60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Weezer—“Say It Ain’t So”

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Rob explores Weezer’s acclaimed emo hit “Say It Ain’t So” by discussing the band’s unique identity within alternative rock and the story behind the song’s lyrical content. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Bobby Bones Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I sucked as a 15-year-old. I don't mind telling you. Just sucked. On we, in curiosity, listlessness, self-loathing, poisonous self-regard, excessive flannel, teenage angst that didn't pay shit, slouching, moping, pointless yearning, toxic daydreaming. Just a pain in the ass didn't take drugs, didn't even drink. And yet, sluggish, lazy, stupid, and unconcerned. thought I was the hero, at least thought I was the protagonist. I was mistaken.

Though maybe I'm overstating it. Everyone sucks as a 15-year-old, right? Right? I have affection still for sucky 15-year-old me. Of course I would. Slouched right down to the floor of my suburban Midwestern bedroom, moping, oblivious to so much of my good fortune, zoning out there in the mid-90s to my almighty alternative rock radio, leaking out of a little cassette player Boombox, invigorated by every new song that assured me that everyone else sucked, not me. The world sucked, not me. I'm not a vampire. The world is a vampire. I didn't leave you here. The world has turned and left me here. I'd rather die than give you control. I want to love somebody. I hear you need somebody to love. Here I am now. Entertain me. What am I doing there? Sitting on my

bedroom floor, what do I want? I'll tell you what I want specifically. I've got a blank tape in the cassette deck, and I've been listening to Alternative Rock Radio for two hours, 107.9 The End out of Cleveland. Used to be an 80s pop station or whatever. They played The Cure a lot, but then they rebranded as an alternative rock station as the end in 1992 and still play The Cure a lot, but they announced this format change, this transformation by playing REMs. It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine on a loop for 24 hours. hour straight. Great radio gag. I listened along just to that song on the radio, on that loop for

hours. I was so excited. I loved that station. I proudly let that station define sucky 15-year-old me. That radio station was my whole identity. So now, this particular night, two straight hours I've been listening to the end. And when each new song starts, my index and middle fingers are hovering over the record and play buttons of the tape player. Because what I want, what I'm waiting to What I'm dying to hear is this drum roll. I desperately want to get Weezers Undone the sweater song on tape. That's what I want. The one concrete fact you should know about sucky 15-year-old me is that drum rolls and pop songs are for whatever reason tremendously important to me.

As a little kid elsewhere in the Midwest, our living room was in our basement. Our TV and our Nintendo was in the basement. And when I'd run down the stairs to the basement, 12 stairs in this staircase. Every single time I'd run down those stairs to the exact cadence of the drum break from John Cougar Mellon Camp's Jack and Diane. This is true. Every single time, as a little kid, I ran down the stairs like this. Thousands of times over the course of years. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do.

Just exquisitely strange behavior. The first album I ever loved was the first album by the Cars, self-titled, 1978. greatest album of all time to this day, my best friend's girl, you're all I've got tonight, etc. As a four-year-old, I used to clutch the vinyl sleeve to the first Cars album while it was playing and run in circles around our living room. I called it Cars Paper. That Cars Paper is now framed on the wall behind me as I speak. As a four-year-old, I thought moving in stereo was sung by Darth Vader, and I thought, and I continue to think to this day, that the drum roll out of the first verse of just what I needed is the single greatest drum roll in pop music history.

Incredible. As a youngish rock critic, I once wrote several thousand words about just that drum roll and just what I needed. I would describe those several thousand words as florid. You might find that hard to believe. My name is Rob Barvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s. The song is Weezers say it ain't so. Eventually, thanks for your patience. So, Sucky 15-year-old boredom, alt-rock radio, Weezer, Undone, the sweater song. The drum roll that starts the sweater song is great. But mostly it's a means to an end. It's the cue to hit record because I heard the sweater song on the radio once. And then for what felt like weeks, I was desperate to hear it again and tape it this time so I could hear it a thousand times. CDs cost like 20 bucks back then,

dude. I'm not made of money. I cherish those blank tapes full of songs I recorded off the radio because each song starts a few seconds in, depending on how fast I hit record. I cherish the imperfections. I cherish my unathletic reaction time. To this day, I only ever hear those songs in my head with the first few seconds cut off. So to this day, for me, canonically, the sweater songs start somewhere mid-drum roll. But why the sweater song? The crunchy guitars? Yes. The palpable goofiness? Yes. The fact that Weezer's 1994 debut album, self-titled, but everyone calls it the blue album, was produced by Rick O'Kasik, frontman for my all-time favorite band, The Cars. Yes, but mostly because the second verse sums up the human condition of a sucky 15-year-old succinctly.

