A recap for the newcomers, then:

In 2007, I decided I wanted to put together a compilation of “alternative” Christmas songs, as an antidote to the same usual songs that we all hear in shops and on telly every December. I crowdsourced suggestions for the tracks from my then-LiveJournal followers, and posted the results – a twenty-odd track mix that was deliberately timed so as to fit on a CD – as a downloadable file for everyone else to try out. It proved quite popular, so much so that it’s outlasted my LJ, following me over to this blog. Each year I repost it, and some years I tweak it slightly.

I think it’s quite nicely reflective of how I feel about Christmas and Christmas songs: in that while on the one hand I’m a cynical Generation Y-er who does get somewhat fed up of Wizzard and Slade pretty quickly, I actually generally like Christmas and most of its trappings a lot, and there are loads of festive classics that I genuinely, unironically, love. So yes, it does have the Long Blondes lamenting a failed love affair, Rilo Kiley telling a tale of a destitute family living in their car, and Loudon Wainwright III singing about the Iraq War; but it also contains the Darkness’ ridiculously cheesy and optimistic attempt to create a modern-day Christmas classic (I think they very nearly succeeded), Half Man Half Biscuit pointing out that “It’s clichéd to be cynical at Christmas”, and a cut from Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You. And it contains not one, but two versions of “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, because that is the greatest Christmas song ever.

(Indeed, having the Carey song in there is my one concession to including “songs you always bloody hear at Christmas”, but I doubt it’s one anyone sensible would disagree with. If I allowed myself to go a bit further in that direction, I’d probably include Jona Lewie, The Waitresses and The Pogues. But I’d rather have a few lesser-heard indie covers in there instead.)

And now, here’s the new stuff:

Each year I’ve done this in the past, I’ve provided it directly as a downloadable link. I’ve felt increasingly uncomfortable about doing this in recent years, however – partly because it’s been attracting more and more listeners, and partly because (although a fair few of the songs are from one-off, out-of-print compilations) it’s simply far easier to legally download music than it used to be, so I don’t really think I should just be giving away an hour and a half of other people’s work for free.

So the 2013 version, rather than being a RAR-file download, is instead a streaming playlist at Mixcloud. You can still listen to the whole thing, but now in a way that means it’s being legally streamed and the artists in question will actually get royalties for it. As a lot of the tracks come from the 2000 XFM compilation It’s A Cool Cool Christmas, meanwhile, I’m also adding my usual exhortation that if you listen to the album, you sling a few quid in the direction of its original charity partner The Big Issue Foundation. Because it’s Christmas, and nobody should have to be involuntarily homeless at Christmas.

To make up for it only being streamable, I’ve added a few tracks (some new, and some that had been dropped in previous years) to make it a bit longer (since there’s no point trying to constrain it to a CD length). So it now contains 27 tracks, and is just short of 90 minutes long. Here’s the full tracklisting:

1. Vince Guaraldi Trio – Christmas Time Is Here (2:44)
2. Alicia Witt – I’m Not Ready For Christmas (3:46)
3. Murray Gold & Neil Hannon – Song For Ten (3:29)
4. Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You (4:01)
5. Fountains of Wayne – I Want an Alien For Christmas (2:19)
6. Loudon Wainwright III – Christmas Morning (3:49)
7. Low – Just Like Christmas (3:08)
8. The Ronettes – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (2:41)
9. The Ventures – Sleigh Ride (2:22)
10. Grandaddy – Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland (2:59)
11. Bright Eyes – Blue Christmas (2:19)
12. Eels – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas (2:48)
13. The Vandals – Oi To The World (2:15)
14. The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick (2:10)
15. Zombina & The Skeletones – A Chainsaw For Christmas (3:11)
16. The Ramones – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight) (2:06)
17. The Kinks – Father Christmas (3:43)
18. Rilo Kiley – Xmas Cake (5:24)
18. Jonathan Coulton – Chiron Beta Prime (2:51)
20. Spitting Image – Santa Claus Is On The Dole (3:48)
21. The Long Blondes – Christmas is Cancelled (4:29)
22. Half Man Half Biscuit – It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas (3:48)
23. She & Him – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (3:42)
24. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Christmas Eve (1:51)
25. The Darkness – Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End) (3:39)
26. Badly Drawn Boy – Donna and Blitzen (4:19)
27. My Chemical Romance – All I Want For Christmas Is You (3:45)

If you missed the embedded player at the top of the page… well, it’s at the top of the page. But you can also listen directly on the Mixcloud page here. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!

(And if you really are desparate to get the album as MP3s that you can put on your phone or other device, then if you follow me on Twitter or know me on Facebook, get in touch and I might be able to furnish you with last year’s 80-minute version.)

Elliott Smith: August 6, 1969 – October 21, 2003

On 22nd October 2003, I was sitting in my college library browsing the internet when I saw a surprising headline on BBC News. The singer/songwriter Steven Paul “Elliott” Smith had been found dead in his apartment a day earlier, of two stab wounds to the chest, at the age of 34. At the time, I’d only really heard one or two of Elliott’s albums in full, and only owned one – 2000′s Figure 8. Despite this, it had been an integral enough influence on my taste and listening habits during my post-adolescent period, and featured certain songs that had been such a comfort during a difficult period I was going through in that latter half of 2003, that I was genuinely saddened by this death for reasons beyond the unutterably tragic circumstances in which they occurred.

It’s something of a cliché that the death of an artist is one of the best things that can happen to their record sales – and I didn’t particularly want to be part of that vulture-like culture. Nevertheless, I felt sufficiently guilty about never having fully explored his music while he was alive – and sufficiently moved by the circumstances of his life and death, the more I read about him – that I felt an obligation to further delve into the work of someone who’d already meant a surprising amount to me. What I discovered was that Elliott’s music – both as written and as performed – has the ability to reach inside and pull at the fabric of my soul like just about no-one else I’ve ever heard. As such, for getting on for nine years now, his songs have taken on greater and greater importance in my life.

It’s not like he was the most groundbreaking or influential musician. In truth, that side of him was relatively simple. He had two distinct phases, each preferred to differing degrees by various sections of his fanbase – his earlier albums were pure, stripped-down, one-man-and-his-guitar acoustic stylings; whereas a shift in the late ’90s saw him move towards a more Beatlesy, pop-influenced sound that took in all manner of arrangements and instrumentation (including using piano, rather than guitar, as the driving force behind a good number of his songs). While it’s probably heresy among the majority of Smith’s fans to say it, for the most part I actually prefer the more complex sound of these later albums – he had a superb knack for constructing harmony, for layering his sound, and this is most evident on what I’ve long thought is his masterpiece, 1998’s XO. At the same time, mind, it could just as easily be argued (and it’s something I’ve come around to more in recent years) that his purest and most perfect songwriting was to be found on the last “acoustic” album, Either/Or. In both eras, though, his strongest sense was one of melody – with particular emphasis on transitions, apparently his favourite part of any song.

I finally got to make the pilgrimage to the Elliott tribute wall, at Solutions Audio in Los Angeles, in December 2009. The extensive graffiti (not all of it, sadly, fan tributes) has since been painted over.

