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Subscribers: You already know that I only send one email per month. I’ve had to make an exception for the summer in order to fully capture the entirety of my Weezer story! You’ll receive two emails in June (a week apart), one in July, and two in August (also a week apart). If your inbox clips the message, you can simply click on the web address above and read it that way.
Dedicated to all my Weezer Fan Club homies, especially my pen pals and the South Carolina Weezer Fanclub contingent, to all those who connect deeply with music, and in memory of Mykel and Carli.
I hope you’re ready to rock, because…WELCOME TO WEEZER SUMMER!
This five-part series is a deep dive into how a young, quirky alternative band named Weezer—and a whole universe around them—became a kind of home for a teenage girl looking for somewhere to belong.
Blue/Pink: Part 1 and Part 2 traces my journey from when I first heard them on the radio back in 1994 and felt that click of connection—something I couldn’t fully explain at the time but immediately understood. I talk about what it is, for me, that makes their first album, Weezer (The Blue Album), and second album, Pinkerton, so groundbreaking and untouchable, even today.
I was the only massive Weezer fan at my high school, and other than the general dismissiveness of most of my classmates, there were some other kids who didn’t like how Weezer was changing who I was, and they made sure I knew that. Becoming an early member of the Weezer Fan Club and belonging to a group that consisted of a bunch of weird-yet-normal people just like me was a vital lifeline during this time.
Rock =W= Music: Part 3 (coming in July) is an intermission to the larger story but the core of THE ROCK! Told through dialogue recreated half from journal entries, half from memory, it describes in shiny detail the events of January 18 and 19, 1997, two back-to-back Weezer shows in Charleston and Charlotte, and my first time seeing the band when I was 17 years old. This unforgettable weekend remains one of the best of my entire life!
Pink/Blue: Part 4 and Part 5 picks up after the shows in 1997 to the present: through some big life events that year, like graduating high school, hosting a fan club meetup that summer (after a devastating tragedy that almost ended the club forever), and how my high school, Weezer-y identity collided with the new identity I was building at college. I fly through more albums, more shows, their musical legacy and where they are today, and how I feel about the direction they’ve chosen (and over the course of writing this, my current opinions surprised even me)!
If you know exactly what I mean when I say that a band feels like home, this is for you. If you’ve ever tried to explain what that means to the rest of the world who just doesn’t get it, this is for you!
If you’ve always wanted to know the full, illustrated story about my devotion to Weezer, well, buckle up for a ride in the Weezermobile*. We’re going on a rock road trip!**
(Before we begin: just to be clear, these are longform essays and aren't meant to be digested all in one sitting. Take your time reading; it is summer, after all! And don’t forget that you can LISTEN to it, instructions above, and please excuse a little bit of awkward singing. But be sure you read it, too, to check out the pictures)!
*The name of my car from 2001-2007, which had a huge green =W= decal on the back window. RIP, Weezermobile.
**The name of their tour this summer, and you can follow along here!
I Was a Teenage Weezer Fan, Part One
January 18, 1997 Dear Journal, When I grow up, I want to BE WEEZER.
There was no one who could love a band more than I loved Weezer.
When you’re 15 years old, and everything is changing around you so fast (but never fast enough), you have to find a solid thing, a thing that is home to you, to cling to. For me, it was music, but it was more than just the music.
It was a band, two albums, a scene, a sound, a color, a club, an identity. Home was Weezer.
Over the years, I’ve had this conversation with lots of people who have shared with me why their own favorite bands matter so much to them. Back then, my best friends were into the Beatles, Counting Crows, Dave Matthews Band; and were arguably as much into those artists as I was into Weezer (and we did actually have arguments about it. Loyalty’s got teeth)!
Another friend regaled me with tales of her love for the band Semisonic (to each their own, right?!). A few of my former co-workers were diehard fans of Jason Mraz and Ed Sheeran. And I think we all know at least a little something about the fervor and dedication of today’s Swifties and the BeyHive. (If you want to read more about the “dark side” of fandom, there’s plenty out there these days, but I like to think that most people are just looking for something meaningful to belong to, like I was).
