Rivers Cuomo - 'gogokain' correspondence

Through discussions with Karl, I learned the following correspondence was almost simultaneous to the initial 'asschun' exchanges, and as you can see Karl passed the torch over to Rivers once Rivers indicated he wanted to directly converse with the people writing in. Karl mentioned that this was probably a good thing, as it's clear 'gogokain' and Karl appear to be at odds in regards to the issues here. - Ridd

*original 'gogokain' message to Karl currently unavailable, though it is assumed gogokain was commenting on the editing of the song Weezer Summer 2000 song 'On The Edge'.

In a message dated 11/23/01 3:18:05 AM Mountain Standard Time, karl@weezer.net writes:

hmmmm. well, id have to say better/worse is a matter of opinion, and in the opinion of the guy who wrote 'em....

I'd understand if they were completely different parts of the song, like a bridge; a completely different musical idea that "the guy who wrote them" decided didn't fit in, but a verse is just a part a repitition of the musical idea before it. Slicing out verses not only shortens the songs, but detracts from the meaning of the songs. Leaving out a verse earlier in the song can impact the meaning of something later in the song.... but, of course....the opinion of the guy who wrote them is the only opinion that matters. Which seems to be rather unfortunate sometimes these days.

In a message dated 11/23/01 4:34:44 AM Mountain Standard Time, karl@weezer.net writes:

actually rivers is keen on your guys opinions, particularly with the newest songs, of which he is paying close attention to peoples comments.

>"Maybe he should stop doing that and just write whatever he wants to...? I'm sorry to go back to >this, but he wasn't paying attention to anyone's comments when he wrote blue and pink, and let's >cut the crap, that's his finest work, you know it, and I know it." < *karl quoting gogokain

now listen, youre a smart guy, and you always bring up great points. but by your own words, i should delete your letters and not share them with rivers. youre talking about a guy who completely shut out the opinions of fans until recently. when he made blue he wasnt listening. when he made pink he wasnt listening. when he made the summer 2000 songs he wasnt listening. and when he made the green album he wasnt listening. now, and only now, hes listening, to a degree. hes listening because he has come to understand that hardcore fans may sometimes be a better judge of songs than say, 50 year old producers. he's not one for living in the past or repeating mistakes. He may make all new ones, but thats better than repeating them.

Secondly, the majority of your comments basically read to me as: i like the old stuff, and i dislike the new stuff. this still comes down to opinion! no one else is a great song. but i like "slave" better. falling for you is one of my all time faves. but so is "death and destruction". am i out of it? old? a bad judge of quality? maybe. but those are just my opinions. also in my opinion, this band has never been as good as it is now. as much as a nostalgic schmoe as i am, i would NEVER want to go back to the way it used to be, for way more reasons than i can even state without stepping on legal toes. in essence: give rivers a bit more credit, and if he asks you for an opinion, dont be afraid to give it: hes taking it with a grain of salt anyway.

*it is assumed that there is another exchange between 'gogokain' and karl before the following one.

From: GogoKainxxxxx@aol.com [mailto:GogoKainxxxxx@aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2001 2:42 AM
To: karl@weezer.net
Subject: Re: What the....

The only people who don't know it are the kinds of kids you guys gave tickets to in the TRL studio, and all the people who just never "got it" and never will. Now you're telling me he's listening to our comments? That's crap. I suppose he considers pink flawed and even blue? Is that why all we get now live are the blue album singles and three exceptions? Because by having radio and critical success, a song isn't flawed? Is that some kind of affirmation of what makes a quality song? Is it so wrong to maybe want some of the good stuff back? The reasons we're all here is because of blue and Pinkerton, not Hash Pipe or Cygnus X3543 whatever. So maybe he doesn't want to put his soul out there on the line for everyone anymore, and I understand the whole Pinkerton thing (if that's even the real reason). So you could compromise here, right. And play No One Else (a freaking milestone song, as you said so yourself), Holiday, Jamie, Suzanne, and the like. Everything besides Pinkerton and TWHTALMH isn't that personal. No one is coming to laugh at him, anyway. People are getting antsy and fed up. If he is paying attention, he knows this, and it's just not important to him. But if he wants the hardcore fanbase to stick around (which I'm not sure of, with the whole "I hate my fans" thing), he'll have to compromise a little more. That sounds a bit preachy and deserving of a "Shut up and start your own band and run it how you want" comment, but it's true. I never would have doubted some of my fellow fans, but most of them didn't even buy tickets and the ones who did are disappointed. If it was just a few whiners (which there always is), I wouldn't even say anything, but it's damn near EVERYONE. Everyone is confused and hurt (as hurt as you can be about a band). I stick around because I hope maybe they'll drag the Marshalls back out and write a key change and some interesting dynamics or something as equally musically interesting. So I kind of went off there, but what I mean to say is..... please don't tell me about how Rivers is keen on our opinions about anything.

In a message dated 11/25/01 8:25:43 PM Mountain Standard Time, karl@weezer.net writes:

From: GogoKainxxxxx@aol.com [mailto:GogoKainxxxxx@aol.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 4:30 AM
To: karl@weezer.net
Subject: re: what the...

You can't be serious? I mean, the way I see it, the difference in the quality of these songs is far too great. You know what I mean about quality of music, right? It's like comparing Britney Spears or Slipknot to Billy Joel. You simply can't say it's a matter of opinion. Seriously, the quality is obvious.