What really made Elliott’s records stand out, though, were his vocals. He had a beautiful, delicate voice, memorably described as “spiderweb-thin” – and yet had little to no confidence in it whatsoever. Ironically enough, though, this self-doubt would lead to one of the most distinctive elements of his sound – unconvinced of his voice’s ability to carry songs on its own, he would frequently multi-track it, creating gorgeous layered harmonies. This is perhaps most evident on his stunning cover of the Beatles’ “Because”, featured on the closing credits of American Beauty (and one of the only examples I can think of where someone’s covered a Lennon/McCartney song and improved it), or on Figure 8’s “Everything Means Nothing To Me”, with its repeated yet ever-building refrain. It’s the voice, more than anything, that gets inside me like a piece of grit in my heart – certain moments in his songs will bring me out in goosebumps, or even spark an involuntary tear on occasion.

It’s easy enough, if you’re being simplistic, to write Elliott’s songs off as “music to slit your wrists to”. But there’s so much more to it than that. Yes, his lyrics were extremely dark at times, reflecting his own life and personal demons. And yes, there’s something deeply melancholy about much of his distinctive sound – the combination of near-exclusive use of minor chords and that heart-rending voice. But it’s a good kind of melancholy. Some music that people would think of as “depressing” is just that – but Elliott’s was more comforting. Perhaps it was that he would, like Morrissey, dress up such dark lyrics in such appealing tunes (minor key or no minor key), but while you may listen to his music when you’re feeling sad, you don’t necessarily do it to wallow or be melodramatic. There can be beauty, and a strange sort of contentment, in sadness – and whether intentionally or otherwise, I think that’s something Elliott’s music frequently encapsulated.

It’s true that if you just don’t “get” Elliott, you probably never will. But I wonder just how many people are only aware of him as “that depressed singer-songwriter who killed himself” (if they know even that), and who would be genuinely surprised to discover what a beautiful, engaging and downright classic body of work he produced in his all-too-short career. The purpose of my writing this, then, is twofold – firstly, to pay tribute to someone I feel is a genuine great, whose music has genuinely either helped me or just struck a chord at certain times, and who I feel is a tragic loss to the world; and secondly, in the hope that some of you who may pay any kind of attention to what I’m talking about might be inspired to go and check out some of his work, and make a similar discovery of your own. To that end, I leave you with a selection of songs and performances drawn from across his back catalogue…

Miss Misery (Good Will Hunting soundtrack, 1997)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Waltz #2 (XO) (XO, 1998)

Click here to view the embedded video.

No Name #3 (Roman Candle, 1994)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Angeles (Either/Or, 1997)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stupidity Tries (Figure 8, 2000)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Suicide Machine (unreleased)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pretty (Ugly Before) (From A Basement On The Hill, 2004)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Coming Up Roses (Elliott Smith, 1995)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Because (American Beauty soundtrack, 1999)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Say Yes (Either/Or, 1997)

Click here to view the embedded video.

4. Songs From The Black Hole Demos

1. Blast Off! 2. Who You Callin’ Bitch? 3. Oh Jonas. 4. Please Remember. 5. Come to My Pod. 6. Oh No This Is Not For Me. 7. Superfriend. 8. She’s Had A Girl. 9. Dude, We’re Finally Landing (Good News!) 10. What Is This I Find? 11. Now I Finally See. 12. You Won’t Get With Me Tonight. 13. Longtime Sunshine.
Recorded January 1994 – August 1995 by Cuomo/Bell/Sharp/Wilson.

In the aftermath of The Blue Album‘s enormous – and, as likely as not, unexpected – success, Rivers and Weezer actually tried two distinct approaches when it came to the task of dealing with Second Album Syndrome. They differed hugely on the surface, although – as we’ll see – they shared more in common than might initially appear.

The First Big Idea was Rivers’ plan to write a sprawling sci-fi-themed “rock opera” concept album. Named Songs From The Black Hole, the album would tell the story of five young space cadets on a mission to the stars – with each of the five characters (three male, two female) voiced either by members of Weezer or friends of the band. If that sounds batshit insane, it’s probably because it was – but it also might just have been something brilliant.

Rivers started work on Songs From The Black Hole in late 1994, and in the first half of 1995 recorded a batch of demos. Intending for the songs to run into one-another in order to tell the story, in all he recorded nearly twenty tracks – but as a number of them were deliberately shorter sections of under a minute, the total length of the demo album, clocking in at just under thirty-five minutes, works out at around half the likely length of the finished product.

Nevertheless, it’s possible to get a sense from these demos – which remained buried away from fandom for around a decade, but have more recently emerged first online, and then via Rivers’ Alone series of solo rarity compilations – how the album would have turned out from a song-writing point of view, if not stylistically (as, with the exception of songs that would later be re-used, Rivers’ raw demos are likely far away from the heavily-produced, multi-layered intent of the final product). Easily the most famous track – perhaps because it leaked first – is the intended opener, “Blast Off”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

While the final version would almost certainly have been drenched in keyboards, this recording does show how Rivers was already moving towards a heavier rock sound than on Blue. The style of riff employed is one that was fairly new to Weezer at the time, but can be seen showing up frequently at later points in their career – indeed, the otherwise-lamentable “Beverly Hills” doesn’t feel a million miles away from it.

Of course, this version – like all the other demos – suffers from the fact that Rivers is singing the parts of all the lead characters. This is also evident on the otherwise-magnificent “You Won’t Get With Me Tonight” – probably the most complete, individual pop song on the album as it exists – on which we therefore have to imagine a female singer like Rachel Haden playing one of the duetting roles:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Frenetic, ridiculously catchy and hugely enjoyable, “YWGWMT” (along with the long-time fan favourite track “Superfriend”) is among the strongest evidence for just how good SFTBH might have been. By the same token, none of these superficially straightforward pop songs really show off the more esoteric nature of the project. Aside from the shorter vignettes – which are highly variable in quality in their demo form – perhaps the song that does this the best is one of the few to feature the rest of the band on its recording. “Longtime Sunshine” exists in various demo versions – usually just recorded by Rivers – but the version released as a bonus track on the Pinkerton deluxe edition seems closest to the one that might have wound up being Black Hole‘s final track:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The closing sequence, in which various band members – each, we can presume, playing their “characters” – reprise a selection of different songs from earlier in the album, overlaid and harmonised, is somewhat raw in its execution here; but nevertheless, it’s pretty clear that the intended final result is something pretty exciting and unlike anything the band had tried before. We can reasonably expect that there would have been plenty more of that sort of thing dotted throughout the record.

Songs From The Black Hole was dead as a project by the time Rivers enrolled at Harvard university in Autumn 1995 – losing interest in the idea and shifting towards a different style of songwriting and recording. Its influence on the band wasn’t completely lost, however – as we’ll see, a number of tracks that started out as SFTBH cuts (and hence missing from the above tracklist) would appear later, and fan interest in the album burned throughout the late 2000s to the extent that a huge array of self-put-together takes on the album (some limiting themselves to the demo album alone, others working in album tracks and even songs by Matt Sharp’s side-project The Rentals) exist online.

Weezer, though, had other business to be getting on with. Like, for example, one of the greatest albums in alt-rock history…

5. Pinkerton

1. Tired of Sex. 2. Getchoo. 3. No Other One. 4. Why Bother? 5. Across the Sea. 6. The Good Life. 7. El Scorcho. 8. Pink Triangle. 9. Falling For You. 10. Butterfly.
Recorded September 1995-June 1996 by Cuomo/Bell/Sharp/Wilson. Self-produced. Released September 1996.

