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BEFORE YOU PROCEED: Have you started from the beginning? Check out Part One, Part Two, and Part Three here.
There was no coming back down from that wave of jubilation of my amazing Weezer Weekend. I was up there to stay for a long, long time.
Back at school on Tuesday (Monday had been MLK Day) and wearing my new babydoll Weezer tee, I regaled all my classmates with details about the shows and the climax of getting to meet Rivers and Brian. Even if they didn’t care for the band, they knew how much I did, and I’m pretty sure everyone was damn impressed.
My best friend was giving me grief about the Charleston show. (It was T-minus two months until the torturous pentangle situation I talked about in Part Two).
“You should have taken me,” he said, fake-pouting, or perhaps real-pouting; I never knew what was genuine or what was meant to elicit an emotional response from me.
It was a complete surprise to me that he’d even wanted to go. I mean, he was ragging on Weezer all the time, and we were in constant competition about who was the bigger fan of their favorite band: me about Weezer, or him about Dave Matthews.
I guess I was supposed to read his mind, and I would remember this moment (as well as many, many others), second-guessing myself, wondering if I had just taken him to the show, maybe something would have actually happened between us and the whole dramatic shebang to follow could have been avoided.
But no. Weezer was my band, and I was happy—and completely satisfied—to have had that first experience with them exactly how it had been, unadulterated by the complicated presence of someone who may or may not have loved me back.
I mailed Mykel and Carli the picture of me and Leslie with Brian, and shrieked with joy when I opened my Weezine Issue 10, Spring 1997 not long after–there we were, famous!! Karl also printed several of my “suggestions” in his “Things We’d Like to See” column, and you can read all five of them here. While they were printed anonymously, I’m going to break my decades-long silence and say that I’m still waiting for Matt’s comedy special, Brian’s clothing line, a Weezer photo book (looks like they’re reading this!), and a life-size reproduction of Rivers’ leg brace “for our own personal enjoyment” (I was sick, I know that)!!
That spring was sprinkled with lots of other little Weezery things. At the end of February I got a phone call out of the blue from Eric and Chris, also in the Weezer Fan Club. They had been at the Charleston show, too! They were in town and found me in the phone book and just called to say hi—they sounded about 14 years old. It was pretty cute.
That spring, I declared (to myself, the sole celebrant) April 2nd “International Weezer Day”! (If you recall from Part 1, it’s the same date, the previous year, that I found the “Say It Ain’t So” single in England). It was a Saturday, so to mark the occasion I borrowed the car and drove to the tunes of Weezer to Columbiana Mall—when there was nothing else to do, the mall would have to do. I bought the Weezer music book, just to have it, even though I didn’t know a thing about playing guitar.
And I was combing through the racks at Gadzooks when I heard the strum of a familiar guitar chord. Gadzooks was a funky store that was kind of a cross between Hot Topic and Claire’s, with a lot of sunflower-themed clothing and ahead-of-its-time poppy fashion for the upcoming millennium. On a TV mounted high up on the wall, I saw Rivers' face and realized: I was seeing the video for “The Good Life” for the first time! I pretty much shrieked with joy and started talking a mile a minute to one of the employees, a guy my age, about why this was a big deal. He grabbed some display pillows (probably shaped like daisies or something)—”Here, we can sit on these!”—plopping them down on the floor, joining in my excitement, and watched the video with me. Super sweet.
And in May, I was leaving a graduation party, keys in hand, my “Weezer Fanclub 1995” keychain dangling. A little blue viewfinder with a picture of the band inside had been the first annual “Secret Surprise” from Mykel and Carli. Only the earliest members of the fan club got them.
A woman who looked to be in her early twenties said, “Weezer Fanclub! I have one too! I stole it from him.” She motioned to a guy, also early twenties, who I learned was Ned, the only other fanclub member in my town! He told me later that he’d seen me in the Weezine but didn’t put it together when he saw me at the party. It was so random and so cool to finally meet someone from the fanclub in person. (Other than Fan Guy from the Charlotte show, but on this night, Ned wasn’t competing with Weezer themselves for my attention)!