Oh, no, it go, it gone, bye-bye. Do I? I think, I sink, and I die. Incredible. Scrawling on the cover of my algebra notebook, tattoo it on my feeble biceps, and grave it on my tombstone. Right, and also the sweater song's chorus was pretty good, too. Weezer were from L.A., but didn't look like it, which I appreciated. Not glamorous. These fellas, the fellas are, of course, resplendent on the cover of the blue album, looking slovenly. They're not slouching exactly, but they look like someone just yelled at them to stand up straight. I would describe them as having accessible haircuts.

Weezer, frontman, and songwriter Rivers Cuomo is second from the left, but these four guys, left or right, drummer Pat Wilson, then Rivers, then bassist Matt Sharp, then new guitarist Brian Bell, are standing in a straight line, very egalitarian, very democratic, though this, of course, turned out to be an illusion. Great song, though, the sweater song. It sits at the exact midpoint of Nirvana in Pee's Playhouse. Great videos, Spike Jones. one take, dim blue lighting, indifferent lip-sinking.

A herd of dogs is released during the final chorus. We're inching closer to Pee Wee's Playhouse emotionally here, and I approved. 1994 needed more slovenly dudes with crunchy guitars who weren't taking themselves too seriously, though perhaps that was an illusion too. When the Blue album turned 25, back in 2019, Rolling Stone did a big retrospective in Rivers Cuomo said, I seriously thought we were the next nirvana, and I thought the world was going to perceive us that way, like a super important, super powerful,

heartbreaking, heavy rock band, and as serious artists, that's how I saw us. He went on to say that the sweater song specifically contained his, quote, darkest thoughts, and it became clear, everyone else who hears this song is going to think it's hilarious. I got to say that everyone else had a point.

How seriously we should take Rivers Cuomo versus how seriously Rivers Cuomo should take himself. These are the animating tensions of Weezer, and so they have remained for a quarter century. Shit gets weird. She gets awkward. More awkward. Weezer, of course, sounded endearingly awkward

from that very first drum roll. For a lot of people, though, for a lot of fans, even, it would all get steadily less endearing. Challenge number one, avoid becoming a novelty one-hit wonder. It can't be overstated. 1994 specifically had an awful lot of glum dudes with crunchy guitars glowering up the joint on MTV that they hadn't already haughtily swore off making MTV videos altogether. Pearl jams of Itology, REM's Monster, Sound Garden's Super Unknown, Bush's 16 Stone, Lives Throwing Copper, Great Records, All of them, Honest. White

Discussion is a killer closing track. white comma discussion. If you know, you know. But not a lot of fun to be had with those records in the classic sense. Not a lot of intentional goofiness. Green Days, Duky, okay, a lot of goofiness. But nonetheless, shuffle the sweater song into an alt-rock radio playlist with all that glowering stuff amid the downward spirals and nirvana unpluggeds of the world. And Weezer felt like a spoof, like a Saturday morning cartoon parody of a tough guy alt-rock band. The better Weezer songs got the greater that disparity. The next single off the blue album was Buddy Holly and Yo, fantastic song. Power Pop classic, you know it. Maybe you pretend not to love it, but I know you know.

Buddy Holly, yo, I don't care how long it takes. Etch the guitar tablature to the Buddy Holly solo onto my tombstone. But the Buddy Holly video, Spike Jones again, Happy Days, the sweaters, the fake commercial break, the Fons tearing up the dance floor at Arnold's restaurant, was an actual parody, and a first ballot Hall of Famer is a video so vivid and quirky and unforgettable, it nearly wipes out the song. If you've ever referred to No Rain by Blind Melon as the B-Girl girl song, you know to many people, to many fans, the Buddy Holly video is the very essence of Weezer, the killer hooks, but also the wanton silliness. Surprise, Rivers didn't like that video. Or, least didn't like the idea of it defining him. He explained his position in a 1997 Weezer cover

