Tag: Weezer

Music, Weezer

Justin Hoenke’s Weezer Song Rankings (Winter 2016 Edition)

Justin Hoenke

rs-28223-20140616-weezer-x1800-1402942062

To read the Winter 2016 Edition of my Weezer Song Rankings, please click here!

I listened to quite a bit of Weezer in October-November 2016 which then prompted me to update my song rankings to see how my Weezer listening habits changed over a few months (click here for the Summer edition of these rankings)

THE ALBUM RANKINGS

  1. Pinkerton
  2. The Blue Album
  3. Songs from the Black Hole
  4. The White Album
  5. The Green Album
  6. The Red Album
  7. Everything Will Be Alright In The End
  8. Make Believe
  9. B-Sides
  10. Maladroit
  11. Unreleased Music
  12. Raditude
  13. Death to False Metal
  14. Album 5 Demos
  15. Alone I-III
  16. Hurley

The White Album made a huge leap in the rankings, jumping from #8 to #4. This album really grew on me over the past few months. The songwriting on it is a great combination of the best of early Weezer and post Green Album Weezer. I find myself going back to the songs quite a bit. I’m not 100% sure of why Everything Will Be Alright In The End dropped in the rankings, as I’ve grown to love that album even more than I did before. It may be due to the fact that I think Green and Red just have some amazing songs that rank really high (for the song rankings, see below) and Everything Will Be Alright In The End did not have as many of those. However overall, that album is much more solid (in my opinion) than both Green and Red.

THE SONG RANKINGS

I made some slight tweaks to most of the song rankings, but what I really focused on was trying to hone in on what I considered to be “perfect 10” songs. Here’s my list of those perfect 10 songs:

Crazy One 10 Alone (I-III)
Miss Sweeny 10 B-Sides
Mykel And Carli 10 B-Sides
The Prettiest Girl In The Whole Wide World 10 B-Sides
Cleopatra 10 EWBAITE
Across The Sea 10 Pinkerton
El Scorcho 10 Pinkerton
Falling For You 10 Pinkerton
The Good Life 10 Pinkerton
Tired Of Sex 10 Pinkerton
Why Bother? 10 Pinkerton
Trippin’ Down the Freeway 10 Raditude
Longtime Sunshine 10 Songs from the Black Hole
My Name Is Jonas 10 The Blue Album
Say It Ain’t So 10 The Blue Album
Island In The Sun 10 The Green Album
The Angel and the One 10 The Red Album
The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn) 10 The Red Album
L.A. Girlz 10 The White Album
Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori 10 The White Album
Baby 10 Unreleased
Mad Kow 10 Unreleased
My Brain Is Workin’ Overtime 10 Unreleased

These are the Weezer songs I find myself listening to and enjoying the most. They’ve got everything I look for in a great Weezer song: melody, chords, quirky arrangement, rawness, and emotional power. Everyone’s list of their favorite Weezer songs is going to be different and it’s going to grow and change. I really look forward to seeing what some of your favorite songs are!

MY TAKEAWAYS

I’ve liked Weezer for a long time. I still continue to like Weezer quite a bit. They’ve contributed many songs to my personal soundtrack. I hope everyone has this kind of band in their lives.

Advertisements
Music, Weezer

Justin Hoenke’s Weezer Song Rankings (Summer 2016 Edition)

Justin Hoenke

weezer2014splash

To read the 2016 Edition of my Weezer Song Rankings, please click here!

As any completely obsessed Weezer fan may do, I’ve spent a good part of this year rating and ranking all (I think I’ve got them all) of Weezer/Rivers Cuomo’s catalog of songs that I have heard. Having been a devoted fan since 1994, a lot of my personality and history is tied into this band. I wanted to understand my listenings habit and decided that this song rankings list was the best thing for me to do to help me in my quest!

THE METHOD

First and foremost, I organized the songs by proper album releases. If the song was not on an album, I did my best to fit it into a category that made sense to me. Most of these songs ended up as B-Sides or Unreleased, but some went into the specific category of Album 5 Demos. Perhaps when I do my second pass at these rankings I will get into further detail but for now, the songs rest where they are. I decided on a simplified “1-10′ rankings style instead of getting into decimals and very specific song rankings. Perhaps those very detailed rankings are for another list, but for now I’d rather spend that extra time with my family. Songs only went into one album category. While I understand this may throw off the rankings a bit, I did this out of ease. One example of this is Longtime Sunshine. I placed this song on the album Songs From the Black Hole instead of listing it on Alone I-III or Pinkerton. Tracks on deluxe editions were mostly placed into the B-Sides category.