Even though the music was different and our experiences were different, I know, deep down, exactly how they felt: Weezer was in my bones.
To paraphrase/botch a line from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity: Did I love Weezer because of who I already was? Or was I who I was because I loved Weezer? I am certain that the answer lies in that liminal space between explanation and defying explanation: I was both.
For the unschooled, a (very) brief history: the rock band Weezer began in Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day, 1992, with Patrick Wilson on drums, Matt Sharp on bass, Jason Cropper on guitar, and Rivers Cuomo on guitar and vocals. By the time their self-titled first album (also called The Blue Album) was released on May 10, 1994 on the DGC label (the harder-rocking imprint of Geffen, that also hosted artists like Nirvana, Beck, and Counting Crows), Brian Bell had taken over from Jason on guitar, and the lineup was set.
The first single, “Undone (The Sweater Song)”, was released soon after, and gained popularity over the summer on alternative rock stations. Their second single, “Buddy Holly,” came out in early fall. Both songs had videos on MTV, and both videos were directed by visionary Spike Jonze, but it was the high-concept execution of the latter that really made a splash, winning four MTV Video Music Awards (Best Alternative Video, Best Breaththrough Video, Best Direction, and Best Editing) the following year. And the rest is history.
Here’s mine.
Late summer 1994 I turned fifteen. Sophomore year began. Claire Danes as Angela Chase in My So-Called Life reflected back my own intense feelings about, like, everything. I was into the logical combination of Stone Temple Pilots, warming the benches at varsity softball, The Who’s Tommy, and the hotties from The Mighty Ducks (they were my age, people)!
My purple Converse sneakers were strung with D2: The Mighty Ducks laces and sprinkled with quotes from the movies. (“Cake-eater!”) So I guess it wasn’t that weird that my allegiance shifted to something else, something even more intense. All teens are a little bit weird. But things were about to get even weirder.
I had already begun to metamorphose. I traded my clothes from The Limited and Express with a smattering of cool finds from thrift shops and Delia’s. I paired baggy cords with tight babydoll tops, or hip-huggers with giant shirts. I found the perfect eyeshadow color (silver), stocked up on Black Honey from Clinique and cologne from the Gap (Day all the way), and plucked the personality right out of my eyebrows.
By the next summer I would start dyeing my hair a color called Stoplight Red, which never looked quite like Angela’s, but the result was effective: I was no longer the same person I’d been as a freshman, and one glance at me proved that.
It was around this the time when it became painfully obvious that I couldn’t rely on my friends at school to support all my choices. It was a hard lesson but a natural one—not every friend can be good for every thing. Going to the movies and gossiping about celebrities was fine, but when I’d reveal something deeper or different—like the music I liked, or that freshman I had a crush on—I was met with disdain. Anyone who looked different or dressed differently was immediately judged. I resented it furiously; some of those people mattered to me.
“I can’t believe you like him,” one of my friends said at lunch one day, twisting her face up, and it shouldn’t have mattered, but it crushed me. Sometimes the loudest voice drowned out the rest, and I grouped all those friends into thinking the same way. It wasn’t fair of me, and all of this low-key drama is downright petty in adulthood, but I was looking for a reason, any reason, to get out of the mold I felt I’d unwillingly been crammed into.
What was that mold? I was a smart, motivated, well-behaved girl, and while I still wanted to be some of those things, I wasn’t solely those things. My parents weren’t happy about the shift in my fashion choices, but as long as I got good grades and didn’t step out of line, they were mostly tolerant of my new identity.
That year’s “Fall Down” by Toad the Wet Sprocket spoke directly to how I felt: “She hates her life, she hates her skin, she even hates her friends,” and while it was all overly dramatic (though I did hate my skin), when I look back at that time I remember being angry quite a lot. Who among us, especially at pivotal times in our young lives, hasn’t felt that stifling, out of control feeling of being boxed in, unfairly defined by circumstances outside of our control?