story for alternative press magazine, which remains to this day the most depressing cover story about a rock and roll band I've ever read. Rivers Cuomo, on the Buddy Holly video, quote, at once I didn't like it, and at the same time I knew it was an amazing idea and it had to be done. It's strange that me and my music got caught up in this, but our music got to a lot of people as a result of that video. It's my least favorite of all the videos we've done. I think I'd like it more if it weren't me and it weren't my song. I think it's truly amazing. I'm extremely grateful to it, but it has nothing to do with me. Thank you for your patience. The third single off the blue album was Say It Ain't So. It's a ballad about fathers and stepfathers and malevolent bottles of beer. This fundamental weezer dilemma about how seriously anybody should take any of this, Here's where that turbulence becomes a permanent part of the Weezer experience. And I heard there was a secret chord that Rivers played and it pleased the Lord, but you don't really care for goofballs, do you? G-sharp Major, by the way.

Now you know, Rivers Cuomo grew up mostly in Connecticut. He didn't start going to public school until he was 11. Previously, he spent time living in an ashram called Yogaville. In that scarring alternative press cover story, he reminisces about his child. though reminisces is the wrong word. Quote, I know I was a very somber child. I would never smile. In the second grade, my teacher asked my mother

what was wrong with me because I never looked happy. So my mother advised her to say, let me see the smile, and then I would smile. So she did that in front of the whole class. She got the whole class to turn around, look at me and say, let me see the smile. The writer of this cover story adds, as an aside, almost 20 years

later, Rivers' voice still shakes at the memory. Rivers Cuomo started out as a metalhead, a kiss fanatic, especially. Maybe you know this. A few different reasons you might know this. One way you might know this is you can look up teenage pictures of Rivers with a majestic poof of jet black hair metal hair. He looks like a columnist for the onion. He looks like Wayne and Garth from Wayne's World combined. He looks like a child prodigy FBI agent undercover in the band Cinderella. He looks like a rad dude, actually.

When he was 14, he started a Kiss cover band called Fury. At their first gig, they played three songs, Rock and Roll All Night, Strutter, and Cold Gin. Get a load of the drum roll action and the actual kiss version of Cold Gin. He joined a metal band called Avant Garde. It's an ironic name. Avant Garde moved to L.A. in 1989 or so.

Rivers was 18 or so. Because that's what you do. As a hair metal guy, you moved to L.A., and you get off the bus in L.A. from wherever podunk town you came from with a giant piece of straw still stuck in your teeth, and you rush down to the hollowed sunset strip to pay homage, and you realize once you're there what a shithole the sunset strip is, and you rethink your life choices, but it's too late. You end up a cautionary tale in a song by Guns and Roses, or if you're only slightly less fortunate, poison, tough break, avant-garde changed their name to fuzz.

That didn't work. They split up. Rivers joined a band called 60 Wrong Sausages. I got no idea what was going on there. They split up. Rivers apparently made an entire rap album under the name Vegetarists in which he rapped in the style of public enemy about being a vegetarian. I'm going to pass on that one.

Rivers font out of the Guitar Institute of Technology, so instead he started taking classes at Los Angeles City College while working at Tower Records, which is where his real education began. Of course, Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, the Beach Boys, the Pixies. The Weezer sound in one glib, rock critic-ass sentence is,

Kiss Fanatic discovers the Pixies. That's a very clean and pleasing narrative. According to early Weezer guitarist Jason Cropper, Rivers first heard Nirvana's smells like teen spirit while working another job as a dishwasher in an Italian restaurant. A young awestruck Rivers Cuomo rocking out to smells like teen spirit while scraping out pans of lasagna, also a very pleasing image. But Rivers had a particular fondness for the Nirvana song Sliver, which most people heard on Nirvana's B-Sides collection insecticide that came out in 92.

All right, I've been listening to Weezer and thinking about Weezer and reading about Weezer and writing about Weezer for 25 years and nothing has ever made more sense to me than Rivers Cuomo, loving this Nirvana song specifically. Sliver is a song about Kirkobane. As a little kid, not smiling. Let me see the smile, Kurt. Another way to describe the wheezer sound in one glib rock critic-ass sentence is,

what if you turn Kirkobane singing mashed potatoes and stuff like that into a whole other band? Also, my single favorite moment in Nirvana's entire catalog is the way Kurt delivers the line, I woke up in my mother's arms. Rivers had moved to Santa Monica and decided he had to write 50 songs before he started another band. He wrote 30 and then formed Weezer. Weezer was a nickname given to him by his biological father. It's a nonsense word to everyone else, but to Rivers that has intense personal meaning.