THE ALBUM RANKINGS

  1. Pinkerton
  2. The Blue Album
  3. Songs From the Black Hole
  4. The Green Album
  5. Everything Will Be Alright In The End
  6. Make Believe
  7. The Red Album
  8. B-Sides and The White Album
  9. Maladroit
  10. Unreleased
  11. Death to False Metal
  12. Raditude
  13. Album 5 Demos
  14. Alone I-II-III
  15. Hurley

The top and bottom of this list came as no surprise. Albums 1-3 have consistently ranked this way for me. Albums 11-15 came out pretty much as expected, other than Alone I-II-II ranking at #14. Alone is listed as one collection, and being a demos collection suffers from some less than exceptional songs or sketches of songs. I believe this is the main reason that the set of 3 albums ranks so low.

Albums 4-11 surprised me considerably. I had long thought that I did not hold The Green Album in high regards, but these rankings changed my mind. I expected The Red Album to be ranked higher, but in review of my ratings I see that what I really like from that album are two songs specifically: The Angel and The One and The Greatest Man That Ever Lived. Albums 4-11 also suggest to me that I am more of a fan of albums that contain more straight-forward pop songs (Green, Make Believe) than albums that branch out a bit (Maladroit, The Red Album). Individually, I may like some songs on the albums that branch out more but as a whole I enjoy the straightforward pop albums more.

THE SONG RANKINGS

Songs from Pinkerton and The Blue Album ranked the highest as expected. The rest of the songs that were ranked between 7-10 were quite a mix of songs from all different eras of Weezer. This confirms something to me that I’ve thought long about Weezer: a good song is a good song no matter the era it came from. Weezer’s music from 1994 to present has varied greatly in style and composition, but at the core the good songs stand out. The songs at the bottom of the rankings stand out to me as well because a lot of them are fragments or demos. This suggests that I prefer more complete recordings over demos.

MY TAKEAWAYS

  • Despite the fact that The Green Album is very much a straightforward collection of pop music with songs containing very similar structures, it turns out that I like it quite a bit! I will listen again to this album over the next few months and report back.
  • At the time of its release, Make Believe was widely panned by critics and fans alike as being a “sell out” album. It is easy to see this with the success of Beverly Hills and Perfect Situation as singles. However as a whole the album stands up as a great collection of songs. Most of the songs on the album have ratings of 7 or 8.
  • The song rankings on Maladroit are very interesting, with all of the songs either ranking at 6  or 7 (Two songs get a five and Possibilities gets a 2).
  • No song from Hurley ranks higher than a 6.

 

Curious about my past writings on Weezer? You can read them by clicking here

Music, Weezer

REVIEW: Weezer “The White Album”

Justin Hoenke

For all of my Weezer related writings, please go here!

weezerwhitealbum1.png

According to most if not all reviews of Weezer’s 2016 “The White Album”, Weezer is back and at their best level since 1996. Here’s where I believe those reviews are wrong: Weezer’s been back for awhile now and despite some low moments, they’ve been making some amazing and interesting music since officially “coming back” in 2000.

“The White Album” is a beautiful album full of crunchy guitar, off kilter leads, awkward lyrics, and stellar drumming from Pat Wilson. It is a very typical “Weezer” album in the fact that it covers all of these bases, but at the same time it does something that Weezer albums have not quite done: it takes the energy from their first two albums and mixes it PERFECTLY with their perfect pop song sensibilities that they’ve been honing since “coming back” in 2000. Weezer isn’t back; they’ve just finally managed to bring everything together from their career in a nice 10 song package.

Rivers’ songwriting collaborations have always been questionable to me, but it is on this album that they finally really pay off. You can hear the co-writers pushing Cuomo to new levels in order to get the best songs possible. Pat’s drumming is once again one of the standouts on this album. I realize that I say this about almost every album, but queue up “Jacked Up” and turn up the volume. Pat’s drums drive the song. Scott’s bass isn’t as high in the mix as I’d like it to be, as his bass lines are always melodic and perfectly timed for this band. Brian’s got the little interesting and beautiful tidbits from guitar and piano covered on this album. It’s almost as if he’s the real star of this album, lending not only his arranging and playing skills to every song but also helping co-write.

High points? Wind in Our Sail, (Girl We Got A) Good Thing, Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori, LA Girlz, Jacked Up

Overall, “The White Album” is a really solid and well crafted set of 10 pop rock songs from a band that excels at giving us albums that can make you smile and sing along.

