GREAT APES: Photograph 📸 👐

Subscriber-Requested Cover #2 🎙👥

Here’s something: a new recording of an acoustic performance of that band Weezer’s song “Photograph,” from their 2001 album “Weezer” (aka the green album). What a thing to wash up onto your media shore on a Sunday! Gosh damn! Surely this is more Thursday material?!?! Who knows. The landscape is changing. The mediaverse is in flux, and shattered, and your attention has — according to news websites — been fragmented. So is there a right or a wrong time to mail out an acoustic Weezer cover? Probably no, not a wrong time, anyway.

This song was requested by reader Renee Barrera, who writes: “I always wished I could’ve been there to see that Weezer Green album show you guys did a long ass time ago — would love to hear your version of Photograph from it.” Don’t know what Renee’s talking about? Read on! Don’t care/just want to hear the song? Still, you have to read on to get to the song!

And so, dinner is served. First, a beautiful photograph, shot by Guy Eppel. Next a little back-and-forth, a little badinage, between our top culture reporters, Keith and Chris, who try to remember some stuff about that show Renee’s referring to. Finally, the main course, the pièce de résistance (“the part that resists”), the song (la chanson)…

Left to right: Aaron Pfenning, Danny Lee Allen, Dev Hynes, Chris Cain, Keith Murray. Copyright Mr. Guy Eppel, 2011

CHRIS: It was just four thousand six hundred & ten days ago (February 2nd, 2011, for readers who suck at math) that you and I made history at a now-defunct bar in Williamsburg called Bruar Falls (I think it’s defunct???) by assembling a fairly ragged and certainly rag-tag group of musicians to play through Weezer’s Green Album live, in public, despite very few rehearsals. The ragged roster that made the racket included you and me; We Are Scientists’ drummer in that era, Danny Lee Allen (also of Youth Group); Dev Hynes, aka Lightspeed Champion, aka Blood Orange; and Aaron Pfenning, sometimes called Rewards, founding member of Chairlift. Whew! Did I say ragged? More like a murderer’s row! 

What do you remember about that show, Keith? Do you recall how we came to undertake it in the first place? I think I remember that we rehearsed a couple of times, but can that be true?? 

KEITH: We did, I want to say, two rehearsals? I think the first one just involved us standing around trying to assign vocal parts. Because Dev skipped out on that one and because I was the only other one who already pretty much knew all of the lyrics, I was stuck with singing nine out of the ten songs. As much as I admire the album, a hurdle in getting a gang to learn it front-to-back is that its intentional lack of idiosyncrasy makes it hard to keep track of where you are in each song, especially if you’re playing an instrument and not really paying attention to the vocals. Even recording this acoustic version, I — a man who has listened to this song maybe five million times — kept losing track of where the solo landed, or how many choruses happen, and where. The songs are sort of like assemblages of perfectly-crafted Lego blocks that can be swapped in and out. 

But, yeah, I think one rehearsal was just about noting who’d sing what and who got to play which sweet solo, etc., and then the second was just nailing the arrangements of the songs. Plus, then we also added the encore of “Pork And Beans” and “We Are All On Drugs” and maybe “Undone”? 

God knows where the idea came from. Most likely, it was hatched at 2:00am, after three or four of Emily Wroe’s supercharged piña coladas at The Commodore. I think Pfenning knew the guy who booked Bruar Falls, and we just texted him on the spot and immediately had a show arranged. When we woke up the next morning, we had to consider which was more unprofessional — to bail on our commitment to the gentleman, or to go through with this hare-brained scheme.

CHRIS: You’re right that we did “Pork and Beans” and “…Drugs” as an encore, but not “Undone.” I know this because there’s actually a pretty competent review by an outlet called Cover Me still sitting, available, on an internet server (I guess Cover Me is/was an internet magazine devoted to covers??? Is that possible??? And did they actually dispatch a reporter to our show because they saw an ad and knew it was going to be an important entry into their Live files?? [see comments for an update on this]). Here are a couple of choice quotes from the piece, written by one Cory Bennett; let me know how they strike you:

[S]upported by Dev Hynes of Lightspeed Champion and Blood Orange, and (when not awkwardly facing the corner) Aaron Pfenning of Rewards – the Brooklyn-based duo loosely bumbled through all ten songs off Weezer’s 2001 The Green Album, before closing with their “two favorite Weezer songs.”