If you chart Weezer’s progression from 1994 to 1996 with the inclusion of Songs From The Black Hole – which, of course, our retrospective position allows us to do – then it’s not entirely difficult to see where Pinkerton comes from. If you don’t have the benefit of that context, however, then it’s fair to say that hearing “Tired of Sex” as the first new track since the Blue Album is… well, it’s something of a shock. A shock that punches you square in the bollocks. If you have them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Maybe this sudden, jarring shift in style explains why Pinkerton was so badly reviewed on release – and it was, to the extent that Rolling Stone included it in their “Worst Albums of 1996″ list. Except it doesn’t explain it, really, because surely only somebody without ears could call Pinkerton anything other than a masterpiece.

Perhaps, for some, the raw crunch of those first couple of tracks – the astonishingly good “Tired of Sex” with its never-again-matched-by-the-band guitar solo, and the admittedly slightly less astonishingly good “Getchoo” – were just too much of a hurdle to get over. Which is a shame, because get past them, and you’re left with an album that – as short, and tight, and raw as it is – shows Rivers at the absolute height of his songwriting powers. There’s depth and nuance to his lyrics that he’d rarely find again, wrapped up in melody that climbs free of the shackles of its deliberately underproduced form. “No Other One”, for example, is simply gorgeous:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The first four tracks all started life as Songs From The Black Hole demos – although “Tired of Sex” in particular is quite clearly the most personal track Rivers has written up to this point, a lament about his new rock-star lifestyle originally intended to be sung via the autobiographical mouthpiece character of Jonas on the concept album, but ultimately performed directly in the first-person. Indeed, despite dating from an earlier aborted project, all four of these tracks link quite well to the remainder of the album by virtue of being written in the highly personal style first experimented with on the likes of “Say It Ain’t So”. Nevertheless, there’s a clear break when the album wrenches into its second half, with a track even more unlike anything else heard from them before.

As the emotional peak of an album said to have inspired countless angsty-emotional-bands-with-guitars in the early 2000s, it could be said that “Across the Sea” has a lot to answer for. None of the subsequent context, however, should detract from the impact of the song. The lyric is downright bizarre – a Rivers wracked with self-loathing, responding with almost uncomfortable candour to a letter apparently written by a fan in Japan – but in the vocal he finds a vulnerability that draws the listener onside. Musically, the track hinges on one of the band’s most memorable choruses in the first half, before building to the kind of crescendo they’d already patented so well on the heavier moments of the first album.

“Across the Sea” is just the beginning, however, of a pretty remarkable sequence of tracks, which showcase the band at the unassailable height of their powers. “The Good Life” is simply furious, as Rivers kicks out at the world from the position in he’d spent much of late 1995: laid up, immobile, following surgery to adjust the length of one of his legs (no, really). Then there’s “El Scorcho”, the album’s one Proper Great Pop Single, which should have been as big as “Buddy Holly”, but whose performance upon release instead became a microcosm for the general indifference that greeted the album as a whole. Which is baffling, because… well, because this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is followed by the equally fantastic “Pink Triangle” – almost certainly the best song ever written about a man accidentally falling in love with a lesbian – and “Falling For You”, perhaps the most complex song musically that the band had recorded at that point. Indeed, the famous line “What could you possibly see in little old three-chord me?” is somewhat ironic given the sheer volume of chord progressions and key changes employed throughout.

And then… there’s “Butterfly”. Titled after the Puccini opera whose character also named the album, it closes the record in unexpected, deliberately anti-climactic fashion. The previous nine tracks might have suggested that an “Only in Dreams” mark 2 might round off proceedings – but instead there’s just Rivers and an acoustic guitar, and a raw, confessional lyric. While perhaps jarring the first time the album is heard, it feels like a necessary moment of reflection and breathing space, especially after the frenetic pair of tracks that precede it.

And so ends Pinkerton, a thirty-four-and-a-half minute explosion of contradictions, loosely themed around Puccini’s opera but more openly concerned with themes of longing, desire and frustration. It marked out the band as unquestionably brilliant talents; and yet, perhaps because it’s not a friendly album the way the first was, it was greeted with disregard at best, and outright hostility at worst, upon its release. That consensus had seen a dramatic reappraisal by the time the band re-emerged in 2001¹ – the year the record was finally certified Gold – but listening to it again now, it’s hard to see how it was ever anything other than an instant classic.

6. Pinkerton B-Sides/Miscellany

1. You Gave Your Love To Me Softly. 2. Devotion. 3. Waiting on You. 4. I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams. 5. Getting Up and Leaving. 6. I Swear It’s True. 7. Tragic Girl.
Recorded September 1995-June 1996 by Cuomo/Bell/Sharp/Wilson.

The b-sides on the Pinkerton singles – chart flops, every single one – are an interesting bunch. They actually share a number of characteristics in terms of the style and sound – so much so that in a way, they feel like a Pinkerton that could have been, if the band had continued to write “cleaner” pop songs while still shifting into the slightly edgier sound they’d developed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of the tracks, “I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams”, actually was from the album that could have been – intended originally as a Songs From The Black Hole piece, in the version that was recorded for the Good Life EP it probably offers the closest representation of how that album might have sounded, thanks to the addition of heavy keyboard backing and guest vocals from Rachel Haden.²

“Waiting On You” and “Devotion” are both pretty solid romantic laments from Rivers – I personally much prefer the former, but I know the latter has its fans – but there’s also a lovely, short, punchy slice of pop-rock called “You Gave Your Love To Me Softly”. The song was originally recorded for another film soundtrack – in this case the 1995 teen comedy-drama Angus – after an earlier song, “Wanda” was rejected.³ But in a reversal of what happened with “Susanne” a year or so before, the generally-preferred version (by fans and the band) was actually the one recorded among the Pinkerton sessions and released as a b-side – slightly slower-paced, but with an altogether beefier feel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In 2010, the Pinkerton Deluxe Edition reissue saw the release of two tracks that had originally been intended to feature as B-sides on a single release of “Pink Triangle”, which was ultimately shelved following the poor chart performances of “El Scorcho” and “The Good Life” (not to mention the album itself).⁴ The two songs have a shared heritage, both also originally having been under consideration as Blue Album cuts. While still incomplete, the Pinkerton era demos show them in a closer-to-final form. “Getting Up And Leaving” is the stronger, in my view, with a catchier hook than the slightly plodding “I Swear It’s True”; but neither especially stand out ahead of the album tracks on either of the first two albums.

Far more of a pleasant surprise was the final track on Pinkerton Deluxe, “Tragic Girl”. Given how meticulous the writing and recording logs of Weezer’s song history were, it was astonishing that this track, recorded very late in the Pinkerton sessions,⁵ was basically forgotten about by just about everybody until it was dug up for the re-release. It’s magnificent. While its original purpose isn’t a matter of record, lyrically at least it fits very clearly in with Pinkerton‘s themes, and stylistically it does actually feel like a pretty strong capstone for the album – it would slot neatly in after “Falling For You”. It’s my guess, therefore, that it was originally considered as the album closer, but later replaced by Rivers with “Butterfly”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Either way, though, what it does serve pretty neatly as now is the “final word” on the Pinkerton era of Weezer – the last discovered recording, the last track on what will presumably be the definitive re-release of the album, and what’s more, perhaps the most holistic single-track representation of that style. And in a way, it’s quite nice to have a track that gives a sense of closure to that whole phase – because, as we’ll see next time, following Pinkerton‘s failure and the band’s near-dissolution, it would be a very different Weezer that would later emerge, to a very different audience…

Weezerology will continue with Part Three, Bein’ Green… hopefully a bit sooner this time!