Senior year drew to a close. With it, graduation and goodbyes, and saying “so long” to a lot more than I could have processed at the time. In my yearbook, a classmate wrote, “This is a secret, but I like Weezer, too. Maybe I’ll see you at a concert someday.” I was floored. She had seen what I had been subjected to and, not wanting the same treatment, kept her interest in the band a secret from us all!
For my senior quote, instead of rehashing overused platitudes from a Roosevelt or a Kennedy, there was really only one source that would do. The meaning behind “I don’t care what they say about us anyway” was a direct snub to those who had made parts of my life miserable at one point. (The irony, lost on a 17 year old, is that in choosing this quote, it’s clear I did care). But whatever! I was still going to be who I was going to be and not apologize for that.
I may have forgiven, but I sure as shit hadn’t forgotten.
Summer before college was packed with a lot of big deals. My last summer at camp. Traveling to Scotland. My eighteenth birthday.
And…the Very First (And Only!) South Carolina Weezer Fan Club Gathering!!!
I’d organized a get-together for all the Weezer fans in the state. Even with the club being a few years along now, there were still only a handful of us in little old South Carolina. Since I’d been in for awhile, I felt like I had a responsibility to all the newbies, kind of like a “Weezer Mentor” to all those fans who joined after I did. It didn’t really matter if we joined in 1995, 1996, or 1997; all of us were a part of something special.
Fan club contingents across the country had been meeting up and bonding over their shared love of Weezer for a few years now; some of the events involved meeting Mykel and Carli, and sometimes the band showed up! The Weezine was chock full of pictures and stories of the silly antics that always seemed to take place at these events. Mykel and Carli wrote in one of these reports: “We wish we had the resources to organize and attend one in every hometown of a Weezer fan. As you know, we don’t have that luxury, hope you don’t feel left out just because of where you live.”
Well, sorry girls, I absofuckinglutely did. Here I was in South Carolina, where the Confederate flag was defended and debated within the walls of my school on a daily basis, and there were kids on the other side of the country having backyard picnics with Brian, Rivers, and Karl. One lucky girl even got to take Brian Bell to her prom!
If there was a dark side to the fan club, it was this: it made me realize how desperately unfortunate I was to live in such a boring, backwards state (read with an exaggerated roll of the eyes). Pre-internet, it was that bite of the apple; my eyes were opened to all the dark and all the light, the curse as well as the blessing. It would open the door and show me all the possibilities, and those possibilities would make me realize what I didn't have. I would never be truly satisfied, knowing how much more was out there, just out of my grasp.
So yeah, we were not living the high life over here in South Cackalacky, but the least I could do was to stop feeling sorry for myself and to make something happen. I could create the best approximation of these gatherings that I could, a time and a place where lonely Weezer fans could come together, talk about their favorite band, and maybe make some new friends in the process.
I created handwritten fliers and mailed them out to all the fanclub members in the state. I’d been writing to some of them for awhile, but with the exception of the two concerts and then randomly meeting Ned, I’d still met hardly any other Weezer fans in person over the almost three years I’d loved the band.
I heard back from a smattering of people that they were coming, and I was super excited. Finally getting to hang out with some other fans, and they were coming to my house! How cool is that?!
But before we could meet each other, something awful happened.
August 1, 1997 Dear Journal, Something I’ve known for almost a week but that I’ve been reluctant to talk about is that Mykel and Carli, =W= fan club members #0001 and #0002, are dead. They were killed in a car crash about a month ago. In a nutshell, that means that the fan club has pretty much been wiped out. The fans are still there, but all we have left of the club is the name. I can’t even listen to Weezer now. It’s not going to turn me off forever, but it hurts. They were so nice and giving. They LOVED Weezer and all the fans. It’s not fair. Tomorrow I’m having a SC Weezer Fanclub get together (I’ve been planning it for awhile) and it couldn’t have come at a worse time, ya know? It really needs to go well. We all need to stick together at a time like this.
Along with their sister Trysta, Mykel and Carli had been in a one-vehicle accident in the middle of the night off a Colorado highway, in between one Weezer show and the next. It was likely that the driver fell asleep at the wheel. They all died instantly.
I’d already lost peers and friends to car accidents, cancer, and suicide. Each one had felt like a sock to the gut. Even though I’d never met the girls, this felt just the same way.
