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Rivers Cuomo reveals 30th anniversary ‘Blue Album’ tour dates and dives into Weezer folklore
By Joe Cingrana,
2024-03-08
"The world has turned," and today Weezer 's Rivers Cuomo joins host Kevan Kenney for a special Audacy Check In to fill us in with details about what the band has in store for fans on their recently announced 2024 "Voyage to the Blue Planet" tour.
LISTEN NOW: Audacy Check In with Rivers Cuomo of Weezer
“I feel like I'm in a spaceship now,” Rivers tells Audacy host Kevan Kenney , “which is very apropos because I'm announcing Weezer ‘s tour of the United States this fall with Dinosaur Jr and The Flaming Lips .”
“We're calling it ‘Voyage to the Blue Planet,’” he adds, “and the thing is, we're gonna play a bunch of classics and then we're gonna kind of zoom back through space and then land on this ‘Blue Planet’ and play the ‘Blue Album’ -- our first album, from front to back -- which turns 30 years old this year on May 10.”
The upcoming anniversary tour is set to kick off in Los Angeles where Weezer got their start, scheduled for March 15 at The Lodge Room , with a special concert featuring the band they performed their very first show with -- Keanu Reeves ’ Dogstar .
Looking back at 1992 in L.A.; post Nirvana , post Pearl Jam , but with Guns N’ Roses still charting, “It was awkward,” Rivers admits. “It definitely seemed like there were still a few holdovers from the Sunset Strip, Glam-Metal days, but most people were trying to do the Grunge thing and we would be playing on the same bill as like three or four other Grunge bands and we, you know, we looked and sounded totally different... like the ‘Blue Album.’ So, it didn't hit as long as we were playing the clubs in L.A. We didn't get much of a buzz or a following. It wasn't until they started playing our first single, ‘The Sweater Song,’ on the radio -- that's when kids heard our music. Until then, we were playing for 21 and up people in the clubs and they were still doing the Grunge thing. It wasn't until we hit, got on the radio, that we really found our audience.”
“I feel like it's still happening,” he adds, “because there's still like 10-year-olds who are discovering the ‘Blue Album,’ like really relating to it. There's something about 23-year-old me that is very similar to a 10-year-old mentality.”
Describing how the band promoted and shopped their music to major labels as independents back in the early ‘90s, Rivers remembers, “The first thing you do is you just play, you play out every week in the clubs and you befriend other bands, especially bands that are a little further along. They have more of a following; they have some more industry connections... and there are some bands that really helped us, like Wax and Black Market Flowers . Then, you just try to meet as many people in the industry as you can. You make a demo tape, you pass it around. Eventually, labels start sniffing around. That's when you can hire an attorney, and then their job is to officially shop it to the labels. In our case, all the labels got interested. They all passed, except for Geffen Records.”
“That was the last one standing,” he says. “They signed us and it was just the perfect tone because, at that time, they were just the masters of breaking a new Alternative Rock band.”
One massive bit of exposure that longtime fans will remember, and 10-year-olds will certainly have to Google, was their video for “Buddy Holly” being included in the CD-ROM for Windows 95. “The amazing thing is,” Rivers reveals, “no one ever asked us permission. We don't know if the label gave it without asking us or if Windows, I can't imagine Windows just put us on there. But yeah, we were never consulted. We definitely would have said ‘no,’ because back then, bands just didn't do partnerships with corporations like that at all. It was unheard of, but they did it. And of course, we were all upset when we found out about it."
Of course, as it went on to be a massive promotion for the band, they relented. “It's totally unexpected because, Windows 95, that's what everyone was using and everyone was so excited to see a video on their computer," he says. "Pair that with the fact that it was such an amazing video. It's like, everyone was watching ‘Buddy Holly.’”
An interesting note: At the time, Weezer was actually hesitant to include “Buddy Holly” on the ‘Blue Album,’ but it was only the persistence of producer Ric Ocasek of The Cars who pushed them to include it. “It was the last song I wrote for the ‘Blue Album,’" Cuomo recalls. “It wasn't on the demo we originally sent Ric.”
Rivers remembers writing the single “right before we went in to record the album and I loved it. But I thought, ‘This is what I want the second album to sound like. So, I'm gonna save this one for the second album.’ Ric had to keep cajoling me like, ‘No, we should consider putting this one on the blue album.’ I'm glad we did.”
Ocasek’s contributions to the record, and the band’s overall sound, are innumerable, says Cuomo. “You just have to listen to our demo and then listen to the album. It's like, ‘Wow.’ The chemistry of being with him, being in New York City, being in this legendary studio -- Electric Lady -- which is where all the KISS records were made. It just made us step up our game and start thinking like, ‘OK, we're going to be a major Rock band and not just some, like little Indie band in, in L A. Everything got turned up and tightened up, and it became the powerful juggernaut that it is.”
Weezer’s ‘Blue Album’ follow-up, Pinkerton , came about in a unique way as well, created with Cuomo’s unfinished Songs From The Black Hole , a Rock Opera he had planned and subsequently left on the cutting room floor. “I was really into Jesus Christ Superstar and Les Miserables at the time,” he says. “So, it was like a full-on musical with a story, and different characters, and different singers. But I never finished it and I abandoned it and it just turned into ‘Pinkerton,’ which is a great album too.”
Though the thought of actually turning it into an operatic production has gone by the wayside, “We've definitely thought about finishing it musically,” he says. “I hadn't thought about turning it into something else, like a movie or a staged performance. There's one song from it that now has kind of taken on a new life. ‘I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams’ got discovered on TikTok, so you can hear Weezer but with a female singer, Rachel Hayden . She was playing one of the characters in ‘Songs From The Black Hole.’”
Getting back into ‘Blue Album’ lore, Rivers and former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp , a huge part of the ‘Blue Album’ who left the group in 1996 citing differences within the group, actually got together and made music in early 2004, which unfortunately has never seen the light of day.
Rivers is unsure of what happened with those recordings, saying that Sharp is "the one who would have the tape... We would have to ask him. I've always wondered that myself, like, ‘What happened to those?’ We did play a show. It was his show and I came and kind of crashed it and played a bunch of songs with him and the kids were super excited. I should ask him, I just had dinner with him a few days ago.’
Finally, Rivers left us off with a tease about a new, 30th anniversary deluxe edition of the ‘Blue Album,’ set to be chock full of old show recordings and rehearsal recordings... “Like very early Weezer,” he says. Though no solid release date has been set, he expects it to be available, “I guess before the tour.”
Don’t miss Kevan Kenney’s full Audacy Check In with Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo above, and stay tuned for more conversations with your favorite artists on Audacy.com/live .
Fans can sign up for Weezer’s mailing list to get access to presale tickets on Wednesday, March 13 at 12PM local time. More presales including a Citi presale will run throughout the week ahead of the general onsale beginning on Friday, March 15 at 10AM local time. All tickets can be purchased on the band’s website HERE .
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