The greatest blog that ever lived (variations on a shaker hymn).

Anyone who knows me knows my favorite album of all time is this:

Out of the thousands of albums I've owned (and the thousands more I've had the chance to listen to via my career path), not a single record comes close to creating the intense feelings of love, loss, loneliness, depression, desire and confusion that Pinkerton does. It's the only album I own on CD, cassette and vinyl. I have the entire disc memorized, and used to play it out in my head during the last 36 minutes of any given college class to pass the time (I always felt especially accomplished when I'd sing the final "I'm sorry" from "Butterfly" right when the teacher would let the class out).



One of the benefits of being at my parents' house for the holidays (besides my mom's laptop and wireless internet) is their ridiculous digital cable package. Working in the field of rock writing, while full of fringe benefits, has yet to reveal a way to score free cable, and as such, I get about 12 channels on my TV in Cleveland. But here, I've been indulging in multi-hour marathons ofDeadliest Catch and Project Runway, watching a rerun of the mtvU Woodie Awards and more, but what I stumbled upon takes the cake: It's an hour-long concert film called Across The Sea: Weezer Live In Japan.



Filmed in 2005 on the band's Make Believe tour, Across The Sea was originally supposd to get a DVD release but that's still not materialized. Only a clip of one song had leaked out on YouTube until recent months, when the full thing started airing on some channel called Palladia (which I'm tuned to right now). After about 10-15 minutes of uninteresting candid footage, the concert begins, and man, is it a fun one: "Don't Let Go" finds Rivers Cuomo sans guitar, running around the stage like a madman doing aerobics. Rivers uses "Surf Wax America" as a chance to try out his growing Japanese-language skills, before Brian Bell and Scott Shriner nail the "You take my car, I'll take my board" a capella in front of a few thousand adoring Japanese fans. Cuomo even lets Shriner sing lead on "Dope Nose" and Bell take the mic for "Why Bother," perhaps foreshadowing their most recent album's dalliances with lead vocal-swapping. But the true gem of the special is the song it took its name from, "Across The Sea."



I would be very, very hard-pressed to find a Weezer song more honest, personal and raw than "Across The Sea." The centerpiece of Pinkerton, the song tells the story of Cuomo falling in love with a Japanese girl who sent him fanmail. What starts off as innocent appreciation mutates into Cuomo blindly falling in love with the girl before digging deep into his psyche and wrestling with his own feelings of inadequacy and desolation. It is, in a word, incredible. There's a reason the band very rarely play it live, even though many otherPinkerton songs continually make appearances in concert. What's super-fascinating about Rivers' performance on this song is, unlike the rest of the concert, where he's running all over the stage, clowning around with bandmates and cracking jokes with the fans, for "Across The Sea," he is stock-still, obviously focused on both his guitar part and his vocal delivery, both of which are (in typical Rivers fashion) virtually note-for-note perfect. It's obvious that (at the time of recording) nine years later, after everything the band have been through and everything Rivers has gone through personally, "Across The Sea" still means something special to him.



I feel like I'm rambling, so I'll just shut up now and let you watch the clip of the song from the special:

Happy new year, everyone. I hope you are each able to find a song in this coming year that will move you for the rest of your life just like how I found this song so many years ago.