And because the fanclub was so huge and the very people responsible for organizing things were not there and never would be again, getting the word out quickly that Mykel and Carli were gone was an impossible task. There were thousands of people to notify. It was done chain letter-style, with different sets of members responsible for notifying different regions, and it took up to two months (maybe more for the international fanclub members) for everyone to find out.
I’d been away at camp when the letter arrived from Karl. Fanclub mail was always a little envelope of joy, so I’d saved it for last. I didn’t recognize the return address, but it said Weezer on it. I tore it open, expecting to hear from a new pen pal or some other good news.
Instead, I felt like I was reading a lie. It didn’t feel real. It was awful about the accident anyway, but the letter basically indicated that the fanclub, as it had been, could not exist without their hard work and leadership. The fanclub was, quite possibly, over.
Mykel and Carli, the sisters who had put their heart and soul into the club, who were responsible for essentially all of my Weezer knowledge and connection, who had been sending me stuff for two and a half years and played an enormous role in helping to shape who I was, were gone.
In a moment, three lives had been lost and an entire network of kids—a lifeline, in so many ways—had been upended.
But I wouldn’t let any of that sink in just yet.
August 3, 1997 Dear Journal, It felt SO GOOD to talk to people who could UNDERSTAND!
On a sunny Saturday in early August, the masses (er, seven people, plus me) descended on my parent’s house in Columbia: Ned and Shannon, Blake and George, Michelle, Chris (who’d called me after the Charleston show), and Donny.
Ned and Shannon were in my zip code, so they could’ve walked over if they’d wanted to. Michelle was from somewhere in the upstate and took a bus down, Blake and George came down from Greenville, Chris’ dad drove him up from Charleston (“Is this where the Weezer convention is?” his dad asked my dad), and Donny drove down from Spartanburg.
Donny was the coolest thing ever. I opened the door, saw his adorable smile, and practically heard birds sing. I couldn’t stop smiling, too. He’d also been at the Charlotte show, even though I didn’t know it at the time. He’d written me before the meetup and said that he would bring a bootleg tape of a Weezer concert in Germany, which we all watched, crammed around the VCR in my parents’ den. With so little “Weezer stuff” out there in the world at that time, it was crazy to see the concert on that tape (and all the rabid German fans screaming: “Weezah! Weezah!”). I was glad Donny brought the tape because it gave us something cool to do to help break the ice. We all thought it was awesome.
We all caravaned to Finlay Park to hang out and chat about Weezer and music, all a bit nervous about sharing our deepest feelings about a band we loved and that others just didn’t understand. We were our own little support group. Chris wanted to go to a music store, so we all went to Richland Fashion Mall, and then back to my house before everyone headed back home.
When I look back, I don’t think I planned a whole lot for the event besides hanging out and talking about Weezer and being goofy, but it turned out to be exactly what we all needed. A group of (mostly) teens, wandering around (it had to be the largest gathering of “People wearing Weezer gear” in the state, other than the concert itself!), asking random strangers what their favorite band was, and seeing the puzzled looks on their faces…this is what kids did before phones, and it was boring and fun and obnoxious and just the best. Think of all the brain cells we had to use just to entertain ourselves this way!
I’d planned on four hours, and other than Ned and Shannon (who were technically already “adults” and thus had responsibilities), everybody stayed two hours longer than that. Nobody wanted to leave, and I didn’t want them to! It was six hours of Weezer conversation and everyone was so nice. Later, I wrote in my journal, Weezer’s such a nice, warm, funny band that the fans (the REAL fans, like us) are all going to be super nice, too.
I hadn’t wanted to talk about Mykel and Carli, but Michelle brought it up. Since not all of the group had heard the news, there was disbelief and confusion and I think I changed the subject quickly. I wasn’t ready to go there. In retrospect, it would have been the responsible thing to share the news officially with everyone, but I was still reeling. I wanted us to be able to be together—for the first time, for just a little while longer—without having to face the harsh truth. After all, I thought that Mykel and Carli would have wanted us to be happy, and be grateful for gathering us in the first place.
