The Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda Files: The Wisdom Of Weston

Brian Raftery | April 23, 2007 5:45 am
Westonband.jpg

Time for another installment of the Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda Files, where we raid our archives in search of a lost gem.

Artist: Weston Albums: A Real Life Story of Teenage Rebellion (1994), Got Beat Up (1996) What happened: We’re certainly guilty of hitting the ’90s-nostalgia button a bit too much around here (“Hey, wasn’t Faith No More awesome? And so was En Vogue!”), but we can’t help the fact that during much of the Clinton era, one of your Idolators was obsessed with this Bethlehem, Pa. outfit (it helped that they were at Penn State seemingly every other Saturday). And considering that Weston played a few reunion shows earlier this year, we can’t be alone. Why they should have been a hit: Because of their to-the-point delivery and cheeky on-stage demeanor, Weston was often lumped in with the pop-punk movement, despite the fact that Teenage Rebellion and Got Beat Up were much more in the thoughtful, fuzzy-pop vein of Sebadoh (there were a lot of Weezer comparisons at the time, no doubt fueled in part by the fact that they often sat next to one in another in the CD bins). And while songs like “Retarded” and “Just Like Kurt” were written in a teen-frustration mindset, they’ve aged better than we ever imagined:

Weston – Retarded [MP3, link expired] Weston – Just Like Kurt [MP3, link expired] Weston – Dinosaur [MP3, link expired] Weston [MySpace]

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