So by mid-semester, I was fully immersed in my new identity. Being with my best friends at camp that previous summer—the ones who really “got” me—had sealed the deal. We were weird, but we were weird together. And knowing that being my true weird self was possible—and accepted—proved to me that I needed to live into an identity that made me feel whole, no matter the cost.
If you were alive and also sentient back in 1994, you were well aware that the musical landscape was dominated by East Coast/West Coast rap, hip hop, and R&B, dance pop, and, more directly related to my awakened “individuality” in musical taste: grunge.
The local rock station, Rock 93.5, played Nirvana, of course, and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. The pop station, 104.7 WNOK, was a lot of Ace of Base, Salt-n-Pepa, Coolio, Toni Braxton. Pop was still a part of my world, but that kind of music slides right off your skin. Listening to grunge was like being dragged over gravel, feeling the bite of every rock, and being grateful for the misery it awakened. I didn’t know that I contained that kind of angst until I heard it in the music, but it had been there all along.
Summer of 1994 was also an interesting time to be a teenager in Columbia, South Carolina. There were twice as many country and gospel stations than any other, and I resented country with every fiber of my being, taking great pains to distance myself from that awful noise masquerading as music.
But, even more threatening to my quiet rebellion was another musical sensation originating right from my hometown: the dreaded Hootie and the Blowfish.
This isn’t an essay about Hootie, so I’ll save the bulk of my thoughts on that band for another time (maybe). The one thing that is worth mentioning is that one could not coexist in the same town as the band that released the best-selling album of 1995 without being reminded of this fact every damn day. The hometown pride that swelled to baffling proportions, all because we had a pop rock band in our zip code, was far too much for me to stomach. And this was before there was a baseball team and a street named for them, even a monument built in their honor!
While I think, nowadays, that the city of Columbia owes the band a lifetime of thanks for how they improved upon the image of the college and the town, I still proudly cling to the fact that I may be one of the only South Carolinians who has never owned the multi-platinum, Double Diamond Cracked Rear View, even though I now rather enjoy most of the songs. (It’s the principle of the thing)!
I also can’t write about music without mentioning that I come from a family of musicians. My paternal grandmother played multiple instruments, was a piano teacher for decades, paid for me and my brother to take lessons during our primary years, and was strongly disappointed—and rightly so—when we ultimately quit, unable to handle the amount of dedication that went into a practice routine.
My dad, from when he was in high school to when I was six years old, sang in local bands, mostly “beach music”, a genre specific to the Carolinas with a colorful history dating back to the fifties. At the time it was taboo for young white audiences to listen or dance to the soul, funk, and R&B music that Black musicians were making. Of course, the youth will find a way, and after being exposed to this “new” type of music that spoke to them, too, they made their own versions, in homage to the lively music they had so rebelliously enjoyed.
My mom would take us to go see my dad’s band, Endless Summer, play at festivals and events, just a few blocks from where that Hootie monument would later be erected. I remember them playing songs by Billy Joel and Dionne Warwick, and people would shag in the streets (get your mind out of the gutter; it’s the State Dance of South Carolina). It was cool to have a “famous” dad; his claim to fame is that he opened for James Brown (yes, the Godfather of Soul himself) not once, but twice!
After retiring as an attorney, he picked up singing again, this time for a band called Heart n’ Soul. Their website says, “Audiences will think they have stepped back in time when they hear R&B and Doo Wop tunes from the 50s, 60s, and 70s,” including popular adult hits like “Sweet Caroline” and “Stand By Me.”
I’m pretty proud of all the effort that he and the band put in during their 15 year run, which ended just last month; they raised over $4 million for local organizations, had a blast, and inspired thousands of people to get their boogie on. And I am certain that my mom lived a little bit longer because she was married to the sweet-voiced lead singer of the most popular band in the Midlands.
So you would think that my dad would have exposed us to a lot of great music in our household growing up. But you would be wrong! My parents had tons of records that intrigued us kids, but the only ones that regularly made an appearance were the Christmas albums: Johnny Mathis, Bing Crosby, Tchaikovsky. The rest of the year, we were forced to listen to boring ol’ classical music, if anything at all.
