Weezer

Surfwax America (mp3)

So, a couple of nights ago my boyfriend woke me up in the middle of the night (well, he says I woke up spontaneously, but whatever) to tell me how bad the new Weezer album is. I guess you could preview songs on iTunes or something? And they're all terrible? I don't know, he just kept saying, "God, it's so bad. It's so, so bad. I was expecting it to be bad... but not this bad. It's just terrible." The whole time he was talking I just kept thinking about that time I had The Heart of Darkness as my summer reading book for school. I kept expecting him to shout, "The horror! The horror!" and then collapse. It was a dramatic moment. Then he came home from work the other day and said that he pre-ordered it on not one but two different formats. Say what? I guess old nineties habits die hard.

Anyway, I suppose the point is that some people just have those bands/artists that they keep loving even when they start to make godawful albums that leave you feeling alone and betrayed and wondering why you ever liked them to begin with (this is sort of how I feel about both Hole and Liz Phair).

I basically stopped paying attention to Weezer when the Green album came out and I've considered that to be a pretty sound move. That said, their debut album is still one of my favorite CDs to listen to in the car.

"Surf Wax America" has always been my favorite Weezer song. I was only seven when Weezer's first album came out, but I was already headlong into a surfing obsession that lasted well into my teens -- I read all of Frederick Kohner's Gidget novels and would watch any terrible sixties beach party movie that showed up on television. The fact that there's a song called "There's No Surf in Cleveland" was more or less heartbreaking for me.

Anyway, it's no surprise that I would latch on to a pretty ridiculous song about surfing written by people who probably don't surf.

(Side note: the similes in this song! Whoa! I love the continuous comparisons made between the ocean and alcohol -- "the sea is foaming like a bottle of beer," that one about the waves rolling like a keg, yadda, yadda, yadda.)

Side note: I am well-aware that this photo features a seriously out-of-date Weezer line-up, but would you believe that no good promo photos of Weezer exist! Also, I don't really care about their current line-up anyway.

Surfwax America (mp3)