Everybody asked when the next gathering would be. Things were about to change for me, big time, and I couldn’t make any promises. But it felt good to have been able to be with people who felt the same way I did, most of us meeting fellow Weezer fanatics for the very first time.
It sounds like a small thing, but it was a big thing for me, and it felt good to all of us.
Being an original fan club member—one of the first hardcore Weezer fans in the whole freaking world!—still feels pretty darn cool. I owe it all to the dedication and hard work of two sisters in far-off Oregon who cared about sharing their love of Weezer with the rest of us, introducing us to each other, and helping us feel less alone.
And I still have every single thing that Mykel and Carli sent me.
And so I left for college. Instead of high school where I was desperate to stand out, here I was desperate to fit in. My preppy school was the wrong college for those who wanted to express any sort of individuality; those who did were few and far between and everyone knew exactly who they were. (Sidenote: If you were in the WFU Class of 2001 and I say the name “Martin,” you know exactly who I’m talking about, a guy who dared to wear feather boas around campus and whose presence refreshingly reminded us that we didn’t have to be robots. But I digress)!
I met a group of other freshman guys who liked Weezer—Vandy, Brett, Dan, Galen—but when we’d hang out, I felt like I was the pretender this time. There was even an upperclassman in the fanclub—I recognized his Wake Forest P.O. Box address on the list of North Carolina fans—but in a big reversal of my previous self, I was too nervous to ever talk to him. (Another sidenote: I found his door at some point and wrote a message, perhaps tipsily, on his whiteboard one night. “I’m in the Weezer fanclub too. THIS IS NOT A JOKE, I promise!!”)
But first, more of the same. Girls on my hall raised their eyebrows at the giant Weezer banner I hung on my wall. The picture of Weezer on my dorm room door was defaced by some visiting pre-fraternity d-bags with the same old boring insults (“Weezer sucks, Weezer’s gay”). I wrote some of my fanclub pen pals, both dismayed by that all-too-familiar incident, as well as extolling the thrill of freedom of being on my own. My long-distance friends provided the intimate connection I so deeply valued.
Your letter was great. It made my day. I understand your anger about the person who messed up your picture. I hope you aren’t as mad anymore. I want to thank you for letting me tell you the ways I feel about Weezer. It lets me feel like I’m a part of something special. You understand, don’t you. –Andrew #3440
So, how’s college life? If you haven’t found your “niche” yet, I’m sure you will soon. Watch out for those crazy drunk frat boys. They’re crazy. –Donny #????
I am glad you are having a good time at college. It obviously is a great leap from high school, and it gives young adults their first true sense of responsibility. I’m not sure I like the sound of being responsible too much, but in 1999, I’ll have to find out. –Peter #3941
At the same time, I didn’t need my security blanket of Weezer in college the same way I needed it in high school, and I was way too busy to keep it at that level. Classes were demanding, my social life was through the roof, and there were all kinds of new distractions and new friends and new crushes to keep me busy. (There’s a lot more about the beginning of my freshman year in this essay here).
I still believed that a musical connection with someone was predisposed to be deep and kinetic, and I probably kissed a few too many boys who told me they liked Weezer, too. But across my entire life, I actually only ever met one guy I liked who shared the same level of appreciation for Weezer that I did, and circumstances, timing, and distance made it a non-starter.
The rest of those guys at school weren’t like me. The girl who was having a hard time wrestling with her identity as a newly-minted sorority girl at a preppy college was also the same person who felt like she was, still, the second-biggest Weezer fan in the state of South Carolina.
But if I didn’t even live in South Carolina anymore, did that even count? So where was home?
Wake Forest was the first college in the nation to distribute laptops to every incoming freshman, my class being the third one to receive the heavy black anchors called ThinkPads and send emails through the school-wide ethernet. With access to distant friends easier than ever, I asked my fanclub pen pals if they could communicate on the computer, too.
I recently got a computer and internet access, too! I got an e-mail address through my boyfriend’s work, so I’ve been having fun! My e-mail address is 7422933@mcimail.com. Next weekend I’m going to Atlanta for the Hot Wheels Convention. I’m not too excited about the Hot Wheels but I’m happy to go SHOPPING! –Andrea #0254
I would email ya, but I don’t have an email address…my step-dad is constantly on the computer! –Donny #????
