The Ongoing History of New Music, encore presentation: Rivers Cuomo and Weezer, Alt-Rock’s Nerd Heroes, part 2

The way I see it, there are three types of bands that stretch across a spectrum. First, there’s the extreme sort, a group that will do almost anything to attract attention…you’re probably thinking of some names right now.

Next to them are the traditional sort, and they comprise the vast majority of bands out there. These are groups that go out there, do their thing earnestly and honestly, and hope that this will be enough for music lovers. They occupy a huge part of this spectrum.

And then we have the third type: the quirky, eccentric, and weird. These groups come in all sorts of flavours, from mildly bent to the gloriously stupid and the confoundingly weird. These bands go a long way into making music fun and unpredictable.

Not all land with audiences—they’re too strange, not enough people get the joke, or maybe they’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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But there can be a balance between being quirky and fun and having songs that have widespread appeal. They have just enough of the nerd factor to set themselves apart while not being so nerdy that they’ll turn too many people off.

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This is really hard to do. It takes songwriting skills, careful management of your image, and plenty of creativity and imagination, especially if you want to main things over more than just a couple of albums and touring cycles.

Among the very, very, very best of this class of band is Weezer. They’ve perfected a formula that includes musical talent, wit, self-deprecation, left-of-centre thinking, a desire to have fun, a willingness to experiment, some clever marketing, and above all, to let their fans in on everything. It’s an approach that has worked very, very well for decades.

This is part two of Rivers Cuomo and Weezer: Alt-Rock’s Nerd Heroes, Part 2.

And, of course, the playlist from Eric Wilhite.

The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on these stations. Don’t forget that there’s a podcast version, too, in case you miss any episodes. Get them for free wherever you get your podcasts.