And that is why my brother’s favorite band for life is Guns n’ Roses.
Everything that was going on around me—from my musical influences to that which I chose to vehemently shun—led me, in some fashion, to alternative rock. Alternative music spoke directly to me and to my generation, straddling that line between the darker, grungier stuff on one end, and the vapid, poppy stuff on the other. Rolling Stone called 1994 “Mainstream Alternative’s Greatest Year”, and 1994’s 40 best albums is the swoon-worthy backdrop for the youth coming of age during this epic period in music history. The waves were parting, and it was all happening right here.
I was just the right age at just the right time for so many of these musicians to have a huge impact on my life. Retrospective articles and podcasts will tell you that these bands breathed new life into the draggy, dark, post-Kurt Cobain era. It was light mixed with dark, and we needed that. Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Bush, +LIVE+, and this “new” (to me) little band called Green Day.
And then there was Weezer.
As I mentioned in the intro, Weezer’s self-titled debut album came out on May 10, 1994. Sometime that summer I turned on Rock 93.5 and caught the tail end of “The Sweater Song.” That dangling thread gave me pause—it was really, really weird—but I couldn't quite process what I’d just heard.
A week or two later, the DJ says, “Here’s a new band, Weezer!” I immediately recognized “Undone,” now in complete form, as that weird, cool song I’d heard before. The first several seconds of that lackadaisical, looping guitar chord tumble out in slo-mo, as if being stoned could be represented in sound. The dialogue, between Matt, Karl Koch, and Mykel Allan (more on them later), spoken over a steady drum beat and slowly strummed electric guitar, sets the scene of a smoky club, lights low, talking closely. Then those lyrics, almost whispered, start off in a shaky, unconfident voice.
And then, almost two minutes in, the slow, heavier-than-the-sky guitars just pummel you. The chorus, with that ongoing march of the drum, and voices, in harmony, singing about giving permission to…destroy a sweater? And then a guitar and drum duet and more sweater and warbling screams and the drums get really loud and the guitars—electric and acoustic—running amok and the little “ooh ooh ooh”s underneath and then an enormous buildup with a ton of scraping, searing feedback and the song ends in a sudden, final crash, the sound of a piano bench slamming shut and shoved away, breathless.
I was stunned. What the hell is this, and how can I get more of it right now?!
There was no internet in 1994; at least, not for me or most typical American teenagers, so I was at the mercy of the DJs if I wanted to hear a song or learn any shred of information about a band. And we didn’t have cable at my house, which meant no MTV, either. But somehow I finally caught the “Undone” video and was even more mystified. This weird lead singer with a freaking bowl cut? What is going on? This band was so good in a way I could not even explain.
One day in early autumn, I heard a new Weezer song on the radio. This one was possibly even more perplexing but also more addictive. It sounded both old and new; the name of it made me wonder if it was old because of the singer it referenced. Not knowing much about the music industry, I really couldn’t tell if Weezer was a brand new band or that modern rock radio was resurrecting songs from the happy-go-lucky ‘50s.
And not long after that I was at a babysitting job. I put my charge to bed, read her tattered copy of “Cinderella” until she fell asleep, and went downstairs. The family had cable, so of course I turned on MTV.
And that’s the night the video for “Buddy Holly” slapped me in the face.
Weezer, “Buddy Holly” music video (I assume most of the world has seen this already, but if you never have, please do yourself a favor and watch it).
I was exploding with questions. How did they make this? Is this old footage that they’re showing us? Are they an old band or a new band?! They are funny! This song ROCKS! I can finally see the lead singer’s face and he is cute!
The first few months of my Weezer fandom was basically like a crush that I couldn’t get enough of. At this point, there were only two songs out, and I was both infatuated with and completely confused by both of them. And their two videos were so purposefully, mysteriously goofy, showcasing the sheer weirdness of each individual band member, that they raised more questions than answers.
Add to that that these were all just mere crumbs, and information about the band itself was scant. I didn’t even know their names. All I could think about was knowing more and hearing more, grasping at figuring out what was going on and how this incredible music got into the world and shot straight through my veins.
