Songs from the Black Hole & Rivers Cuomo

Something a little fishy has been going on with Weezer lately. Namely, Rivers Cuomo. A few weeks ago I checked his MySpace blog, as I usually do, and his most recent post at that time featured a tracklisting of Weezer's currently unreleased album Songs from the Black Hole (this post has since been deleted as well as all of his posts before that, which is a shame because they provided a very candid insight into his life). Before reading this post, I had never heard of Songs from the Black Hole before, so I decided to do some research. It turns out that Rivers began recording this album in 8-track form in 1994 after The Blue Album. It was never finished, but some songs intended for SFTBH were included on Pinkerton instead. The other songs remain unreleased, but some can be heard on the unofficial SFTBH website. They are actually rather good, and I would love to see the album released sometime in the near future.

This brings me back to my original point. Due to the recent activity surrounding SFTBH, I suspect that maybe Weezer is planning on releasing it sometime soon. Of course, this is only speculation. Rivers said that he would like to release the SFTBH songs but he is unable to because Geffen alone has the rights to his music. Perhaps this has changed? I find it unlikely, but I still have hope.

In the meantime, Rivers has been posting the sheet music and lyrics for some of the SFTBH songs on his website. My theory is that he's trying to keep his fans somewhat satisfied by posting sheet music because he feels bad that he can't legally release anything from SFTBH... or something like that. I mean, I would feel pretty bad too if there was an online petition with 1,000+ signatures in support of releasing my currently unreleased and highly desired album while I couldn't do anything about it, legally.

There's something else weird that I noticed. Perhaps it's nothing, but I find it hard to believe that Rivers would do something like this just for the hell of it, especially since he's an English major. In his latest post at his blog (keep in mind it may not be there a few days from now, since lately he's been in the habit of editing his posts and rewriting them completely as opposed to creating a brand new post) he has quite a few spelling mistakes, which I assume to be deliberate. I've noticed a trend of replacing some "a"s and "e"s with "i"s. See here:

I think the three male charicters were supposed to reprisent differint parts of my personality: i.e., the asceticism of Jonis vs. the party hearty aesthetic of Wuan and Dondo (Don Juan, get it?). The two main female charicters reprisented the two extremes in the types of women I was attracted to: Maria (rock chick) and . . . I can't remember the other girl's name but she was the good girl. I guess I've bin into irreconcilible dichotomies for a long time. Our robot "M1" was to be played by Karl!

This is really puzzling. Perhaps I'm overanalyzing it, but I feel like there has to be some reason as to why he would do this. Also, earlier in the same entry, he spelled "songs" like "sawngs". Uh... what?

I have heard rumors that Make Believe, Weezer's latest album, is also their last. I really hope this isn't true. Even if they don't record a whole new album, I'll still definitely be satisfied if they release SFTBH. Actually, what I want most is for them to go on tour again. I'm really angry that I missed their tour last fall. I can easily say that attending a Weezer concert would be one of the best experiences of my life (as would attending a Pearl Jam concert, but unfortunately I'm missing them, too; both of them are next week), and I hope that all of my opportunities for that haven't passed yet. I'm not sure of the likelihood of that happening though, since Rivers will be married in a matter of days, and musicians often retire once they get married. Plus, Weezer has been around for 14 years. I have a feeling they're all going to start settling down.

It's always sad when a really good band retires. It's a huge disappointment because you kind of assume (or hope, at least) that they'll keep making new albums forever. It's like that with Weezer. They've been around for so long and they're still so good that I can't really imagine them retiring. It's going to be a sad day for music when Weezer finally retires. I hope they'll still be around for a while, but in reality it's probably sooner than any of us Weezer fans can bear.