You say that you have just learned the wonders of the Inter net. I wish I could say I had a computer to use but my parents don’t see the value in one. I know all the info about one but don’t have one. I will e-mail if I ever get on a friends computer. –Andrew #3440
The internet was a slowly inflating balloon of musical information, made up of people searching for and finding music communities. I had a busy social life, but now I had =RWA=, Rebel Weezer Alliance (then filed under weezer.net) to keep me connected to all things Weezer. It was the very first website I ever frequented, and I checked it daily to see if there was any new Weezer news. You can see a capture of the original =RWA= here: check it out for pre-2000-era internet stylings, it’s so rad! (The links work, too)!
=RWA= was started by two fanclubbers, and it contained a plethora of pictures I’d never seen, articles I hadn’t yet read, and a community of fans who were hardcore like me. Karl had even moved his Karl’s Corner over to the web; on one hand, this was awesome, and made all the information much easier (and faster) to access. But (I say with a wistful sigh), like everything else that the internet has done, it also made it more diluted and less special.
Rivers was back at Harvard, the other members were pursuing their side bands (Space Twins, The Rentals, and The Special Goodness), and it would eventually be revealed late in my freshman year that Matt was officially out of the band. We were told he wanted to pursue The Rentals full-time, which felt like a bad business move to me. The Rentals were a fun band and I’d absorbed their music for the lighter fare it contained, but they weren’t Weezer.
Losing Matt wasn’t just a loss for the bands’ sound or personality, even though those were each huge in their own right. It was like Mom and Dad had broken up. Matt had been the one who had drawn us in in the first place, with his larger-than-life personality and commitment to a gag (one only has to watch the band’s MTV VMA acceptance to know what I’m talking about).
The band would be really different without him; while those of us in the fanclub understood that Mykel’s and Carli’s deaths were a big deal, the rest of the fan world would consider Matt leaving the band the first major loss that defined the “before” and “after”.
Along with all of this, apparently over the previous year Pinkerton had not sold well. Sure, I didn’t hear any of it on the radio, maybe “El Scorcho” once, but I didn’t need to: I had the album itself. I could listen to it whenever I wanted. Plus, the concerts I’d attended had been sold out; I knew that other concerts on that same tour—which had lasted from August 1996 to August 1997, a virtually nonstop, exhausting parade of shows—were equally as packed.
In a Rolling Stone article twenty years after the album came out, Karl remembered things the same way: “You [would] never know [the album was performing poorly] from the shows. That tour was great,” Koch recalled to Alternative Press.
In addition, critics didn’t love the album, either, but even with all my extensive knowledge as a high school graduate, I didn’t know that the lack of radio airplay and the harsh criticism from the press sounded like a death knell for an album, no matter how successful earlier endeavors had been. Some bands don’t make it through such dramatic events.
The legend of Pinkerton popcorns around, from Rivers pouring his heart into it, to the album’s initial “failure” and his embarrassment and bemoaning that it was ever made, to the album becoming an emo cult classic, to the raised eyebrows over some of the “problematic” themes (I’ll touch on that a little in Part 5), to now, a mix of all of these stories that make the album loved, complex, and complicated.
For me and for those of us who “got in” early on, we can appreciate it for the 1996 time capsule and brilliant emo record that it is, ahead of its time. When I listen to it, I’m seventeen every time.
When I met him in January 1997, Rivers’ demeanor was indicative of a lot of internal heaviness, halfway through a yearlong tour that would end in August, as scheduled, but immediately preceded by the deaths of Mykel and Carli. He had hoped that Pinkerton would mark a new trajectory for Weezer, and he was devastated when he turned out to be wrong. Having laid bare all his emotions and then being rejected by the masses was excruciating, far worse than his leg surgery, because, at the time, he didn’t see how it could ever end.
