Weezer debuted a couple of new songs at concerts in Korea over the weekend, and oh man are they just craptastic enough to be tailor-made for “ironic” videos featuring Internet personalities! (One, called “The Girl Got Hot,” even opens with the line “I went to a party last Saturday night,” thus paving the way for Lita Ford to play Keyboard Cat’s cougar-tastic mom in the attendant clip.) I’ll place the videos of the two performances after the jump and avail from further comment, except to note that Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney and attempted Phish fandom, pretty much summed up what bugs me about Viral Internet-Era Weezer thusly: “I don’t know if Weezer hates its fans or just the (apparently) stifling concept of sincerity, but you should listen to these two new songs if you weren’t already convinced of Weezer’s contempt for music.” Yeah, pretty much. To the tunes! More »
Never one to let an opportunity for online virality pass them by, Weezer have released the hybrid cover of MGMT’s indie-kid fave “Kids” and Lady GaGa’s actual hit “Poker Face” that they premiered a few months back in Slightly Cleaned-Up, Officially Sanctioned Single form. Watch as Rivers Cuomo toasts 2008… in May 2009! Judge for yourself whether Weezer’s take on GaGa’s No. 1 track is better than Chris Daughtry‘s! See if you can make it all the way through the clip’s five minutes and 36 seconds without wishing you were listening to “Say It Ain’t So,” or even “Beverly Hills,” instead! All these delights await you after the jump. More »
This year’s Virgin Mobile Fest, headlined by blink-182 and Weezer, has been rechristened the Virgin Mobile FreeFest thanks to its total ticket price of $0–provided you don’t get your tickets delivered, at which point Ticketmaster will charge its customary delivery fee. Ticket buyers who pick up their ducats at the festival’s site (the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md.) or the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., will have all convenience fees waived. Tickets go on sale–er, will be made available to the general public on Saturday; Public Enemy, St. Vincent, Franz Ferdinand, the National, and Jet are also on the bill for the festival, which will happen on Aug. 30. [Official site / Billboard] More »
Our pals at Absolute Punk have a listing of the dates for blink-182’s summer tour, with a handy code telling you which supporting acts–of the array encompassing Fall Out Boy, Weezer, the All-American Rejects, Asher Roth, Chester French, Taking Back Sunday, and Panic At The Disco–will be on which dates. [AbsolutePunk] More »
Also performing at the T-Mobile party that hosted the first concert in four years by blink-182: Weezer, who had a tweaked lineup (with Josh Freese on drums; wonder if Rivers Cuomo got a copy of his solo album when the hire went through?) and a cover of MGMT’s highly bloggable “Kids” that interpolated a bit of Lady Gaga for good measure / extra viral impact. The two songs mesh pretty well, although I do wish they’d thrown a bit of an old folk tune in there for good measure. [YouTube] More »
Fall Out Boy has been added to blink-182’s tour this summer with Weezer. No dates to announce yet, but this certainly adds a new wrinkle to Dan’s hypothesizing last month about which bodily function the tour would name itself in honor of. [himynameismark.com] More »
That band starring the guy smart enough to quit Weezer is barreling ahead with its blog-punk project, Songs About Time. If you are one of those dudes that still care what bands you pretended to listen to in high school are doing but are just catching up over here, a refresher: The Rentals are putting 365 photos this year (don’t hurt yourselves!), 52 short films of the band recording their music (thrilling new media content!), and three digital mini-albums (2009, yeah!) on their Web site. OK, I’m being a total boner for no reason, because the Rentals films are actually look pretty cool–they’re like a hi-res, dorkier Don’t Look Back if you’re into watching bands make records. More »
When Matt Sharp started his cutesy little Weezer side project (ahem, excuse me: musical collective), The Rentals, back in 1994, I thought, “That’s nice. They’ve given the bassist his own little band to play with.” I said that in a baby talk voice. Now I look back fondly on the reliable pop charms of the Rentals, having watched Rivers Cuomo spend the last decade dismantling any goodwill I ever felt for Weezer. Did y’all listen to “Heart Songs”? That song alone has made me question why I ever liked that band.
I’m probably not in the target demographic for this particular tour, but the announcement that Weezer would be opening for Blink-182’s reunion tour this summer conjured up an “oh, that’s still happening?” response from me. (Then I pondered which bodily function the tour’s name would pun around with.)
We’ve taken aim at Wired‘s Panglossian attitude when it comes to the relationship between the Internet and the music business before, mainly because the powers that be at Conde Nast’s ever-shrinking tech bible just make it too easy. Witness the magazine’s latest, and somehow most witless, entrant to its ever-growing “we can write about music, honest!” canon, “Why The Music Industry Hates Guitar Hero,” which somehow manages to be offensive, wrong, and a testament to why Wired should maybe think about scrapping its print edition and just go online. All at once!
