and thanks so much for the introduction to his stuff, I hope to one day shake this guy's hand and tell him he rips.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:12 PM on June 19, 2022 [4 favorites]