But I Ain't Never Coming Back

When I read the Pitchfork article detailing Rivers Cuomo’s recent comments on the impending permanent hiatus for Weezer I was at first resigned and then ultimately relieved. I’m not going to be one of those naysayers wishing good riddance to bad rubbish, nor am I going to slice “My Name is Jonas” into my arm with a razor blade. After reading that article and the MTV.com one it grew from, I was pretty certain it was another instance of the camel dancing.

My mind filled up with all sorts of ideas to write about

• My own Weezer timeline spanning that first listen to the blue album while doing my Math Analysis in 1994 all the way to putting “Jamie” on a CD I made as a gift this spring
• The lasting impact of Matt Sharp
• The post-Weezer generation of bands
• The abysmal majority of Make Believe
• Disc 23 – All Weezer all weekend

It’s quite enough to devote years and years of blogging to, which I no doubt will. This abundance of material comes directly from an abundance of moments. Weezer transcended listening moments to an extent that I’m certain some sociology major just figured out the topic for his thesis. From the advent of the Blue Album, Weezer successfully captured the vim that took their songs beyond 90’s white noise into a well-respected realm of music that instantly ties itself to images and memories. My life – until yesterday – was full of those moments. I can tell you exactly where I was when I first purchased/heard Pinkerton, The Green Album, and Maladroit. I can rattle off the 11 songs I heard them play on August 12, 1995. I can even tell you the myriad of nuggets we fans held on to between 1997 and 2001 when a Pixies tribute album took on unprecedented importance.

Even knowing this, I can't tear an idea out of my mind.

"The camel dances and having danced moves on."

As I type, countless multitudes are fighting back tears behind horn-rimmed glasses while clicking away on their Macs emoting how Weezer made if ok for them to be a dork, how “Across the Sea” brought their summer camp lover home to roost, and how “Only in Dreams” truly is just an allegory for sex (which I don’t wholly buy). This is all well and good, but I’m going to call bullshit on anyone bemoaning this demise. This was doubtlessly the logical end that sixteen-plus years of fandom would point toward, and I for one am quite at peace with it.

• No one is dead
• There was no “Do you feel like you’ve been cheated?” moment
• There was no member exodus/revolving door allowing them to eke it out until there’s an original touring keyboardist on stage with a host of impostors

The next evolution of Weezer was quite frightening to ponder and most likely would have ended up with fans hating them just to prove how much they loved them, an old-fashioned I’m-more-angry-than-you-off. The camel moved on. Kiddos, there’s certain points in anyone’s existence when one has to recognize everything that has happened is no longer happening. As a man more wiser than I once said, "It is finished." Move on.

While the prospect of a Weezer-less world is a bit more fathomable today than in years past, I sill have a twinge of remorse. Yet beyond this initial reaction, I’m quite happy to have their body of work firmly rooted so that future criticism can lift up the genius of their early work. But Weezer's time has come, so do like I’ll do when I get home and time travel to September 24, 1996. I'm in NW 276 in Wiley Hall and English 103 homework is miles from my mind because I just heard the greatest rock scream opening “Tired of Sex.” Sweet Mother of God, I’ve still got nine tracks to go.