I came across this excellent bootleg last week, which finds power-poppers Weezer at a pivotal time in their musical evolution: Following the extended hiatus that befell the band after the commercial failure of Pinkerton, this show features the band blasting out old favorites and debuting songs from the soon-to-be-released Green Album, live in 2001 to a ravenous San Diego audience.
At this stage, it was hard to say exactly where Weezer were headed artistically, but I remember friends ditching school the Tuesday Green came out to run to our town’s lowly record store to pick it up.  I waited till after class, but it was one of the first times I felt important buying a record. I was a member of the cult that had sprung up following the Pinkerton fiasco – one of the nerdy rock kids who took all my cues from that tortured art-pop masterpiece and its predecessor.
This set finds them rocking the Green tunes a lot harder than they ended up on the record, and the songs from Blue and Pinkerton sound energetic, as do a couple of pretty fantastic non-album tracks like “You Gave Your Love to Me Softly” and “The Christmas Song.”
We know now that following Green‘s detached nonchalance, the band tried on cheeky pop-metal with the disjointed Maladroit before sailing into Top 40 waters with the subsequently terrible Make Believe and Red Album Their new record, Raditude, out Nov. 3, features the band at their absolute worst (despite that it’s sleeved in my favorite album cover of the year).  Even “Can’t Stop Partying,” featuring Lil’ Wayne, isn’t interesting in the batshit-crazy way most things involving Weezy are. Instead, it feels lazy, and even insulting as Rivers Cuomo deeply mocks the genre he’s trying his hand at.
But let’s forget that for a moment, and take a listen to a time when it felt like Weezer were about to return home and take their rightful crowns as kings of dork-rock.  The fact that they didn’t is inconsequential – listening to these tunes it’s easy to imagine a parallel universe where Weezer still cared about their sweater clad, horn-rimmed followers, blessing them with hair metal guitar solos and earnest melodies, bestowing on their listeners a sincerity they’ve abandoned in reality.
[ZIP]: Weezer | Live in San Diego, 2001 (17 tracks, 65.1 MB)
TRACKLIST:
1. I Do
2. My Name is Jonas
3. El Scorcho
4. You Gave Your Love to Me Softly
5. The Good Life
6. The Christmas Song
7. Island in the Sun
8. Don’t Let Go
9. Hash Pipe
10. In the Garage
11. Tired of Sex
12. Say it Ain’t So
13. Buddy Holly
14. Undone (The Sweater Song)
15. Why Bother
16. Only in Dreams
17. Surf Wax America
Could this tracklisting be any better? It’s sad to see what has become of the once-mighty Weezer, but this is a nice reminder of when they were still relevant.
I bought Make Believe the day it came out, and sold it back the next day. Broke my heart to see the band that gave us “My Name is Jonas” and “Across the Sea” degenerate into such shlock.