Weezer is a painful word to him. His biological father was a jazz drummer. Per another Rolling Stone Weezer profile, his father walked out on the family when Rivers was four years old, and Rivers only saw his biological father three times between that moment and the release of Weezer's Blue album, which includes a song about Rivers Cuomo's biological father called Say It Ain't So. These are the wiserist possible opening line.

to a Weezer song, pieced together 25 years of Rivers interviews and fan-sight interpretations, and the concept of this song is that a teenage Rivers finds a beer bottle in his family's refrigerator, that beer bottle presumably belonging to his stepfather, and it reminds Rivers that his biological father started drinking a lot before he abandoned the family. And so now the mere presence of this beer bottle leads Rivers to assume that his stepfather will soon abandon the family too. But that very first line gets to work undercutting all that darkness. Refrigerator becomes icebox.

Worse yet, Heineken becomes Heine. Just so he can start the song with the word somebody's heinie, which is so willfully obnoxious that I've heard this song 200,000 times, but still never quite grasped the elegance. Legitimately, the elegance of somebody's cold one is giving me chills. All right, now throw in a vague chorus that's super fun to shout along to it, karaoke. All right, now throw in a rad bridge that's also fun to shout along to it karaoke. Even though the lyrics are as explicit and as angry and as painful as anything that ever came out of Kirk Cobain's mouth.

When this song started, it was literally about an item in Rivers Cuomo's refrigerator. And it ends with him realizing that you can't always wake up in your mother's arms. cue the guitar solo. Etch the guitar tablature to the say it ain't so solo onto the back of my tombstone as a B-side, if you will. The Say It Ain't So video, Sophie Mueller directed it. It's basically just Weezer playing the song in one of the band's old apartments.

During the guitar solo, the fellas play Hackysack. It's quite soothing. I read once in some magazine, it was an interview with Juliana Hatfield, and she said that Rivers looked really cute in the Say It Ain't So video, but also he looked really tired. Why do I still remember that?

What is the point of my remembering that? What am I supposed to do with all this useless information in my head? Podcast. Meanwhile, in 2014, Rivers put saying ain't so in perspective. He says, I was an angry young man. Typical generation X, I was quick to point the finger. He says he sees his biological father all the time now. He says, now that I'm a father, I've forgiven my parents.

How much time would you like to spend you and I discussing in the next 14 Weezer albums? I thought so. A few quick fun facts, though, about Weezer's second album, Pinkerton from 1996. Pinkerton is ugly and gnarly and disconcertingly horny and 30 different additional kinds of ill-advised. I would describe the overall vibe as admissible in court. The first song is called Tired of Sex. The fifth song is about a real-life fan letter Rivers received from a... an 18-year-old Japanese girl that includes a line.

The song does where he imagines her masturbating. The next song starts with a line, God damn, you half-Japanese girls, you do it to me every time. I don't want to talk about it. The eighth song is about him falling in love with a lesbian. Everyone hated this record at the time, which made Rivers hate it too, but of course everyone loves it now, but of course Rivers still hates it. And you know who loved Pinkerton at the time?

The lead guitar player and my ska band, freshman year of college, at a giant back tattoo of the Weezer logo. That is true. You know who else loved Pinkerton at the time? Me. Pinkerton fucking ruled when I was a moderately less sucky 18-year-old. I loved Pinkerton. I proudly let Pinkerton define me.