You should know the drill by now, but if you don’t (and I seem to have picked up a fair few new twit-o-chums in the last year or so, so this might actually be the case for once), then it’s a Christmas compilation album (designed to fit on a single CD, so if I want to bring new stuff in – which I do some years – then something else has to make way), made up largely of tracks that are a bit different – whether that just means they’re an indie/rock interpretation of a classic, or if they take a slightly fractured or unusual perspective on the festivities. There are one or two exceptions – stone-cold classics that I just couldn’t bring myself to leave out – but on the whole these are songs you’re less likely to hear while you’re out and about doing Christmas shopping, but which still (for me, at least) convey a lovely and festive feeling.

This year’s tracklisting is identical to last year’s, so if you’ve already got the 2011 version, all you’ll find that’s changed is the file name… so as ever, Merry Christmas, and enjoy!

Download Now That’s What Seb Calls A Christmas Album! (2012 edition) (via Dropbox)

1. Vince Guaraldi Trio – Christmas Time Is Here (2:44)
2. Murray Gold & Neil Hannon – Song For Ten (3:29)
3. Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You (4:01)
4. Fountains of Wayne – I Want an Alien For Christmas (2:19)
5. Loudon Wainwright III – Christmas Morning (3:49)
6. Low – Just Like Christmas (3:08)
7. The Ronettes – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (2:41)
8. The Ventures – Sleigh Ride (2:22)
9. Grandaddy – Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland (2:59)
10. Bright Eyes – Blue Christmas (2:19)
11. Eels – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas (2:48)
12. The Vandals – Oi To The World (2:15)
13. The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick (2:10)
14. Zombina & The Skeletones – A Chainsaw For Christmas (3:11)
15. The Ramones – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight) (2:06)
16. The Kinks – Father Christmas (3:43)
17. Rilo Kiley – Xmas Cake (5:24)
18. Jonathan Coulton – Chiron Beta Prime (2:51)
19. Spitting Image – Santa Claus Is On The Dole (3:48)
20. The Long Blondes – Christmas is Cancelled (4:29)
21. Half Man Half Biscuit – It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas (3:48)
22. She & Him – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (3:42)
23. Badly Drawn Boy – Donna and Blitzen (4:19)
24. My Chemical Romance – All I Want For Christmas Is You (3:45)

This year, though, I’ve also decided to throw in an extra little treat. You may or may not already be aware that a few of the above tracks come from an XFM-produced compilation album from 2000 called It’s a Cool Cool Christmas. This album’s pretty hard to track down these days – it’s long out of print, second-hand copies are rare, and I don’t believe there’s a legal download of it available – so I’ve decided to make a copy of it available for those who want to hear the whole thing (personally, I think I’ve already picked out the best cuts from it and used them above, but you may well disagree). You can get that here, at least for as long as it’s there before someone important notices and shouts at me to get rid of it.

What I will say, however, is that it was originally put out as a charity record in support of The Big Issue, an organisation that I consider to be a highly worthy cause (particularly around Christmas, when many of those suffering homelessness tend to feel it most acutely). So if you are going to download it, perhaps you might want to think about dropping them a small (or even a not so small) donation at the same time?

I’m still trying to take in the notion that James and I – basically two pretty much entirely unheard-of writers – made a public proposal a month ago to create something new in a completely unfashionable medium (audio sitcom), and asked people to stake money on it up front in the hope that we’d get it made and give them something great in return. And that people actually did.

And sure, many of them were friends and family, or people who knew us via Twitter.

But plenty of them weren’t. Plenty of them had never heard of us before seeing the words A Brief History of Time Travel.

And sure, many of them probably only had their interest piqued by the fact that we somehow got Robert Llewellyn to agree to be the narrator (a relatively small role, in which he’ll basically open and close each episode, but enough of a feather in our cap to give us the second wind of a mid-campaign publicity push). But he thought enough of what we laid out to want to agree to get involved in the first place, which has surely got to say something about it as well.

And some people said “We want to make sure this gets made”, and went far above and beyond anything we might have expected anyone to pledge, in order to do that.

At the time that I’m writing this post, the Kickstarter campaign hasn’t quite yet finished, but we’ve just managed to nudge above a landmark figure of £5,000 raised. That’s five thousand pounds that people thought was worth spending on seeing this happen, based on nothing more than our plot outlines, our descriptions of what we wanted to do with the series, and a silly five-minute promo sketch with a couple of half-decent jokes in it, recorded in my living room on my laptop with an embroidery hoop and a pair of tights used as a microphone shield.

Even if there are no more backers between my writing this and the campaign finishing, then almost 150 people have said “Yeah, we want to hear this. Impress us.” Every single one of those people – even the ones that have known us since we were children – have decided that they have some measure of faith in us as comedy writers.

It’s my thirtieth birthday today. I’ve got a pretty damned good reason to celebrate.

Thank you.

I’ve already written about my opinion on the series in general based on my experiences of having seen a number of the episodes recorded – an opinion that’s only been strengthened by, last night, watching “Trojan” at the Prince Charles Cinema in London. It’s come together absolutely beautifully – it’s funny, of course, as funny as it was seeing it “live” (indeed, one scene in particular plays out magnificently as a direct result of that live recording, with one of the most brilliant examples of a cast riding laughter and timing their deliveries to perfection); but it also looks incredible, with some truly stunning model-based outer space sequences that, just as in the show’s “classic” years, complement the sitcom material perfectly.

Having been a fan of this show for over twenty years, it’s still quite unbelievable that we’ve got a new, full series of it. And, more impressively, that said full series is so great. It’s obviously difficult to talk in detail about a lot of the reasons why that is, but it’s at least possible to vaguely hint at a few things. So for a bit of fun, here are a few cryptic teasers. I will neither confirm or deny any guesses anybody might have as to what they mean, however, so you might as well keep them to yourselves, and then just be smug afterwards if you got any of them right:

1. T f a c w h n b s o s s 1989.

2. D D c m t t t R D c p S.

3. W f t R t a u o I a m h f a.

4. A c c H, w w o g t a i t m, i a i T B.

5. A a w a i S VI p a s – b d – c i E.

6. T f l o t s i a c t t v f e.

Enjoy the series. I think it’s brilliant, and I think you’ll think so too.

Oh good, it’s that time of year again, when Back to the Future date hoaxes do the rounds on Twitter and Facebook. And the rest of us bang our heads on the table in despair.

Look, I don’t blame the people who start these things, who photoshop a date in 2010 or 2011 or 2012 onto a screengrab of the DeLorean’s date readout. They’re trying to wind up the internet, and they’re succeeding. It’s an old joke, now, but if people keep falling for it they’re going to keep doing it.

But the people who keep spreading it around, and making it so easy to wind everyone up… ARGH. Why do I let it bother me? I wonder to myself. I mean, I’m a massive pedant, everyone knows that. But this one gets my back up more than most – and I think it’s because I love BTTF so much – it’s one of the most truly delightful, joyous, wonderful things that modern pop culture has ever created – that it irritates me that other people don’t care enough to get it right.

