Nostalgia is a funny thing. It’s also an insanely marketable thing. Admittedly, my teenage musical awakening took place well after Weezer’s canonised ‘great’ first two records. I faintly remember the Spike Jonze-directed clip for Island In The Sun on early morning telly. My first gateway into the band was 2008’s Pork And Beans. But I quickly discovered the brilliance of the band’s self-titled debut (aka The Blue Album) and within months, I was fronting a one-show-only Weezer tribute band in a garage on a Halloween night. Still, recent nostalgia is still potent – as demonstrated by tonight’s initial showcase of quote unquote greatest hits.
The hits were played in reverse chronological order, beginning with Hurley’s Memories. “Playing hacky sack back when Audioslave was still Rage.” Now Audioslave is Rage again. So it goes.
The crowd, a Rivers ran through it, during Troublemaker. It momentarily distracted us from the objective fact that it is a really fucking shitty song. Nothing distracted from how bad Beverly Hills still is. Brave opinions here, folks.
Hash Pipe, the penultimate selection of the greatest hits portion, was the grittiest, and one of the greatest, tracks of the night. El Scorcho followed, everybody sang along.
The Blue Album was played. It was played fairly well and fairly perfunctory. Say It Ain’t So was stratospheric. Buddy Holly weirdly featured most of the track’s guitar noodling being performed by Brian Bell on synth, but it was still pretty awesome.
Weezer were on our level. Rivers spent the soundcheck onstage kicking a soccer ball with a dude plucked from the crowd. Then he checked his guitar with a sloppy Smoke On The Water riff. There were no grand theatrics in the style of Rivers’ “favourite rock group, Kiss”. A giant =W= logo was a backdrop for half of the greatest hits portion, which gave way for a basic blue projection for the main event. An endearing slideshow bridged into The Blue Album performance. No fireworks, no extravagant lighting. We were there, paying 100-plus dollars to relate to a bunch of affable dorks in a state of musical arrested development, for that longing nostalgia.
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
Photo credit: Felicity Yang
LOVED: Say It Ain’t So.
HATED: Two 30-something dads seated next to us kept on taking selfies and making beer runs.
DRANK: A civil glass of red afterwards.