I don't need to tell you how that turned out. I still love Pinkerton, even though nowadays I involuntarily cringe through most of Pinkerton. Yeah, we're almost out of time. No time to talk about how the most popular Weezer song on Spotify as Island and the Sun, or about the song Beverly Hills, or about all the mid-2000s internet memes recreated

in the Pork and Beans video. I love that song, and that video. Keep it to yourself. No time to talk about the album called Rattitude, or the album called Hurley, whose album covers a super close-up photo of the guy who played Hurley on Lost. No time to talk about how they've put out a green album,

a red album, a white album, a teal album, and a black album. No time to talk. about how Rivers now writes all his songs by a spreadsheet. No time to talk about that time. Weezer covered Toto's Africa because a random woman on Twitter told them to and it was their biggest hit in years. No time to talk about the fact that Weezer's 13th album is called OK Human and their 14th album is called Van Weezer. No time to talk about the email I received 24 hours ago with a subject line, Weezer is coming to the blockchain. Exclamation point. What does that even mean?

mean, we're out of time. I forgot the other reason. You probably already knew that Rivers was a kiss fanatic. It's because he told you on the Blue album, on the next song, after Saying Ain't So, it's called In the Garage. He shouts out my favorite rock group kiss, and Dungeons and Dragons,

and the X-Men. He talks about how he's probably better off if he never leaves his garage, and nobody else ever enters it. The way he talks about himself, it reminds me of me, now, talking about myself as a sucky 15-year-old. It's tempting to want to go back in time and tell Rivers to be a little kinder to himself.

But if I did that, he probably wouldn't have a career, and I wouldn't have an identity. My guest today, we are thrilled to welcome Bobby Bones, superstar radio DJ, best-selling author, American Idol, mentor, dancing with the stars Victor and noted Weezer fanatic Bobby Bones. Thank you so much for being here. fan and the fact that you'd have me on, I'm pretty pumped. Well, I'm pumped to you, man. Thank you so much. You became a huge passionate Weezer fan.

I think you said when you were around 13, which is the best age, I think, to become a huge passionate fan of a rock band. So how does your love affair with Weezer start? I think when you're in those formidable years, you're looking for people that are saying what you're trying to say, or at least you think you're trying to say when you're 13 years old. And, you know, I was the quintessential, extremely nerdy kid in an area where nerds were not accepted. Right. I went to a school that wasn't good.

I lived in an impoverished town. If you weren't an athlete or in trouble, you just weren't cool. And so, you know, for me, I loved reading books. And when I read there was a rock star, what I thought was a rock star at the time, who also loved reading books and was really smart. I thought, man, this is the guy that I need to latch on to. And so, you know, for me, that's where my love for Wieser came from. obviously super catchy hooks.

I mean, you hear any of the songs, especially from early on. I mean, they're just, they're great pop alternative songs. And so the mixture of catchy songs to sing along to and a nerd, and I was in. Absolutely. Rivers Cuomo started out as a metalhead, like a kiss fanatic. And then he starts working at Tower Records in L.A. He gets into the Pixies and the Beach Boys. Like, were you in any of that?

Like, musically, did you gravitate more towards Weezer's cool side or Weezer's uncool side? Well, nothing about me has ever been cool. I think, you know, as they say, the coolest things about some people is, in fact, they're not cool at all. And I've never, ever thought I was cool. But, you know, again, I grew up in a tiny town in Arkansas where there was country music that was speaking about where I came from, but there wasn't really music that talked about how I felt or who I was.

And oddly, it was the 90s when the grunge, and not that Weezer's grunge, but that same time period where it was guitars and it was people sharing awkward angst or angry angst. And that's kind of where I found, you know, my voice and music. And it was really the first time where I had music that actually represented me and I could go to school and be like, okay, you guys can can be about, you know, Tupac or you can be about, you know, Randy Travis. But I definitely had, I am Weezer's A plus number one fan years. I mean, I wear the glasses. I mean, this is. This is my, if you call it, signature look, and I wore it because I'm just generic white guy. And so I thought at some point I've got to do something.

But this is Rivers Cuomo and Buddy Holly. And that's how much those two artists affect in my life. You told me earlier that you wear dark-rimmed glasses now because you were so heavily comforted by the idea of Rivers. And I just love that phrasing. Like, how does a rock star go about being heavily comforting? Because you don't have to be cool by everybody else's standards. Right, right. And when you don't meet anyone's standards at all and you're told you are not cool and you are not part of any group whatsoever, when you find a leader, I felt like it was almost an occult.

Like I found my leader. And I finally felt welcomed somewhere. And, you know, it was Weezer oddly. I've never said those words out loud. But Weezer welcomed me into the cult. So did you find other Weezer fans in high school? Like were you able to sort of know. None.