I mean, look: if you like BTTF enough that you think it will be pretty cool when we finally land on the future date featured in the film (and it will), then surely you should at least know these two basic facts:

1. Every year featured in the Back to the Future trilogy ends in a 5.

2. The first Back to the Future film is about travelling BACKWARDS in time, not FORWARDS.

Beyond those two fundamentals, however, as a Public Service Announcement I thought it would be a good idea to compile a list of all the dates referenced in the BTTF films – so that next time one of these spreads around, there’s a handy and quick reference by which to confirm that it’s utter bollocks. So here it is.

Back to the Future

The dates the Doc punches in when showing Marty how the controls work are:

• July 4th 1776 (“the signing of the Declaration of Independence”)
• December 25th 0000 (“the birth of Christ”)
• November 5th 1955 (“a red letter day for science”)

This last date is the date that Marty gets transported back in time to, as it’s the one left on screen when the Libyans arrive. Despite what some Twitterers say, the Doc never puts in “a random date”.

The date on which lightning strikes the clock tower and Marty returns to 1985 is:

• November 12th 1955

The date in 1985 that Marty returns to is:

• October 26th 1985

The date the Doc travels to at the end is:

• An unspecified day and month in 2015

Back to the Future Part II

The date the Doc brings Jennifer and Marty to (and thus, the ACTUAL “Future Day”) is:

• October 21 2015

The date Old Biff travels to and gives the Almanac to his past self is:

• November 12 1955

The date in “alternate” 1985 that Marty and the Doc return to is:

• October 26th 1985

The date Marty and the Doc go back to retrieve the Almanac is also:

• November 12 1955

The date the Doc accidentally travels back to, because of the lightning strike jolting the time circuits (the ONLY time a “random” date is travelled to) is:

• January 1 1885

Back to the Future Part III

The date Marty leaves 1955 to go back to the Old West:

• November 16 1955

The date Marty arrives in the Old West:

• September 2 1885

The date Marty leaves the Old West:

• September 7 1885

The date Marty arrives back in 1985 and the DeLorean is destroyed:

• October 27th 1985

So there we go. Now, STOP IT.

Weezer. Alternative rock band from Los Angeles, California, specialising (mostly) in melodic power-pop, usually with a romantic lyrical bent. Formed in 1992, with a lineup that has consisted of Rivers Cuomo (vocals and guitar, 1992-present), Patrick Wilson (drums, 1992-present), Matt Sharp (bass and vocals, 1992-1998), Brian Bell (guitar and vocals, 1993-present), Jason Cropper (guitar and vocals, 1992-1993), Mikey Welsh (bass and vocals, 1998-2001) and Scott Shriner (bass and vocals, 2001-present). Primary name associated with the phrase “geek rock”, and the most direct influence on the late ’90s/early 2000s US popular emo-core movement (Jimmy Eat World, The Get Up Kids, Saves the Day etc.).

They’ve been basically my favourite band since I started listening to them with a vengeance in mid-2000, but I haven’t really written much about them (a couple of track-by-track reviews aside) since I abandoned my surprisingly-popular fansite, WeezerfansUK, about eight or nine years ago. That’s changing with this blog project, in which I’m listening to every one of their songs, in chronological order, and writing about them on an era-by-era basis. If you want a full tracklist and an explanation of the self-imposed rules, check out the introductory post – but if you’re ready to get on with the project, then read on.

(And feel free to do a listen of the albums – or a re-listen, if you’re a fan – yourself, and join in with your comments, if you fancy it. I’ve tried to make this as accessible as possible both to long-time fans, and to those who don’t know much about the band but might find it an interesting read, so here and there you’ll find embedded Youtube songs so you can hear some of the things I’m talking about.)

1. The Kitchen Tapes & Early Demos

1. Thief, You’ve Taken All That Was Me. 2. Let’s Sew Our Pants Together. 3. Paperface. 4. Lullaby for Wayne.
Recorded August 1992 – September 1993 by Cuomo/Cropper/Sharp/Wilson/Bell.

Throughout 1992 and 1993, the newly-formed Weezer – Rivers Cuomo, Matt Sharp, Jason Cropper and Pat Wilson – recorded three distinct sets of demos at Rivers and Matt’s home in Santa Monica, LA. The middle-most of these, known as The Kitchen Tapes (by virtue of having been recorded… er, in the kitchen), was the most well-known – and unlike the one that followed it (which saw the band honing a handful of their preferred tracks), it featured a few tracks that wouldn’t be carried forwards. A number of Blue Album songs were also included on this tape, but in the interests of doing this thing properly, I’ll skip over them and discuss them when we get to the album itself.

Nevertheless, the three songs we’re left with – “Thief, You’ve Taken All That Was Me”, “Let’s Sew Our Pants Together” and “Paperface”, are of strong historical interest. Although not brought forwards onto the album, they’re still quite reflective of where Weezer’s sound lay in their early days. There’s a strong ear for melody (especially on “Let’s Sew Our Pants Together”), while the yearning tone that would characterise Rivers’ early lyrics is most discernable on “Thief…”, which to me is the standout of the three songs:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Perhaps the “actual” Weezer song it’s most similar to is “The World Has Turned And Left Me Here”, which was also among the earliest tracks demoed. This similarity, in fact, could explain why it was left out of the album sessions proper. Meanwhile, the last of the three, “Paperface”, is something of a fan favourite – but it’s also the least “Weezerish” of the lot, instead betraying Rivers’ earlier interest in heavier rock. It’s a fun, fast-paced number, but it’s easy to see why it didn’t warrant inclusion as the band honed in on their distinct style. It’s also interesting to note, on all three tracks, the different vocal approach that Rivers takes – it’s more whispery in the main, but with a harsher edge, than he’d later employ on the generally more harmonious album proper.

In late summer 1993, Weezer went into the studio to record what would become The Blue Album. The earliest sessions included a handful of additional tracks that were dropped after the first demo stage; some were picked up at later dates, so we’ll discuss these at the relevant time, but one song – “Lullaby for Wayne” – was never attempted again. Although slower than “Paperface”, it’s got a similarly heavy edge – which may also explain why it didn’t make the album – and is also somewhat more serious in lyrical subject matter (although, perhaps deliberately, the question of whether it’s actually about a particular real-life school shooting has always been left vague).

2. Weezer (aka The Blue Album)

1. My Name Is Jonas. 2. No-One Else. 3. The World Has Turned And Left Me Here. 4. Buddy Holly. 5. Undone: The Sweater Song. 6. Surf Wax America. 7. Say It Ain’t So. 8. In The Garage. 9. Holiday. 10. Only In Dreams.
Recorded August-September 1993 by Cuomo/Sharp/Wilson/Bell. Produced by Ric Ocasek. Released May 1994.