In an interview reprinted in Weezine Issue #10, the magazine Addicted to Noise interviewed Rivers shortly after Pinkerton was released. The interviewer asked, “Do you have a sense of where your music is headed?” His response, summarized:
“I always get big ideas and then they never come true. So I could tell you what I'm thinking but I think I'd probably be wrong. I always end up far more conservative than I think I'm gonna be. So I think in the future, we could probably expect more Weezer pop music but maybe a little less annoyingly poppy and maybe a little deeper and more complex. You can probably hear my trajectory by listening to Pinkerton, because those songs were written over two years and they're in order. I really like the sound of this record. I like that it sounds so natural. Maybe my taste will change by the time I have another 10 songs. But I think my tastes are kind of leveling off and becoming more consistent so maybe the next record would sound similar. I never have any idea.” (Read the full interview here)
We now know, with Green four years later, that the “less annoyingly poppy” and “deeper and more complex” work he imagined was not to be, and that the next record (or the one after that, or the one after that), did not, in fact, sound anything at all like Pinkerton.
By the end of freshman year, all my Weezer pen pals had stopped writing. Maybe it was I who stopped first. Maybe a few of us kept in touch through email. The point is that my needs had changed. There was no fanfare when the letters ended. It wasn’t sad to me in the moment—I probably didn’t even realize it was happening—but it’s sad to me now to have lost that, indicative of what we’ve lost as a larger society as the way we communicate has changed.
I was in the fan club as long as it existed in its original run, renewing my membership every time it was available. To his eternal credit, Karl almost singlehandedly kept it going as long as he could, into 2002, but he was way too busy to maintain it in the same uber-personalized way that Mykel and Carli had. Looking back, it’s clearer now that the spark and the uniqueness of the original fanclub they had cultivated died along with them.
This series of dramatic events in such a short time—the loss of Mykel and Carli and the turmoil of the fan club, Matt’s departure, and Pinkerton’s rejection by the masses—meant it would be more than four years (my entire college tenure!) before new Weezer music would come out. The dawn of the internet had changed how I learned information about Weezer, and the busyness and new distractions of my new life all combined to put my favorite band—still my favorite!—on the back burner for the next four years.
But not quite four years! In December 2000 I visited Southern California for the first time with my then-boyfriend, whose family had just moved from North Carolina to Riverside. In addition to the excitement of finally getting to go to a place that was actually cool, I learned that Weezer would be performing at an arena show on New Year’s Eve down in San Diego. Of course I snapped up tickets; I couldn’t miss my first chance to see them after three agonizing years!
I had just received a special Weezer fanclub-only, two-song Christmas CD, and it was my soundtrack to the flight across the country that Christmas Eve. When my boyfriend’s dad picked us up from LAX, my jet-lagged eyes gaped wide open as we drove through the brown hills and orange groves, landscapes I’d only read about and imagined, and into the sprawling suburbs around Los Angeles. The entire trip rang with the brilliance of the new—I’d always pictured myself in California, meeting celebrities and soaking up the sun—but I was most excited about the show. I couldn’t imagine a better way to welcome 2001 than by being at a Weezer show in their home territory.
It was a big bill, six bands, with New Found Glory opening for Weezer, and hometown heroes Blink-182 headlining. It was cool to see NFG for the first time; I’d heard of them a couple years before through my connections with the fan club (more in Part 5 on how I got to my next stage of music fandom). They were part of a new class of pop-punk bands made up of guys my age who had made it relatively big, and while I wasn’t out there trying to do what they were doing, I was thoroughly impressed by their tenacity and the energy they brought to the stage.
And while nothing could ever compare to my first Weezer concerts, it felt so great to have them back! While I didn’t memorize their set list like I did before, they must have played the big songs off Blue like “Undone” “Buddy Holly” and “Surf Wax,” and possibly some off Pink, too, even with Rivers’ trepidation about going into that territory again. This might have also been the first time I got to see the “Winged W” (also known as the Flying W) lit up in all its splendor on the wall behind Pat’s drum kit. There’s something about that giant letter that makes people go all crazy-like, me included. (Pat, incidentally, is the one who came up with the design, so it makes sense that he’d get to bask in its glow onstage every night)!
Sure, things were incredibly different since I’d last seen them. Mikey Welsh had replaced Matt on bass two years ago, and I already knew all about him from the Weezine and =RWA=. He seemed decently goofy enough to fill Matt’s shoes, and played with raucous energy.