Well, you got to think. You know, I was, you know, 13. years old in 1994, so we didn't have social media. It wasn't like Weezer was coming

and doing a lot of shows in rural Arkansas. And so it was mostly the first time that I listened to the blue album on cassette tape and then later this CD and just hearing the intro

and you could go through any of the songs. I mean, Buddy Holly is when everybody calls to, but at the beginning part of Undone, where people are talking

and it's a little nutty. I was like, man, this is kind of like what I hear in my head, like not being accepted by folks all over the place. And so, you know, that, that was welcoming to some sort of group for the first time. You do look quite a bit like Rivers Cuomo. I have to say, like, did you look at him and say, like, I want to look like that? Or did you

look at him and say like, oh, rad, I already basically look like that? A little bit of both. I think it was like, I'm 70% there. You know, the funny thing is, you know, with my job now, and I work on America Auto full time right now, we're about to wrap. Idle up and go to a different show. But I've been with Idol four years and Weezer has played the big celebrity episode or the finals for two years. And the first time they came, I was extremely nervous. They kind of give us carte blanche. You know, the judge is Seacrest and myself, we can go in any dressing room, knock on any door. There's no security. So I was like, all right, I'm going. And I got on vinyl, you know, I got the blue album and I was like, I'm going to go over and just knock on the door.

They were out in a big camper like trailer. It was like a hybrid camper trailer. It wasn't like the Hollywood trailer. Obviously, Weasers got to have something slightly different than everybody else. Exactly. But I go up and I knock on the door and Rivers is in the very back and they were so welcoming. They were like, hey, they didn't know who I was. They just know I had a pass to be there. So they welcomed me in. And I explained to them that they played with, you know, one of my friends on the show that's performing that year. But I said, hey, I'm a big fan. Would you guys mind signing this? And everybody but Rivers was super warm. But had Rivers come out and been super warm? But had Rivers come out and been super warm and huggy.

And I think I would have lost, like, why I loved him so much. He was just so awkward in the back. He felt like he didn't want to bother me. And I was like, hey, Rivers, I don't want to bother. He was like, oh, man, it's okay. You're not bothering me. He signed it. And it was the perfect Weezer experience.

It was exactly what I thought it was going to be. Right. You hunched your shoulders and that's just, I picture, yeah, him just sort of collapsing inward as he's trying to talk to somebody that is the perfect Rivers Cuomo brand. Like, there's video of you. interviewing him face to face. I think at an Iheart radio festival. And it does look like that meme of two cartoon Spider-Men who are pointing at each other, except now they're holding microphones. Like, what was it like to interview him face to face? Like, he's so awkward,

sort of a soft-spoken, like off-putting guy. I think it takes one to know one. Sure. When you know someone's language, it's easier to communicate in their language or understand how they're talking. And, you know, I don't often request to take pictures with folks. that was one where I was like, hey, Rivers, you got to give me a picture. And we took one. And I'm about six inches taller than he is. I was going to say, other than the height difference and maybe, you know, 15 years, it was right on. You know, we all have music that first connected us to something. And it's odd to say that Weezer, because people make fun and made fun of me my whole life for, but Weezer was the one where I felt like, okay, I don't have to get made fun of and be the outcast

of everywhere. I actually have a group. And it took the internet to find. them, but now we're together and we're feeling pretty good. Yeah, I was going to say, like, when did you finally meet fellow Weezer fans? Like, when did you connect with other people in this cult? College. Yeah, yeah. When you grow up where I grew up, you know, it's not the coolest. When you say that you're a Weezer or a sister Hazel or a counting crows fan,

you get a lot of frogs in the shoulders, a lot of dead legs. Oh, my God. You know, that was a lot of my junior high in high school years. So, you know, I kept a lot of that underwra. I wasn't holding signs that walking to the hall. Like, I'm a Weezer fan because I knew that was going to get me back in the toilet. Totally. Yeah.

So the jocks didn't go even for like sweaters on Buddy Holly. You figure once it hits MTV, once it hits the radio, like there's a certain coolness conferred there. But that never happened in high school. Not really where I was from, no. I mean, when I got to college, you know, again, we had our group that loved Weezer and love books and they did coincide. But no, not really in high school. It wasn't cool. You said that Weezer seemed smart to you.