 

 

Family, Kids, Libraries, Life, Music, Technology, Things, Titusville, PA, Video Games

2015 Year In Review

Justin Hoenke

PLAY

LISTEN

READ

WATCH

THINK

  • Be nice to each other.
  • Library. What a weird name for what public libraries actually do in 2015.
  • Have fun.
  • I want to stay at home with my family more.
  • Hi There.
Libraries

Everything Will Be Alright In The End

Justin Hoenke

I have been going through a lot of changes when it comes to my library life. I have been meditating on everything that involves libraries and my place in them for the past six months. The new Weezer album Everything Will Be Alright In The End (EWBAITE) was released during this time. Here’s my review: it’s awesome, pretty much perfect, and exactly what I have wanted in a Weezer album since Pinkerton was released in 1996. In the words of my son Aero….good stuff!

In the same way that The Blue Album and Pinkerton sang to me as a teenager,  EWBAITE speaks to me as an adult and as a librarian who has recently been thinking a lot about the big picture and going through some changes. My 17 year old self says, “Hey Justin, make one of those lists that lays out what the album means to you at this moment. It’ll help you think through what’s going through your brain.” Before, I would put these thoughts into a notebook and only look at them when I was moving and packing things into boxes. Now I’ve got this blog and it has become a place where I can be myself, talk about the things that are in my life, and work through everything and anything. Here we go.

Ain’t Got Nobody:  I feel alone in the library world. What is it that I am doing here? Are my efforts to bring a unique library experience to my community amounting to anything? It’s difficult to bring forth change. There are a lot of bumps and a lot of complaints along the way. How does one stay on the positive path? Sometimes I feel like I ain’t got nobody to talk to.

Goodbye heroes.You had a good run.Fifteen years of. Ruling the planet. But now your light’s fading. Adios rock band that we loved the most.This is a toast to what you did.And all that you were fighting for.Who could do more when.Time marches on. Words come and go.We will sing the melodies that you did long ago.

Ok, I am beginning to understand something. We all have a shelf life. Musicians and bands have one. They have their big albums and then the albums where everyone complains about how they don’t sound like the old ones. This is a very easy to spot cycle within a profession. The bloggers rise, the tweeters come up next, then then tumblrs, and who knows what else. Words come and go. Adios librarians that we loved the most. This is a toast to what you did. Keep on working but that “first two albums” part of your career is over.

Don’t wanna find myself homogenized.Don’t wanna become the very thing that I despise.Don’t want my ideas polluted by mediocrity.Don’t want my sentiments diluted.This is important to me.

I’ve had it up to here. This library thing is important to me…so important that I don’t want to pollute it with half baked ideas and some kind of mediocrity. This community doesn’t deserve that. They deserve the best. I tried to give my best to you but (sometimes) you plugged up your ears. Where does one go when they have had it up to here? How does one grow?

I like to think that I know quite a lot. But with you it feels like I forgot.I wish that I can explain who you are.But when I try to I never get far.

I used to have some kind of insight into library work that I loved sharing with the world. I thought about it all of the time. I constantly aimed to grow, change, and lead. But anymore I don’t know you. It feels like I forgot. You’ve become someone that I used to be very close to but anymore all I have are these memories. I don’t want to have just the memories.

We grow old, our hearts are dim.But our minds are free, to fly where they will.Your beauty is faded, you’re a broken shell.It’s only the weak that fall for your spell.You can’t control me no more Cleopatra.It’s time to move, to the next life.You’ll be reborn as a beautiful child.

This change has happened with age. I have become a caricature of what I used to be in terms of ideas and change. There is constantly something on my shoulder reminding me that everything has changed and it is never going back. But I won’t let it control me anymore. There has to be a better way to go through the day to day of life. There has got to be a place for me in libraries. I’m not waiting for retirement and just counting the days. I still have something in me. The next life. Change. I’ll be reborn.

EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT IN THE END

You find out where you are at this moment, you find out where you want to go, and you start moving your life on that path. You follow that path and find what you are looking for. You are what you are and you can’t change that. I am Justin William Hoenke, a husband, a father, a friend, a human being, and a librarian.

The path is rocky and difficult, but in the end it all leads to our return to our own personal Ithaka, a place that we call home and can be free to explore, grow, and try out all of the new things that we want to experience in this life.

I don’t know where I am going but I’m sure I will get there. It is scary. It is exciting. There is something cool happening inside of my brain and in my heart.

Music, Weezer

REVIEW: Natural by The Special Goodness

Justin Hoenke
Artwork by Ali Bromberg aka @mutantmanifesto

Sometimes bands stay in your life longer than family members or friends.  When this becomes the case, it gets really hard to listen to their music.  You start to feel like you’re part of the band and the music and that “you would’ve done this or this differently” to make the album “perfect”.  That was my worry when I listened to Natural by The Special Goodness, the band’s second or fourth album (depends on how you’re counting). I have been a longtime fan and supporter of Patrick Wilson and his projects.  In 1998 I tracked down their first album (known as The Bunny Album) on Ebay and got it for about $100 from Japan.  Approaching Natural as an almost 15 year fan was gonna be tricky.