Everything that has shaped my identity can be traced back to four specific paths and to the people who encouraged me along the way.
Number one: writing stories, beginning at age six.
Number two: attending summer church camp when I was nine.
Number three: taking drama classes when I was ten.
My parents, teachers, pastors, grandparents, even my best friend—they all had a hand in exposing me to interests that have led to lifelong loves and professions and so much more. None of us are formed in a vacuum, and I’m so grateful for the lasting influence of so many mentors and role models, especially since many of them are no longer alive.
But these three things had all been chosen for me. What I’ve given a lot of thought to over the years, that I couldn’t have understood at the time, is that this band and my love for their music—that fourth thing—was the first defining moment in my life that belonged solely to me.
In “discovering” Weezer when I was fifteen, I had found something that was truly my own (apart from the DJs who played the songs and the music industry and everyone who had a hand in getting the notes to my ears, sure). Weezer was full of tongue-in-cheek mystique, earnest and seemingly nonsensical lyrics, crashing cymbals and crunchy guitars and high high energy. My immediate and intense interest in them was propelled by a combination of the music itself, their unmistakable aesthetic, and my burgeoning hormones.
In them, I saw both exactly what I wanted and what I wanted to be.
January 17, 1995 Dear Journal, Today I bought two tapes, Green Day and Weezer, two good-looking bands!
Buying a band’s album was a big investment. Unlike now when you can cherry-pick songs and find out pretty quickly whether you’re going to like them or not, it was always a real shame if you shelled out $12 or $15 on a cassette tape and it sucked. Two tapes was like a weekend’s worth of babysitting money. So perhaps that’s why it took me several months into my enthrallment with Weezer to finally buy The Blue Album, hoping that the rest of it would be as good as those two songs.
And within the first ten seconds, I knew I had been right.
“My Name is Jonas” rolls out with gentle acoustic guitar, which then slides underneath the heavy electric ones that leap, without hesitation, into power chords, an absolutely screaming guitar solo, and incites the urge to rage, two-thirds of the way through the song, to the backdrop of…a harmonica!? Throw in some jingle bells, and this incredible song, a compendium of strange instrumental bedfellows, remains one of the most irresistibly mind-blowing Weezer songs of all time.
Then we jump right into the driving pace of “No One Else”, kicking off with a riff that could be part of the theme song to the best TV sitcom never made. The lyrics, according to Rivers later, are about “the jealous-obsessive asshole in me freaking out on my girlfriend” and they didn’t faze me in the slightest, still don’t. The bridge, really the entirety of the song, is almost sock-hoppy, unstoppably happy-go-lucky but full of loud rock, too. And finally, a bookend, that same riff that started it all, closing out a deeply satisfying three minutes.
“The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” brought the tempo down a notch in a necessary way, with the jazzy brushes on the drums and that cyclical, loopy riff flowing as an undercurrent, the instruments painting a picture with sound, the world an inflating balloon that gets bigger and bigger through the climb of the music. It ends in that squealing feedback, present in so many songs on this album.
And only seconds to go until…
“Buddy Holly”! Before this song was all over the place, it was all over my own airwaves, and here we are, thirty years after it was recorded, and for me, it will never get old. Which is kind of a funny thing to say about a thirty-year-old song that sounds kind of like a seventy-year-old song. When we get to the final chorus, I can’t stop grinning. That’s really all I need to say about it.
And now for “Undone (The Sweater Song).” The quirky strumming, doo wop-style harmonies, and elusive lyrics are pure perfection. This song will also never get old, and will always be one of my favorites; it opened the door, the sweater tumbled out, and I grabbed that loose string and got all tangled up in it….
(…the guys were joking in an interview one time about ideas for the video, which they really didn’t want to involve a literal sweater, and I think it was Pat, maybe Matt, who jokingly suggested that there would be a sweater in the middle of a dark room, and the camera would gradually pan to the sweater, all aglow in a spotlight, and the threads of the sweater were slowly being consumed by rats).
This joke lives inside this song for me and it epitomizes why I love this band. On to Side B.