Like he talked about being a big reader. Like what books did he talk about? Like I'm trying to think of how he presented himself like in early interviews around the blue album. It was mostly, I think everybody knew, again, this is before the internet, but just going to Harvard? Are you kidding me? There's a rock star in school. And again, that to me, when you see a guy that is your hero musically at the time, And he's also in school at an institution that seems like it's just in the movies.

Right. You're going, wow, you can actually do anything you want to do. You can be a rock star and you can be educated. Right. You can be a rock star and then you can go to Harvard. You can be a rock star at Harvard. You can do whatever you, in any order. And I've kind of subscribed to that method that the world we live in is bendable because

of those early Weezer days where he was doing things because, you know, here I am. am a radio guy, but I also do stand up and I write books, but I'm not good at any of them. And I haven't had training at any of them. And so I fully believe that the world we live in is bendable. All you have to do is know that there really are no regulations on you if you just continue to push. And Rivers was one of those guys that taught me that creatively. You can be in a rock band and you can go to Harvard and you can be five foot three and you can be quiet and also be loud. like the juxtapositions that you live in don't have to define everything about you.

And so, as you can tell, I'm very passionate about Weasor. I didn't realize that's how passionate I was. They started going down the rabbit hole. Yeah, yeah. Have people auditioned for American Idol with Weezer songs ever? I don't think so. I don't know that Weezer songs are huge. Vocally, yeah.

You really need to showcase your vocal ability. We did have them do Weezer on the show with Weezer, but there are also certain bands. I'm not saying this about Weezer itself. So certain bands don't allow their songs to be played on talent shows or competition shows without them there. I'm picturing Say It Ain't So. I think you could dress up Say and Eight So it is a big show stopping. At this point, they've dressed up every, I mean, they have polished every turd possible.

But yes, I think so too. Yes. So the sweater song was the one for me on the radio. And then when I got the album, it was the one. world has turned and left me here. Like, what is your favorite early Weezer song or like the song that defined Weaser for you? I mean, Jonas was one that sounded so just big and my name is Joe. It was just such a big song.

But again, all those radio songs, and I'm like an act like when the blue album came out that I was some underground Weezer fan, I was like everybody else. I just got a tape and heard songs on the radio and then started to explore after that. But all the singles remind me of a place in my life. life and I can remember exactly where I was when I hear them. And that's what's great about music. You can hear a song that you listen to all the time when you were 17 or 12. And for that split second, like I read a book called I'm okay, you're okay, that music is one of the few things that will trigger something in your brain. And for that brief, extremely small amount of time,

it feels like you're in that same place again. Because that same song kind of beat it into you. So now when you hear it, you just react like you're in the same place. And so, All those radio songs. And then when MTV had music, you would see the videos all the time. They remind me of really getting picked on a lot more than anything else. Well, I was going to ask, yeah, like, do you get set back to the just the bad parts of that place? Or is it a little more of a romantic, nostalgic type memory now that you've survived? Yeah, where I would go into my room forever and read books, read encyclopedias.

That's what I would do. I'd buy them from the grocery store, one at a time. Wow. And I would listen to Weezer. and that was it. And I would just play the tape, flip it, let it keep playing. When I got a CD player, it was game over because you have to flip it anymore. Yes, it's a big moment.

It was more romantic time because I finally found music that kind of represented who I was. I can't imagine better encyclopedia reading music than Weezer, honestly. That's just a perfect combination. It wasn't on purpose, wrong. I just think, you know, just like an outlier. It was at the right place, at the right time. It just happened to be broke. What did you make of Pinkerton when you first heard it?

such a raw, chaotic record. I think some people are thrilled by it and some people are sort of disgusted by it, but there's like an instant reaction. I think, and I think you'll agree too, when you have a favorite artist and they put something out and you're not sure about it, you just go, I love it. If you can't find it. But with Weasor, too, if you don't love Pinkerton now, you're a poser. You have to at least even act like you love Pinkerton, even if you really didn't,

or the real Weezer fans will call you a poser. But I remember listening to it being confused. But other people were hating on it. So I just decided I would love it. And that was it. I signed my little teenage brain to love it. And, you know, Pinkerton, even as different as it is, is, I don't listen to it as much now, honestly. I have a jukebox in the house.

And I can't, I don't hit that record often. It is in there. But when I do, again, it kind of takes me back to that exact time. Yeah. Any discussion of Weezer, you reach sort of a darker, sad moment where I have to ask, like, where did Weezer lose you? Or have they lost you, their output, their record since?