Turns out I didn’t need to worry about it at all.  Time has a way of changing everyone’s outlook on life.  These days, I’m still very much into music yet at the same time there’s a disconnect…I have a wife and two boys that trumps over any kind of love of music that I may have had in my youth.  I feel that Natural represents that kind of idea in music form.  Whereas past Special Goodness efforts were pretty awesome but just not all there, Natural manages to pull it all together with a sound that is simple yet big and warm.   And to top it all off the songs are the best batch to come out of the Weezer camp in years.  For the first time, The Special Goodness sounds like The Special Goodness.  It doesn’t sound like a project, an experiment, or a band.  It sounds like Patrick Wilson making sounds that means something to him.

The songs on Natural are simple.  The words don’t have any giant revelations when you read into them, the music is stripped down to the basics, the performance is never flashy just for the sake of being flashy, and the production keeps the instrumentation at the minimum.  With this album, you get guitar, bass, drums, vocals and that’s all.  And there’s a beauty in that simplicity.  The songs are able to breathe and the unique parts of each production work together to form something really beautiful.

I guess there’s a reason why the album is called Natural.

Music, Weezer

RIP Mikey Welsh

Justin Hoenke

This past Sunday, I woke up to the news that Mikey Welsh, the former bassist of my favorite all time band Weezer had passed away at the age of 40.  I spent the rest of the day completely in shock, and thoughts of Mikey, life, and mortality were never far from my mind.

My story with Mikey Welsh goes back to around 1998-1999.  When I first read about Mikey and saw pictures of him, I had never seen anyone quite like him.  He had tattoos!  He looked tough!  His bass sound was all fuzzy and distorted and it really rocked!  As an 18-19 year boy, this was quite exciting.  I was always labeled as the geeky kind in my teens, and the sheer rockin’ essence of Mikey was just what I needed to roughen up my edges.

Me, Karl Koch, Pat Wilson, and Mikey Welsh (at my parents house post Special Goodness show, 1999, Pittsburgh, PA)

Fast forward to 1999, when I was lucky enough to host Mikey, Pat Wilson, Lee Loretta, and Karl Koch at my home for one evening while their band The Special Goodness were on tour.  I have fond memories of helping the crew unload their instruments and helping them carry them up four flights of stairs.  I remember carrying Mikey’s bass guitar case, which had WEEZER sprayed painted across it.  It was pretty awesome for an 18 year old super fan to be carrying the instruments that helped make the music that I loved so much.  Before the show started, I got to hang out with the guys.  I specifically remember Mikey working on little pieces of art that he worked on in the van while they were traveling.  I think he sold them for $5 each or something at the shows, and they always sold out quickly.  I also remember Mikey being entranced by a video game at the venue.  At one point he asked me for another quarter to play the game, which I gave him (you still owe me, dude).

When the band came back to my parents house after the show was probably the coolest music geek moment of my life.  I was getting a chance to hang out and talk music with some of my idols.  Mikey was nothing but kind and polite to my family (as were the rest of the gang).  My dad still remembers him as “the nice one with all the tattoos”.  For some reason or other, we had MTV on (as seen in the picture above) and I remember Mikey’s comment about the band whose video was on at the time (Stone Temple Pilots).  He said something along the lines of  “yeah, that’s how hard I wanna rock” which makes me crack up.

After this experience, I didn’t keep much in touch with Mikey other than seeing him backstage at a few shows in 2000/2001.  He was always kind to me and remembered staying at my parents house in 1999.  I recently got back in touch with him about a month ago through Facebook and Twitter, where Mikey was posting his stories and talking with his fans.  It just so happened to line up with a trip I was taking to Burlington in early October.  I had hoped to possibly meet up with Mikey, but he had already planned his vacation to see Weezer at RiotFest in Chicago a week later.

I didn’t get to see Mikey, but I got to see his artwork and I was very impressed.  My wife Haley, our son Finn, and I stopped by the store Maven where Mikey created this awesome piece of artwork you see in the picture above.  I tweeted the pic at him and he thanked me for stopping by to look at it.  That was the last time I spoke to Mikey.

It always hurts to see people go before their time, especially someone super talented like Mikey.  He was a hero to me and I can’t imagine my adolescence without his influence.  He taught me to rock harder no matter what I do.  He taught me that fuzzed out bass is a delight to listen to AT ANY TIME OF DAY.  Thanks for the music, the art, and the kindness Mikey.  You will always be remembered as a great person.

I leave you with a track Mikey co-wrote for the Juliana Hatfield album Total System Failure.  If you haven’t listened to Mikey’s contributions to this album yet, I suggest you do.  They’ll give you the perfect idea of just how amazing his bass playing was.