There are a handful of songs for which I know exactly where I was the first time I heard them. “Buddy Holly” is one of them (sitting in a parked car in Formby with Simon Mayo’s Radio 1 show on, if you’re wondering). This perfectly-constructed, immortally-catchy nugget of a pop song has remained permanently in my head ever since – and although it would take me a few years to get around to actually listening to any more Weezer (on the rare occasions I bought or was gifted albums at that age, they were usually Blur records), hearing the song for the first time was a hugely significant moment in my personal musical taste. And eighteen years later, I’m still not tired of it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Buddy Holly” serves as a strong microcosm for the rest of the album as a whole: carefully wrought, hugely slick, and surprisingly confident for a band at this stage of their career. It meshes the sunny power-pop that Rivers was capable of writing so effortlessly (and which producer Ric Ocasek could make sound so finely polished) with his younger self’s harder-rock sensibilities – so there are memorable guitar crunches and outstanding solos all over the shop. Nothing ever feels accidental, however – even all the feedback noise seems very carefully placed for maximum effect.

Does this apparent lack of spontaneity harm The Blue Album, however? Is everything a little too carefully polished – to an almost cynical extent? It’s an accusation you could almost certainly level at later Weezer at times (and I will, trust me), but at this stage… I don’t think so. It’s merely a band very quickly, and very confidently, finding a distinctive sound at which they’re extremely good. It’s especially impressive that they managed this despite changing lineup partway through the sessions – with Jason Cropper leaving for family reasons, and being replaced by Brian Bell, formerly the bassist in a band called Carnival Art.¹

The lyrical tone of the album is as consistent as the musicality. A recurring theme is of Rivers as an awkward, lonely outsider, looking in on things – most notably, of course, on “In the Garage” (lyrics about Dungeons & Dragons and the X-Men’s Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler turning the band on to a generation of similarly alienated nerds), but also the gentle yearning of  ”The World Has Turned And Left Me Here” and the altogether more pronounced yearning of “Say It Ain’t So”. The latter prefigures Pinkerton somewhat, in that it involves Rivers writing directly about his own personal life: specifically, his fear that alcohol was to break up the marriage of his mother and step-father (the “Stephen” of the song’s lyrics) as it had with his father (who did indeed “find Jesus”, becoming a bishop in Germany years after having initially lost contact with Rivers).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Blue, then, is a remarkably assured record: album tracks that for many other bands would be little more than forgettable filler, like “Surf Wax America”, “The World Has Turned…” and “Holiday”, are rock-solid pop songs in their own right, and you feel that almost any of the ten cuts here (with the possible exception of “No-One Else” and its chugging, awkwardly-ironic lyrics) could have stood out as a single. Yet for all this polished consistency, it does contain a couple of flashes of idiosyncrasy.

“Undone: The Sweater Song” manages to use the polished production, and a ridiculously catchy chorus, to mask the fact that it’s actually a completely batshit insane track. Each of the two actual “verses” (themselves only consisting of barely-sensical two-word lines) is preceded by an instrumental segment, over which a snippet of conversation² is played. And the lyrics are, ostensibly, about the gradual unravelling of a woollen sweater. All things considered, the Spike Jonze-directed video – in which the band mime badly to the song in slow motion against a blue backdrop before being joined by a random assortment of running dogs – is somewhat apt for the tone of the thing.

Both “Buddy Holly” and “Undone” were singles – and in an era in which people still sat in front of music TV and watched the videos that were chosen and put before them, they consequently became extremely familiar even while not being huge chart hits (although “Buddy Holly”, of course, attracted huge waves of attention thanks to its marvellous Happy Days themed video being featured on the Windows 95 CD as an early demonstration of PCs’ multimedia capabilities). Potentially less familiar (at least to those of you who don’t avidly follow the band) is the album’s closing track, and the second of the two more unconventional moments, “Only In Dreams”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Only In Dreams” is distinctive for two main reasons: firstly, Matt Sharp’s hugely memorable bass line (which drones consistently for almost the entire track, before kicking into a higher-paced version of the same melody later on), and secondly, the track’s length. Early demos of the track clocked in around five minutes, and faded to a quiet conclusion at that point. It was still a great-sounding song, with that terrific chorus, but it never quite kicked into the truly epic beast it would become. The album version – aside from being a much-cleaned-up production – pans out in much the same way for those fist five minutes, but the original end point is now the cue for a quite monumental crescendo, in which the now-quietened instruments increase in tempo and volume. This results in a spectacular climax just short of seven minutes, where on a single beat everything comes crashing back in. It’s a spine-tingling moment, and even after having heard the song hundreds of times – even after seeing the band do it live, with an explosion of confetti and lighting at the climactic second that still ranks as one of the most purely joyous moments I’ve ever experienced – I get goosebumps every single time.

So, yes. The Blue Album. It’s quite a good debut.

3. Blue Album B-Sides

1. Mykel and Carli. 2. Susanne. 3. Jamie. 4. My Evaline
Recorded April 1993-June 1994 by Cuomo/Cropper/Sharp/Wilson/Bell.

Ah, for a time when Weezer actually recorded distinct individual songs as the B-sides for their singles. With the exception of “My Evaline” – a daft and fun little barbershop cover – the three Blue era B-sides are outstanding tracks. Though none of them were recorded during the album sessions, all could quite happily fit on the record – and at least two could have stood out as genuine hit singles of their own.

In fact, “Jamie” was originally intended as a single. Recorded in Spring 1993, when Cropper had yet to be replaced by Bell, it was planned as a debut 7″ release – but for reasons unknown, these plans were shelved, and the track didn’t see light until July 1994, two months after the release of the album, when it was featured on a Geffen Records compilation called DGC Rarities 1. It got a wider release here in the UK, however, as the B-side to “Buddy Holly” – which is where I first heard it. It’s a gorgeous song, written as an affectionate tribute to Jamie Young, the band’s first attorney.³

In fact, it’s interesting to note that – again with the exception of “My Evaline” – all the Blue b-sides were written in tribute to friends of the band. “Mykel and Carli”, however, would ultimately have an altogether more poignant context associated with it. Originally written in early 1993 as a song called “Please Pick Up The Phone”, it was later rewritten and demoed as “To Mykel and Carli (From a High School Friend)”, and finally just as “Mykel and Carli”, in honour of Weezer’s two biggest fans. Mykel and Carli Allan were sisters who had followed the band from their earliest days, and ended up responding to fan letters (such as sending out Blue Album lyric sheets) in those pre-Internet days, before setting up the official Weezer fan club itself. The song was trialled during the Blue Album sessions, but the band didn’t hit on a version they were happy with until the 1994 “b-sides session” produced the track that was released as a flip on “Undone”.

Tragically, in 1997, Mykel and Carli were killed – along with their younger sister Trista – in a car crash on the way from a Weezer show in Colorado. Naturally, the song – originally just a touching gift from Rivers to his friends – has taken on a much more mythical status since then, most powerfully demonstrated by this incredibly moving solo performance by Rivers at a later benefit show for the sisters’ family.

I’ve left for last what is undoubtedly my favourite of the early B-sides – and, in fact, one of my favourite Weezer songs of all. It’s also the song that’s pretty much responsible for my getting into the band in the first place – since, although I bought and loved “Buddy Holly” back in 1994, I’d never actually listened to the album until the summer of 2000, when I picked it up at a reduced price (in a record shop in the Dutch town of Delft) on the offchance it might have “Susanne” on it. It didn’t – but naturally I loved it anyway, and the rest is history.