“Surf Wax America'' has the kind of universal likeability that I felt should have made it one of their singles, but what a sweet surprise it is, tucked into the middle of the album. The song’s opening notes mimic the rhythm and repetition of undulating waves, and the slowed-down chorus near the end is the swell before the crash, like the artistry on “The World Has Turned.” “Surf Wax USA” has the surface appeal of a simple party song, but at the same time it speaks to the deeper elements of eschewing a boring life and embracing the lost adventure of youth. For sho, Brah!
It’s still somewhat surprising to me that “Say It Ain’t So” ended up becoming their biggest hit. It's their angstiest song at the time, and its general vibe reminds me that lots of kids probably got high with this song playing on repeat (never me. I was high on the music, obviously). The backbone of bass and falsetto vocals make Matt an indispensable player in the execution of this surprise hit.
I couldn’t relate to “In the Garage” at first, and while it had that “Weezer sound”-ing distorted guitars, the lyrics were pretty confusing and didn’t apply to me at all, or so I thought. Later, there were ways that this song was applicable to my life, and in fact, had been all along: my love for Weezer was my garage, for one, as well as my journals, where I felt safe, where no one cared about my ways.
And now it’s time for a “Holiday”! It’s a waltz via electric guitar (I didn’t know what 3/4 or 6/8 time was when I heard it, but after years of ballroom dancing, I could pick out a waltz). It would be right at home at the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance, with the guys wearing the same outfits from the Buddy Holly video. Upon further listening, “Heartbeat, heartbeat” thump-thumps, thump-thumps in and out, in harmony, like an actual heartbeat. Brilliant.
And finally. “Only in Dreams” brought the whole thing to a close, like “Undone’s” even weirder, loopier, louder cousin. I listen for Pat’s cymbals every time. It’s a fun ride, one that is all the more satisfying because you have to stick around for all eight minutes of it. The plodding, parallel bass and guitar lines propel us through the song, then go crazy, and come back again, making us wonder if it ever happened in the first place, making us wonder if it was all just a dream.
Which kind of felt like the album as a whole. How could I ever be the same person again?
The themes of rocking out with your insecurities, wanting to be loved and accepted but confused about your place in the world, told through the quirky, paradoxical stylings of barbershop harmonies and power chords, harmonica and chugging guitars, frenzied, poppy-rocky hooks and strategic arpeggios, doo wop vocals and lengthy feedback; they had taken the building blocks of different musical techniques and genres, stacked them together, and created something completely unique.
So this band from Southern California, led by a 25-year-old metalhead from Connecticut with the hippie-sounding name of Rivers (how cool is that?!), spoke to me in a way that nothing or no one else ever had. It was electrifying.
I listened to this album on my tape player, night after night. I’d take a break, pop in Dookie, and then go back to Blue. With headphones on, I could pick out some of the nuances in the songs that were different each time—which backing vocals were Brian’s vs. Matt’s, Pat’s unsparing yet strategically loud drums, Rivers’ voice waffling between controlled confidence and crippling uncertainty.
I’d listen to it all the way through, turn it over, and start again, until the music reverberated in my bones and became a part of my DNA, lodged in between molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
As a staff reporter for The Winged Press, our school newspaper, I grabbed at the chance to have a platform and wrote a review of The Blue Album. The article was clearly written very early in 1995 because all the information I had about the band and their songs came from my own head. Due to the fact that the school paper was run by teenagers and a very busy teacher advisor, I’m sure the issue wasn’t printed until long after the album came out, but I didn’t care. I was spreading the good news of Rock Music to my whole little world.
Reading it now helps me better understand what my untrained ear picked out when listening to the songs early on. I can laugh at some of my commentary today (sure, I had a limited word count, but couldn’t I have done better than “Of course Buddy Holly refers to the past”? And why is there no mention of The Beach Boys?). But I’m glad this relic exists, proof that I was paying close attention and I wanted to share my love of the album—and the band—with others. I mean, how on earth could I be quiet about it with the neverending waves of “Surf Wax America” pounding in my head?
