Weezer/Best Coast, November 27 at the Gibson Amphitheater

Sometime in the late summer or early fall the tickets for the short Weezer tour went on sale. Of course Noa had to go. I would have skipped it, having had my fill of Weezer for a while, but they did the one thing that could get me to see their concert: They committed to playing all of Pinkerton. While I can’t say that I love Weezer anymore, I will have Pinkerton on my top 100 albums of all time for a long time. So I told her I was in and we planned to get together for it. (She also had tickets for the night before, when they were playing the Blue Album but that was way more than I needed.) As it turned out, Noa got sick and she had to give up her tickets (and she had to have been deathly ill for her to miss those shows). I don’t remember what she did with the first night’s tickets but since I was going to the second night I took the other ticket she had and, since she was with me, took Carla with me. Noa gets her tickets through e-mail nowadays and I didn’t think I’d have a problem printing out the tickets on my own but I had printer problems (yet again. That printer didn't last much longer after that) and I knew that I couldn’t take it to Kinko’s (since we had a problem with accessing the site there before). I had a bit of luck and was able to get the printer to work but it was nearly at the last minute and we rushed to Universal, getting there in the nick of time to see Best Coast, but only because we valet-parked (and that cost $25). Best Coast is another local band that I’ve missed until they got (relatively) big but that they were opening was another clincher in the deal for me to go to this show. Live, they were a little flat, only showing that their debut album owed much of its thrill to the production but it was still a good enough performance, especially considering they weren’t really built to play a place like the Gibson. Weezer went on, beginning not with Pinkerton but with a best-of set showcasing pretty much post-Pinkerton, an era when Rivers decided to go along with his fame and become a real, full-time musician, though it might also be argued that it was when he approached it as a job and lost the spark that made the band’s early stuff so loose and fun. It could also explain why they did this full-album cash-grab, since they could feel their relevancy slipping away as Rivers kept pooping out new music, perpetually with lessening returns, and felt that they could get the spotlight again, playing their most beloved albums, even if they hadn’t played more than a sparse spattering of Pinkerton since they originally toured (limply) for it and, as it's said, an album that Rivers would rather forget. Also goes to show why Rivers has let go of the control over the band that he held with an iron fist in the past: by letting the other guys write or sing some of the new material, he can care even less and the rest of the guys are happy, even if they suck. At least Rivers was smart enough to get an awesome drummer to replace Pat when he decided to play guitar, which also means that Rivers doesn't even have to play guitar anyone, though with Josh Freese on drums, it only shows how much a marginal drummer Pat is. There’s so little that Rivers does with the band anymore, it’s a surprise he even shows up for the shows. As for Pinkerton itself, the performance was mostly flat and joyless, which is mostly what it was on the album, on purpose, and while that was part of the album's charm, it doesn't work as well live, and so to say it was even more flat and joyless in concert is remarkable. It wasn’t bad (and credit for playing two B-sides, including "Suzanne," secretly one of their best songs), since the songs were still the same, but it was clear that they engaged a lot less with their own material than the audience did, which is sad since it's sad that Pinkerton was the start of the mass-market emo movement. The kids at that show grew up with and were built from that album so they probably didn’t notice or care that it was a lackluster performance. Even though I knew that it wasn’t going to be a great performance, I still had to go, to experience all of those songs performed live all at one time, especially since they'll probably never bother to do it again, if they even play any of those songs at one of their standard shows. It could be either good luck or bad luck that Weezer are still together so it’s fortunate to get to see their best songs performed, even if it's by the modern-day version of Cuomo and the band. It was probably the only way to make their newer music sound vibrant and exciting, to do a set of songs they were playing begrudgingly against a set of stuff they actually wanted to do. But really, if they played all of their stuff like the set they played before Pinkerton, they might be able to reach the heights they once (almost) had (as long as they keep away from the stuff from the accursed Red Album).

Weezer’s set-list:
"Memories"
"Pork and Beans"
"The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)"
"Perfect Situation" (with Jorge Garcia)
"Dope Nose" (Scott Shriner sang, Rivers played guitar)
"Island in the Sun" (with Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast)
"Hash Pipe"
"You Gave Your Love to Me Softly"
"Susanne"
"Only in Dreams"

Pinkerton