Why did I want to hear “Susanne” again so badly? Because I’d heard it over the closing credits of Kevin Smith’s Mallrats, and it was absolutely bloody fantastic. One of the band’s customarily brilliant forays into a 6/8 time signature,⁴ and another tribute to a helpful friend (this time a particularly dedicated A&R rep at Geffen) it’s outstandingly, ridiculously melodic (with harmonies drawn from Rivers’ love of the Beach Boys), and life-affirmingly joyous. There are actually two versions – the original was used as one of the “Undone” b-sides, but the song was remixed (and beefed-up/improved considerably) for use in Mallrats. Here it be:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Listening back to the first couple of years of Weezer’s output in order is an undeniably pleasant experience. The band had a clearly defined sound and style, were bursting with creativity – if sounding a little samey on a track-to-track basis – and just about everything they played burst forth with unfettered joy. They were confident in their own musicality, and yet endearingly awkward and unassuming figures at the same time. In short, they were a band it was very, very easy to fall in love with. And a band you could never imagine falling out of love with.

Oh, how little we knew.

Weezerology will continue with Part Two, The Butterfly Effect… soon.

WHAT? A blog-based listening project that will involve going through (just about) every single Weezer song, in chronological order, and charting the evolution (or, in some cases, devolution) of the band’s songwriting and recording styles.

WHY? My favourite band for over a decade, Weezer continue to fascinate me even as they continue their slide towards being one of the music industry’s biggest running jokes. Their recent recording output has been baffling, bizarre and – in the main – borderline unlistenable, yet there’s something about them that means they can never wholly be written off, and even the worst albums contain nuggets of merit. I want to examine why that is, as well as looking at why and how they’ve got to this stage in the first place. I also find it fascinating to look at the surprisingly high number of “albums that never were”, and compare them with the official eight albums that have seen release.

HOW? Rather than taking each song on a detailed one-by-one basis (it’s been done, and with over 150 songs to get through it’d take bloody ages), I’ll look at blocks of songs in separated “eras” – each centred around a particular album but also taking in things that might have gone on in the year or so either side of it.

WHEN? Part one, spanning the band’s earliest demos and debut The Blue Album, will go up at some point in the next couple of weeks. After that… periodic, depending on how quickly I get through them and (especially) how depressed I get around the time of Raditude. Monthly, maybe?

I hope it’ll be interesting – especially for those of you who actually like the band, but maybe for some of you who don’t as well. I’ll try and include song links here and there so that readers who don’t know the material I’m talking about can sample the important bits. And if you are interested, below the jump is the full list of songs I’ll be tackling…

Kitchen Tapes & Blue Demos
Thief, You’ve Taken All That Was Me
Let’s Sew Our Pants Together
Paperface
Lullabye for Wayne

The Blue Album
My Name Is Jonas
No-One Else
The World Has Turned And Left Me Here
Buddy Holly
Undone
Surf Wax America
Say It Ain’t So
In The Garage
Holiday
Only In Dreams

Blue Album B-Sides
Mykel and Carli
Susanne
Jamie
My Evaline

Songs From The Black Hole (Rivers Demos)
Blast Off!
Who You Callin’ Bitch?
Oh Jonas
Please Remember
Come to My Pod
Oh No This Is Not For Me
Superfriend
She’s Had A Girl
Dude, We’re Finally Landing (Good News!)
What Is This I Find?
Now I Finally See
You Won’t Get With Me Tonight
Longtime Sunshine

Pinkerton
Tired of Sex
Getchoo
No Other One
Why Bother?
Across the Sea
The Good Life
El Scorcho
Pink Triangle
Falling For You
Butterfly

Pinkerton B-Sides/Miscellany
You Gave Your Love To Me Softly
Devotion
Waiting On You
I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams
Getting Up and Leaving
I Swear It’s True
Tragic Girl

Hiatus Tracks
American Girls
Velouria
Everyone
Trampoline

Summer Songs 2000
O Girl
On the Edge
Preacher’s Son
Superstar
The Sister Song
Too Late To Try
My Brain

The Green Album
Don’t Let Go
Photograph
Hash Pipe
Island in the Sun
Crab
Knock-Down Drag-Out
Smile
Simple Pages
Glorious Day
O Girlfriend
I Do

Green Album B-Sides
Teenage Victory Song
Oh, Lisa
Always
Sugar Booger
Brightening Day
Starlight

The Alternative Maladroit (2001/2002 demos)
Ain’t Got Much Time
Serendipity
Broken Arrows
Don’t Pick On Me
Listen Up
Zep Song
Your Room
Mr Taxman
Porcupine
How Long
Change The World
Saturday Night
High Up Above
Sandwiches Time
We Go Together
Puerta Vallarta

Maladroit
American Gigolo
Dope Nose
Keep Fishin’
Take Control
Death and Destruction
Slob
Burndt Jamb
Space Rock
Slave
Fall Together
Possibilities
Love Explosion
December
Living Without You

Album 5 Demos
Mo’ Beats
Private Message
Misstep
Booby Trap
Modern Dukes
Untenable
Fontana
She Who Is Militant
Prodigy Lover
Mansion of Cardboard
Queen of Earth
Hey Domingo
The Organ Player
Sacrifice
Mad Kow
Running Man
367
The Victor
Acapulco
Lullaby

Make Believe
Beverly Hills
Perfect Situation
This Is Such A Pity
Hold Me
Peace
We Are All On Drugs
The Damage In Your Heart
Pardon Me
My Best Friend
The Other Way
Freak Me Out
Haunt You Every Day

“The Fallen Soldiers”
I Don’t Want Your Loving
Blowin’ My Stack
Losing My Mind
I’m A Robot

Pre-Red Album
Turning Up The Radio
The Odd Couple
Autopilot

The Red Album
Troublemaker
The Greatest Man That Ever Lived
Pork and Beans
Heart Songs
Everybody Get Dangerous
Dreamin’
Thought I Knew
Cold Dark World
Automatic
The Angel and the One

Red Album Bonus & Miscellany
Miss Sweeney
Pig
The Spider
King
It’s Easy
I Can Love

Raditude
(If You’re Wondering if I Want You To) I Want You To
I’m Your Daddy
The Girl Got Hot
Can’t Stop Partying
Put Me Back Together
Tripping Down the Freeway
Love is the Answer
Let It All Hang Out
In the Mall
I Don’t Want To Let You Go

Raditude Bonus & Miscellany
Get Me Some
Run Over By A Truck
The Prettiest Girl In The Whole Wide World
The Underdogs
Turn Me Round
The Story of My Life
I Hear Bells
Represent

Hurley
Memories
Ruling Me
Trainwrecks
Unspoken
Where’s My Sex?
Run Away
Hang On
Smart Girls
Brave New World
Time Flies

Finally, a few quick notes for people who might actually know what I’m on about:

• With the exception of the Rivers SFTBH demos (included due to their importance), this is full-band material only. No solo stuff or side projects – no Rentals, no Space Twins, no Special Goodness. You may note that Homie have snuck in there, though. We’ll discuss that when I come to it.
• No covers, either. This is about Weezer’s songs only.
• Wherever possible I’ve tried to include every song for which either an official release or a leaked (officially or unofficially) demo has occurred. There may be one or two I’ve missed here and there, or not been able to get hold of for some reason. There are of course countless songs that the band have written and recorded that we’ve never heard, however.
• Some songs have found their way into multiple recording sessions over the years, but I’ve only ever included each song once. Priority is always given to an official album release. With demos, the version from the latest “era” is used – if there are multiple recordings in an era, I’ve just gone with the version I like best. This explains why, for example, the only songs listed under SS2K are the ones that weren’t carried over to later sessions.
• Some demo compilations have specifically been put together in “album”-style tracklisting by me. Again, we’ll discuss those when we get to them.