I had had a life-changing revelation. The prophet had descended upon me with its glittering gold wings (or maybe it was a winged =W=) and that prophet was Weezer. I just knew that I was the biggest fan of Weezer anyone would ever meet. And everyone was going to know it.
Everyone.
Lots of kids at my school were shapeshifting during this time. The dorky redhead becoming a cool skater, the preppy guy growing his hair out and becoming a stoner, the friendly girl who suddenly got popular on account of just being friendly.
One day I wore a new outfit that I had designed myself: black suede Mary Janes. White knee socks. A gray wool skirt. A gray plaid flannel shirt. A wool sweater vest, gray. It was 90s-grunge-Catholic-school-girl-meets-J.Crew and I knew that I looked cool as hell.
Unfortunately for me, though, I didn’t have the external confidence to pull off an ensemble like that. I got a lot of stares, a lot of snickers, and the blaring voices of ridicule were just too much for my sensitive self to bear. I might have had the inner confidence and pride in myself to look and be different, but this day brought into stark reality that the people who didn’t want me to change were going to make a big fucking deal over it.
So it follows that I was absolutely vilified for liking Weezer. Sure, there were the people who, later on, called me “Weezer” in a charmingly endearing way. But, first, there were those who used the band’s name like a weapon, aimed at me and only me.
Early on sophomore year, what had begun as absurd name-calling a couple of years prior became a surreal, full-blown, outright bullying situation. It was led by a group of boys and their mindless minions for reasons that, while they shouldn’t matter, are about as obscure and vague as any reason for being unkind to another person.
Verbal insults gave way to defacing my notebooks and then actual physical violence when teachers weren't looking. I was relieved that most of my classmates were oblivious to it, and you couldn’t see any bruises. I didn’t want to talk about it, but my mind couldn’t escape it. I had to watch my back.
What was it about the band that they found so threatening? Was the music too silly and annoying, compared to some of the heavier stuff of the day, like Rage Against the Machine or even Nirvana? Was it the goofiness, the dorkiness, the improbability of the popularity of “geek rock”?
That if a band called “Weezer” was getting attention, then what godforsaken thing was next?!
This being the mid-nineties, there was a lot of homophobia running around. The societal pressure to reject everything related to “not-the-norm” sexuality was impossibly heavy. While I had my own range of opinions, I wasn’t immune to some of that pressure, and I regret that now. I’m grateful that most common-sensed people are way past that (including these guys from high school), but I remember that time well.
I can now easily see a connection between teenage boys who felt the need to shun everything remotely gay and their disgust for a band in which no members gave off any hint of stereotypical masculinity. The fluid way Brian moved when playing the guitar, cutting that George Harrison-esque silhouette, Matt’s wild, hard-to-decipher antics, and Pat behind the drums giving off the vibe that he really did not care what anyone in the world thought–they were most certainly not bros.
Rivers, of course, was the worst offender of all. Short, meek-looking, purposefully nerdy, how dare he? And women wanted to sleep with this guy? Who the fuck did this dweeb think he was?
While I don’t want to spend more time than necessary on this aspect of my life, it’s impossible to talk about one without the other: my love for Weezer and finding my authentic self was marred by the words and actions of a handful of obnoxious, immature, mean-ass teenage boys. The old me had flown under the radar. The new me stood out, and they didn’t want me to. The act of being different, of changing, was a personal affront to them.
Perhaps it raised the question, too advanced for any of us high schoolers to recognize: if what had always seemed to be true ceased to be true anymore, how could reality ever be trusted again?
Or, centered another way: if I wasn’t who they thought I was, then what the hell did they know about anything?
My strength now was that I’d found my true identity. This music, the people who made it and the people who liked it, I mean really liked it, were my kinfolk. No amount of insults could tear me away from what I knew to be one of the things—maybe the very thing—that made everything about myself finally make sense. It was a superpower and couldn’t be touched.
It was just like Rivers sang in “In the Garage”, and I was living it.
Be sure to stay tuned for Blue/Pink: Part Two! Subscribe now to get it in your inbox before it’s released to the public!