Like, where are you on current Weezer? When they put out a record, I will listen to it all the way through. And there's only about five artists that I'll do that with. Because I'm like most consumers, my attention span is three songs. Right. Maybe. But I will listen to it all the way through. I don't know that they lost me.

I think I just kind of transitioned a bit myself. like we all do when we, and my music started to be a little more acoustic and sad, just in general. So probably around 25 or so. And I was deep into the counting crows then, and it was, I just wanted to feel sad more than I wanted to feel happy. And so that's where I went. Totally.

Recovery the Satellites is one of my favorite records of all time, bizarrely. And when they did the double album, when they did the full acoustic, and then they did the live. My life was changed in college. And I worked in an alternative station in college. And I haven't did alternative radio, you know, about four or five years ago. I did a national show for a while under a pseudonym. And, you know, I still love to get on Weasen.

And we would still get a lot of tweets about Weezer, oddly today for a lot of the old stuff. I liked the covers album they did, too. A lot of people did it. I loved, I thought it was fun because I think it was what they were trying to do, just show that they kind of just do their thing and that's it. I don't think they were trying to want a Grammy. No, they're. They just do their thing.

But, yeah, Africa, that was bizarrely a big success for them covering Africa, no scrubs and so forth. Yeah, it's do your thing, Weiser, I think, at this point. Weezer, to me, falls into this zone where they're almost punished for just surviving. Like, you imagine all the bad albums, Kirk Cobain would have made in the past 25 years? Like, do we treat Weezer unfairly now just because they don't look and sound and act the way they did in 1994? for. I would argue now that they are starting to get treated fairly again. I think they have come full circle. They were loved. Once something gets so popular, the cool thing is to not love them anymore, regardless. You've seen it with cold play. You've seen it with anybody who gets massive. The cool thing is to

hate. I think Weezer had that for a little bit. And I think now, though, because they have sustained, I think now you just kind of respect them regardless of if sonically they're your flavor. River, River still performs like he's 28 years old. I mean, I watched them here a year and a half or so ago, because if they're close, I'll go. He does a little bit where he runs out in the back and he gets in the little boat and they play at the back of the amphitheater. He moves well.

He's a whole different person when he's on stage than when he's off. I feel like for all the haters that had all the years to make a fun of Weezer, I do feel like sustainability is the hardest thing in the creative world. And they have been able to do that. Yeah. You're a country music DJ primarily, and this is a ridiculous question. But to your mind, is there any country music star, pastor present, who exudes in any way like Weezer type energy, like a revenge of the nerds type vibe. Do you get this from anybody in country? There are nerdy folks. You know, I think Brad Paisley is extremely smart. The cowboy hat can throw you off. But there's a guy now named Matt Steele who was going to med school and was like, you know, I'm going to do music. for a little bit. So we have the smart guys, but no, when I moved, because I did hip-hop and pop for 15 years and thought, I'm going to go over and do country, not because of the music, because I don't

play a lot of music on my show. I talk for five hours a day, but I felt like my audience was, their sensibilities were in the middle of America, so let me talk to them. Yeah. And so, you know, I came over and I had these glasses in the news, all these national news shows, they were doing stories on me not wearing a cowboy hat, but looking like Weezer. Like that was the literal story. It was like he doesn't wear a cowboy hat or have a bell buckle. He's Bobby Bones. Oh, boy.

Dirk's Bentley, he put together that goofy 90s country band in 2020, Hot Country Nights, I think, with a K. I think you interviewed them on your show. That's a very Weezer-esque. Those are Weezer-esque antics to me. They were definitely antics. They were playing completely different characters. characters. Sure. So in this space, they were trying something a little out of the box,

which I commend them for. But I don't know that it was smart humor. I think they were going, let's be as dumb as we possibly can. It's pretty dumb in a good way, but yes. Yes, in a hilarious way. Bobby, this has been fantastic. It's been a thrill to have you on. It's an honor. Thanks so much for talking with us, man. Hey, thank you. Listen, every episode. Thanks very much to our special guest this week, Bobby Bones. Thanks as always to our producers, Justin Sales and Isaac Lee. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now, without further ado, here we have Weezer with Say It Ain't So. We'll see you next week.