And unlike Music Farm or Tremont, the arena was huge, with room for 12,000 people. With such a big bill and big headliners, it was packed. I was in the floor crowd down at the front, and the energy at the show was more than palpable. The bands brought a ton of fire and we reflected it right back at them.
I, too, was very different. My boyfriend liked Weezer, too, or so I thought. I felt secure, I wasn’t “bitter and alone” anymore, and I was close to graduating college and going out into the real world. I was excited about the prospect of moving west: closer to my boyfriend’s family, who I thought would surely become my family. And closer to Weezer!
We were so exhausted from the four other bands and then Weezer’s set, in fact, that we left before Blink took the stage. “Hey, you know there’s no reentry, right?” a security guard called out to us by the doors. “Yeah, we know!” we said as we walked away. I’m sure I’ll get to see Blink-182 again, I thought.
Things were picking up: it wouldn’t be long, just a couple of months, until I got to see Weezer again in Charlotte in March for the Yahoo Outloud Tour. Another arena show, down front, still in the mix, yet never close enough. There were new songs, too: “I Do”, “Hash Pipe”, and “Island in the Sun.”
The long wait was finally over—within the same week in May, I graduated college and Weezer’s new CD, The Green Album, was released. It sounded good, and the lead song, “Don’t Let Go”, was promising and loud. Green didn’t sound like Pinkerton, and it didn’t sound like Blue, either, but it did sound like Weezer, and I was happy with that.
More Weezer shows, Charlotte again in February 2002, and Raleigh later that month, and even more new songs from another upcoming album just a year after Green. The shows were bigger than I wanted them to be, and I missed having the same experience I did when I first saw them. For the Charlotte show, I took my friend Nathan who was also a Weezer fan. For Raleigh, I went alone. If I couldn’t go with someone who was a hardcore fan like me and wanted to be in the thick of it, then going alone was better. That way no one else would get in the way.
Fast forward to that summer, and Maladroit, the cover of which looked just like my grandfather’s living room, complete with a pea soup-green couch. A new and better boyfriend for me (this one gave me his old-school “Rock =W= Music” shirt, green to my navy one) and a new bass player for Weezer, Scott Shriner. Scott’s aesthetic—sleeve tattoos on his heavily buffed-out arms, seen prominently because he was always wearing tank tops—was a hot topic of discussion amongst Weezer fans. He didn’t fall neatly into Weezer’s “goofy bass player” prereq. Would he be a good fit? Time would tell.
The timing, in fact, of both Green and Maladroit and what was going on in my own life had a big impact on how I felt about both those albums. On one hand, the past four to five years—the entirety of my college experience, plus one—had changed me. A lot of ups and downs, with relationships crashing and burning and hope rising from the ashes, impossible decisions about what to do in “the real world”, close friends who were like sisters but then we all had to move on; nobody tells you just how painful the end of college and the start of the rest of your life can be.
That fall, I was going to graduate school and living with my parents back in Columbia, and my friend Adam took me to see his friends’ band, Love Apple. “I think you’ll like them,” he told me. “All the members love Weezer.” On the way into New Brookland Tavern, I saw the lead singer’s car in the parking lot: he had a huge =W= decal on the back, lime green, just like the one gracing my own car.
When the band came onstage, I shrieked with joy. On guitar was none other than George, who’d been at my Weezer Fanclub gathering five years ago! I was totally impressed that he and his friends had a Weezer-inspired band in little old Columbia. I was in town for one more year, and George would be at all the same shows Adam and I went to. It was rad to be friends again.
The waiting period between Maladroit (2002) and Make Believe (2005) felt like the blink of an eye compared to the wait for Green. The time period was more than a year shorter, but more importantly, there was a lot more filling that space in my life. I was now in my early twenties, in grad school, then moving across the country, meeting new people, and building a completely new life in Arizona. Weezer was still my favorite band and a big part of my life, but so were a lot of other things, like improv, church on Sundays, Monday night football, and Ladies 80’s Nights. I still felt that rush of excitement when I thought about their music, and wanted more. I still carried my fanclub card in my wallet, brought my lunch with me in my new Weezer lunchbox, and hung the first four albums, vinyl, on my bedroom wall, framed.
