“I asked you to go to the Weezer concert.
You said you never heard of them.
How cool is that?”
Those were Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo’s tongue-in-cheek twist on a line from Weezer’s song “El Scorcho,” performed last Friday night (06.16.23) at Blossom Music Center, a stop on Weezer’s “Indie Rock Road Trip” tour. “El Scorcho” was just one of the many stand-out songs from a setlist packed with hits. And judging by the crowd, there didn’t seem to be a single person who didn’t know Weezer or the lyrics to every song, from “Undone – The Sweater Song” to “Say It Ain’t So.”
The band started strong, opening with their hard-hitting “My Name is Jonas,” the opening track (and my personal favorite) from their self-titled debut 1994 album. Rivers and guitarist Brian Bell traded off shredding solos, a trend that continued throughout the night, switching out guitars so many times, I lost count. Not to be outdone, Bassist Scott Shriner often shredded back-to-back with Rivers on songs like “Only in Dreams,” with a jam so long it felt dreamlike, sometimes even rocking the double-necked bass.
It wasn’t a fluke that they started the night with the first song on their first album. Weezer knew exactly what the crowd wanted tonight. Over half of the songs were from the band’s first three albums. Considering their 15 studio albums to date, that’s quite the representation of earlier hits. Weezer also quite literally gave the crowd what they wanted, by using sunglasses, guitar picks, and hats for a single song and then tossing them into the crowd.
Not all the songs were classics from the vault, though. Rather than taking an intermission, Rivers came out with an acoustic guitar and sang a solo version of “I Want a Dog,” a tour-debuting song about, well, wanting a dog, that he wrote during the COVID pandemic. That led to the semi-acoustic version of “Suzanne,” as the band filtered back out to join in the song, also acoustic. Following that was “Only in Dreams,” which started acoustic and grew into an electric rendition when drummer Patrick Wilson came in hard on the drums, which worked very well for that song.
One surprise from the night was “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams,” a B-side from their sophomore album ‘Pinkerton.’ The song recently went viral on Tik-Tok, which led to Rivers recording a video of himself dancing to it. This was evident in the crowd, as the young fans erupted upon hearing the intro. Another surprise was that they performed the song with the opening band Momma joining in on vocals. Rivers and Momma sang the song together while dancing atop a car dashboard. (Oh, did I not mention the giant dashboard set? Yeah! It was there! Taking up the entire back half of the stage, complete with the steering wheel, gauges, and cassette deck!) Several times throughout the night, Rivers climbed onto the dashboard above the steering wheel and rocked out, but the performance with Momma really took advantage of the setup.
Weezer closed the night with a three-part encore, ending in “Buddy Holly,” with the crowd singing so loud they drowned out Rivers. But that was not before a fight broke out down in the front, during the song “Hash Pipe.” Impressively, the band didn’t miss a step while Rivers ran to the side of the stage to get the attention of the staff in order to stop the scuffle. That could be said for the entire show; it is evident that Weezer has not lost a step in the 30 years that they’ve been together. The band continues to rock as hard as ever. Even people I knew who went and claimed they were just casual fans said they could not stop singing Weezer songs the entire week after the show. And even after a setlist of over 20 songs, there could have been so many more great songs included.
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