Whatever missteps were made along the way didn’t deter the enthusiastic crowd, which was small enough that when Pfenning offered to buy a drink for whomever could predict the two encore songs, you could easily hear someone yell, “Aaron, you don’t have any money.” No one else ventured a response.

“Photograph” began a trend of performances a bit more discordant on harmonies and accompanying vocals than the originals, but that just fit even more with the boozy, garage band feel of the evening. 

Murray summed up the evening best when he thanked the audience for coming out: This is a pretty weird thing to come to."

KEITH: I can accept that review as “probably entirely accurate but utterly ungenerous.” Perhaps it’s a journalist’s duty to attend a show performed on a makeshift stage at a random, tiny hipster dive bar and watch five friends from notable indie rock bands come together for an unlikely, nearly-impromptu album tribute and still remain downright stoic about the proceedings. Or maybe the show just sucked real bad?

I guess if you’re a staff reviewer for a cover-focused periodical, maybe you’re used to acts who treat the source material with a little more reverence? I’ll concede that we delivered a more gonzo performance than Cory Bennett might have been used to from the more prominent Weezer tribute bands (Pleezer? Undone (The Weezer Songs)? Wee Sir?). But, shit, in a room full of friends on a snowy Brooklyn night, I think enthusiasm was always gonna trump precision.

It also kinda sounds like maybe Aaron Pfenning crossed this Bennett person at some time prior to the show, and payback was due?

CHRIS: I think a Pfenning feud, or at least some Aaron acrimony, was likely at play, yes. Elsewhere in his review, Cory refers to "a faithful take on 'Island in the Sun' – where they made the unfortunate decision to let Pfenning mumble his way through a solo” — although I do like the verb “mumble” in reference to inarticulate guitar playing (assuming that’s what Aaron did during the solo — maybe he set down his guitar and did some kind of verbalizing into a mic?). 

Enough about one live performance, albeit a great one, of The Green Album; let’s turn to the article itself. Is there an argument to be made that Weezer’s third album is their best? If so, what is that argument?

KEITH: Well, it’s certainly the *purest* distillation of what it is that Rivers Cuomo does, melodically. The first two albums have much more character — all of Rivers’ lyrical quirks and the band’s weirdo inclinations get flexed on those two, to singular effect. The diaristic lyrics in songs like “Say It Ain’t So” and “In The Garage” and the entirety of Pinkerton are pretty much the blueprint for all of the lyrics in 2nd- and (worse) 3rd-wave emo (not his fault!). Even the more inscrutable, abstract lyrics on those two records (like in “My Name Is Jonas” or “Undone”) hit you with weird, specific images or kooky turns of phrase. 

Apart from the uniquely-specific “Hash Pipe” or the odd one-liner like “Crab at the booty/t’aint gonna do no good” from “Crab,” The Green Album largely abandons that approach. Still, there’s something very appealingly broad about the lyrics on Green. In a lot of ways, the vacant nature of the lyrics kind of recalls the Great American Rock Songbook, especially the much-beloved early years of the undisputed masters, The Beatles. Is “Oh girlfriend/that’s the end/and I’m lost without your love” really that different from “You know I love you/I’ll always be true/so please, love me, do”?  Does “But if there comes a day/you should turn your heart away/I’ll be down on my knees/Begging for that girl to stay,” pale in comparison to lines like “I’ll tell you something/I think you’ll understand/When I say that something/I wanna hold your hand,” apart from the weird fact that Rivers starts referring to her in the third person (I guess in anticipation of her departure, which, actually, is a pretty savvy bit of storytelling!)?

Anyway, the real power of these songs is in the razor-sharp hooks. Every line of every song delivers a swoon-worthy melody. The record exemplifies Rivers’ unique ear for vocal and chordal composition.  Someone trying to rip off the Weezer sound (i.e., every power-pop band between 1996 through today) would likely end up sounding more like The Green Album (but worse) than those first two more “iconic” records. Even the bands that bald-facedly aped Weezer BEFORE this album came out (Phantom Planet, Rooney, that first Nada Surf record) kinda sound like Green album. THIS is what Weezer sounds like.

Best album? Debatable. Most essentially “Weezer?” I’d argue it.

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Okay, turkeys, that’s a wrap. You are turkey, and we just made a wrap out of you + mustard + pepperoncini = you’re fucked.

We’ve got another song coming later this week, plus an oral history of one of the highest profile tours we’ve ever done, plus probably a drunken rambling stoop chat, who knows. So now would be a very bad time to cancel all your accounts and “go offline”!

Pasta macaroni,

Keith & Chris