I had tickets to see them in 2005 in Phoenix with Foo Fighters, but because of a medical situation I had to miss the show. Instead, I gave the tickets to my best friends Rachel and Maureen. Maureen used my ID at Will Call with no problem, since we always get mistaken for each other. I was super disappointed—missing Weezer and Foo Fighters!!—but it was probably for the best; I could have passed out on the floor and easily been trampled by other fans. What a way to go!
Four years after that, my husband and I caught Weezer in Saratoga Springs, New York, another show where they were opening for Blink-182, but once again, I did not get to see Blink-182. (The lesson is: don’t waste your Blink moment, because if you do, you’ll be wishing you were paying 2001 ticket prices)!
And a year later, we’d see them again, this time at the Champlain Valley Fair, just a few miles away from where we lived. It would be Weezer’s first show ever in Vermont! We volunteered at the fair every year, tabling for the non-profit he worked for, right underneath the grandstand, passing out mini beach balls with his organization’s logo on them. We snuck out to grab some “only-in-Vermont” fair food, like apple cider slushies and maple cotton candy (the only acceptable cotton candy flavor), and checked out my favorite exhibits, the giant pumpkins and the butter sculpture.
And then it was time! We got in line with the rest of the crowd waiting to go in. I ran into a few of the teens I worked with at my camp. It was a weird but cool full circle moment; they were the same age I was when I got into Weezer. Now, more than a decade and a half had passed. I was glad that the band was still gaining younger fans, but also misty-eyed that my time as a “young” fan was long gone. We headed to the grandstand seats, far far away from the stage.
The concert was great. Coheed and Cambria opened; an interesting choice, but I’d been a fan of theirs for awhile. Weezer, as always, brought big energy. Rivers' persona had changed quite a lot in the thirteen ensuing years since my first show. He was totally amped and bouncing off the walls, and even though our seats were like a mile away, he ran all the way out into the grandstand, climbed up the stairs, and with unbridled energy, sang right in front of us, as though he knew I would be there!
It just goes to show that it’s never too late for a band to surprise you.
There would be one other surprise, too: an impromptu appearance by Mikey Welsh on bass for “Hash Pipe.” Needing to take care of his mental health, Mikey had left the band after Green and was now an artist living in my new hometown of Burlington, Vermont. I had wondered if he’d be there, and apparently his performance was totally unplanned, surprising even Rivers mid-song! It was such an awesome moment to witness, especially since there were probably only a handful of us in the audience who knew just how big this moment really was.
I always hoped I’d run into Mikey sometime; Burlington was not a big place, and he was finding his footing with his art. I’d peer in through the windows of our downtown skate shop to see his work on the walls; it was just a few doors down from one of my favorite restaurants.
Sadly, Mikey died of unknown causes just a year after that performance. He was only 40 years old. I was grateful that I’d gotten to see him then, happy and enjoying being a part of the band once again, if only for a Cinderella moment.
The show ended, the sky now faintly dappled with stars trying their best to peek through the ambient neon light reflected by the midway rides. “I want to ride the swings,” I suddenly declared. I hadn’t been on a fair ride in years; as an adult, you learn to be suspicious of the safety of those rickety, skeletal frames, dubious about taking the risk of getting launched into the air and coming down in pieces.
As a teenager, I’d loved the swings, and now they seemed like a relatively safe choice compared to some of the more terrifying options swirling around me. Leaving my husband on the ground (he was not about to forgo years of built-up healthy suspicion for one ride that could be his last!), I rose into the air, and realized immediately that I’d made a terrible mistake. I couldn’t close my eyes—I needed to see what would happen if the chain snapped, sending me soaring into the heavens—I wanted to know what it would feel like, that last feeling of weightlessness and complete freedom before the crash.
I did not die that day. (Obviously). I haven’t been on the swings since. And that Weezer show—a warm, early September Vermont evening thirteen years ago, the air laced with the unmistakable fair aromas of fried onions and maple anything and the fresh stink of the barnyard—was the last time I saw Weezer in concert.
Part Five comes next week, and takes us to the present day. Subscribe now to get it in your inbox before it’s released to the public!