Maybe you LIKE Britney Spears better, but Billy Joel writes higher quality music, and no one in their right mind would argue against that. Do you know what makes No One Else a great song and so unique compared to slave? So many great things. The intro is astounding. Starting on the E, then descending until you hit the A, and then the little riff, then it hits the E and Rivers starts singing right then. THAT is intense. When you get to the C "And if you see her..." part, Matt starts playing around with the notes, and doesn't stick to guitar, (like almost everything Christmas Song and after) as the rythym guitar goes back between C and F# . Then right before the chorus, the F#/G#/B/E thing comes in. That's an intense way to go into the chorus. The chorus. Ah yes. The back ups by Brian are keen, and totally help make the chorus (and the entire Weezer sound, for that matter). Notice Rivers does not say "Ha ha ha ha house" this time. The intro is repeated. Brian comes in on "...looks around and around and around you know....". That's a variation from the first verse, it's unique to that part of the song. Dynamic. It's not repititive. This time in the prechorus, the G# (maybe, I'm doing this all on memory) octave comes in. Adding variety and uniqueness to that part of the song, instead of just repeating the first prechorus. This time during the chorus, the hahahahouse thing comes in. Goddamn. That is genius. I swear, if I'd written that, I just would have quit. Who the hell comes up with "HA HA HA HA HOUSE"? Incredible. Then the bridge before the solo. That's great; it has energy. So then the solo, which fits the song rather well. The feedback on the last note is held into the vocals.... "and if you watch her go (watch her go) <---that's cool, that's important, it helps build the energy into the final chorus. It's the climax point. Almost all old Weezer songs have a "climax point" (for lack of a better term). The final chorus is pure energy thank to the climax point. The addition of Matt's back up vocals on this time through add to that energy, they accent the main vocals so well.

You see, I could write a freaking essay on the greatness of No One Else or any old Weezer song and why it's so great, i couldn't spend half the time doing that with Slave or any other new song. All classic Weezer songs have unique personalities that make them stand out from each other. And the climax point, I mean, nothing post Pinkerton has that. On the Edge is the closet thing I can think of, and I think it's probably Weezer's finest post Pinkerton work, but it was greatly hindered when that extra verse got cut out of it. You didn't spend as much time building up to it, so it doesn't feel as good when you get there. I can elaborate and give more examples on the personality and climax things if it's not clear, but I don't see how it couldn't be. It makes a Weezer song great.

You know, then there's the whole voice thing. Right now, I don't think that's too important right now, but it's the topic of much debate recently. I don't want to sound as high school as our friend asschun does, so I won't say "gay". But it is pretty obvious there's been a dramatic change in Rivers' voice. I don't want to go back to the whole Pinkerton thing because I don't really want to sound like one of those freaks who are obsessed with the damned album, and I don't want to piss anyone off. I recognize as pushing the boundaries of what you can do with a two guitar/bass/drum pop rock (sorry, but you know what i mean) band, but apparently it's a touchy subject and I won't go there. But the thing that amazes me about that album is how honest the vocals are. You can feel it. They're so energetic and dynamic. On the green album, it's very stagnant and boring. It's like a guitar solo without any bends or slides, pretty generic and dull. It's like BB King says, a guitarist's vibrato is a guitarist's personality. The same applies to a vocalist, wouldn't you agree? Now, I understand there's not a lot of feeling you can put into "Crab at the booty" and that's a whole other problem I probably shouldn't touch on, but the new voice bleeds over into the live thing, and takes away from what few old songs Weezer still plays. I think it's most noticable on SIAS, during the chorus. It used to sound so rich and full, and now it sounds forced and not as warm. It's hard to explain this. I guess maybe more "open". It just sounds like he's just going through the motions, instead of actually singing the song. I have bootlegs from all eras of Weezer, and this didn't happen until after green. The Summer Sonic Festival from last year performance is just fucking incredible, but the Philly broadcast from last month is really bad. Maybe it happened when you ditched the monitors, but that still doesn't explain green or the demos.

You can't just write 500 little 2:00 songs that sound generic and have no distinguishing characteristics. Well, you can, and Weezer does these days. If you pass this on to Rivers...... He'd have to know all this stuff already, right? There is no way you can just start writing songs with a drop off in quality and not notice. I feel that it's delibrate, and I still believe Rivers could churn out more songs that are exactly in the vein of the classics tomorrow if he damn well felt like it. and he probably does, but chooses not to introduce them to the fans. I don't think he's "lost it" like most people say. I don't know why it's happening, but that's just what I feel about the whole thing, and I'm just an outsider and have no and don't pretend to have any freaking clue as to what's going on, but I know what I'm hearing, and it's pretty mediocre for the most part, and all I can do is speculate.

Crap, I just wrote a lot of stuff. Sorry for any typos or words that don't make any sense there.... I have a tendency to leave out words at random, so just piece that together. Thanks for taking the time to read that.

From: "karl@weezer" <karl@weezer.net>
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 14:49:27 -0600
To: <GogoKainxxxxx@aol.com>
Subject: FW: what the...

Do you like the Beatles? How do you think they were able to get away with writing songs with wholesale repetition of verses and bridges without development? Each verse is essentially the same as the last. How about Nirvana? How about nearly every song ever written before acid hit rock music? That's what I'm trying to do. I'll admit I haven't pulled it off yet but I haven't given up either. (Maybe I should?) The difference between songs like No One Else and songs like Slave is that the former is composed of different ideas tacked onto each other in an ad hoc fashion whereas the latter flowed out naturally from one germ of an idea. I have to believe the latter is a more sound way to compose music. (Am I wrong?)

Are the summer 2000 vocal performances (including summersonic) on par with Classic weezer? I know how to get that back. I'm sure this is all very frustrating for you, as it is for me, but I hope you believe that my heartis in the right place.

Are you sure you like the unedited On the Edge better? I could have sworn the streamlined version was better.

Are you a musician? You've brought up a million great points and I hope we can continue conversing. Thanks for the help.