See you later this month for part one!

A lot of people know the song “Jilted John” by Jilted John, even if they don’t know it by name. Chances are, they probably think it’s called “Gordon Is A Moron” or “The Moron Song” or something like that. It sounds like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It got to number four in the UK charts in 1978, was performed live on Top of the Pops on no less than three occasions, and is rightly held as one of the greatest and most memorable singles of the late ’70s punk/new wave era. But for most people, that’s where the Jilted John story ends – as a one-hit wonder, a novelty record and nothing more. What most people don’t know, however, is that “John” actually recorded an entire album. And, what’s more, it’s a masterpiece.

Jilted John was, of course, the alter-ego of a young comedian and singer-songwriter named Graham Fellows – who would later go on to create the peerless John Shuttleworth, and appear in adverts for Yorkshire Tea. In its original form, the eponymous song was actually the B-side of a Rabid Records single called “Going Steady” – in which a not-so-jilted John told of his love for girlfriend-of-two-months Sharon – but on the radio, it was “Jilted John” that gained greater currency, and the single would eventually be re-released by EMI with the sides flipped. In the wake of the single’s success, Fellows and super-producer Martin Hannett regrouped to create an entire album. It had an absolutely fantastic romance-comics-spoof cover, came with a free gift of a “Mice and Ladders” board game, and was called True Love Stories.

Although the album was – by the standards of the single – something of a flop, it’s retained its status as something of a cult favourite. And I absolutely love it to pieces. So if you’ve never heard it – or, even, heard of it – before, allow me to educate you as to its genius…

The first track on the album is called Baz’s Party, and… well, wait. Let’s hold on and back up a minute. Nowadays, if you’re listening to the album, you’re probably listening to the 1999 CD re-release – especially since that’s the version on Spotify, iTunes and so on, and since, unlike me, you probably didn’t go digging through eBay to track down the original 12″ record (with the “Mice and Ladders” board still intact inside, fact fans!) And that version of the album has a couple of additions on it – notably, opening with the very first Jilted John song of them all, Going Steady.

And it’s good that it does, really, because Going Steady is a fantastic song, and makes for a much more welcoming opener. It’s criminal that it never made it onto the album’s original release in the first place – particularly for some reasons that we’ll come on to later. Here it is:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The feel and mood of this track set the tone for the rest of the album – although musically, it’s quite different from the keyboard-heavy arrangements that Hannett brought to the production of the album, having been recorded almost a year beforehand. John is young and naive, a wide-eyed innocent, declaring after two whole months that when he and Sharon have “saved up, we’re going to get maaaaa-rried”. Even if the word “Jilted” weren’t in his name, we’d know this happiness couldn’t possibly last – but for now, his feckless charm is endearing.

Although it makes a great opener musically, though, Going Steady doesn’t actually fit chronologically into the narrative structure that, as we’ll see, True Love Stories has at its core. Then again, neither does the actual album opener, Baz’s Party. That song initially creates a jarring effect if you’re listening to it on the re-release – because it opens with a snatch of “Going Steady” heard on a record player at the titular party, while a supposedly teenaged female voice – actually, quite obviously, Fellows himself – declares it to be a “great song” and asks for it to be played again when it finishes.

Baz’s Party, although funny (“I’m drinking as fast as I can / While we all sing Telegram Sam / And now the boys are dancing to / The silly dance / That skinheads do”), is a touch silly and slight, and probably doesn’t help assuage the initial impression that this is going to be just another “novelty” album. Neverthelss, and although it may appear earlier in the track listing than it’s chronologically supposed to – the version of John that it features surely comes from around track four or five – what it does achieve is establishing the style and tone of the character (even though arguably, on the re-release, Going Steady has already done this better). It also has a truly killer final line:

There’s a boy puking up in the lavatory
His name’s Baz -
It’s his party…

It’s from the next track, however, that our chronological narrative begins, and the concept album starts to take shape. I Know I’ll Never is a minute-and-a-half long call to arms sung by a younger John, as he declares in the brilliant opening lines:

I am reckless and I am shoddy
I’m an adult in a child’s body
I’m twelve years old and I rule O.K.
And I know I’ll never reach pu-ber-TAY! 

Having already been introduced to “Baz” in the preceding track, he’s referenced here as John’s best friend too - “Barry is my mate and we can sup / Two bottles of cider each and still stand up” – suggesting for the first time some kind of continuity between the album’s songs. This is carried forward into the next track, something of a companion piece titled I Was A Pre-Pubescent. The first properly “narrative” song on the album, this track tells John’s life story from birth up until his early teens – the main points to take away being the early death of his father and subsequent departure of his mother, and the fact that he and his sister were consequently brought up by their gran (although this fact creates its own continuity problems, as we’ll see).

Having re-emphasised the previous track’s message of just how much John enjoyed the simplicity of pre-adolescent life, however, …Pre-Pubescent ends on an alarming note:

One summer’s day in ’73
I looked in the mirror and it terrified me
For what I saw was quite out of place:
Bum-fluff and acne all over my face
I tried to speak, but when I spoke
All that came out was a croak
My voice had broken
I was a… pubescent, and it was sad

Following John into adolescence, though, is merely a cue for the album to hit its high point. There’s already been a tone that I’d describe as distinctly Adrian Mole (although obviously the album predates Sue Townsend’s novel by a few years) in the tracks up to this point, but it really comes to the fore in Fancy Mice. This exquisite song is a five-minute long opus in which, across a succession of increasingly laboured rhyming couplets, John barely pauses for breath. To attempt to describe it further would fail to do it justice, however, so all I’ll do instead is present it to you in its entirety:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of many, many brilliant details in this song, perhaps my favourite is the fact that John’s chosen name for his first pet mouse is Jane. If you like, you can just see this as being because “Jane” is quite an easy name to rhyme with a lot of words – but I prefer to think of it as a clever piece of storytelling detail, recalling that Jane was the beloved girl that John sat next to in primary school in I Was A Pre-Pubescent.

Unfortunately, after this masterpiece is when the album goes on to hit arguably its one major misstep – and it’s with the inclusion of a re-recorded version of Jilted John. It’s not that the song itself isn’t brilliant – and it’s certainly arguable that to have excluded it would have damaged the album’s chances of commercial success even further – it’s just that it really doesn’t fit. Having been re-recorded to fit in more with the production style of the rest of the album, it’s sapped of a lot of its original power and ramshackle charm – and although a theoretical relationship with Julie could be fit into the album’s narrative somewhere, it seems odd that the next track, The Birthday Kiss, is about John breaking up with Sharon – who, unless experiencing the re-released version of the album, the listener hasn’t heard anything about yet. It would seem to have made far more sense to have Going Steady (either in original form or re-recorded) show up at this point, and if Jilted John had to be on there it could always have served as track one. But hey ho. In the MP3 era, if we want to put together our own versions of favourite albums, it’s not like we can’t do so.

Anyway, none of this should detract from the magnificence of The Birthday Kiss, which is easily the flat out funniest song the entire album has to offer – a tale of unadulterated heartbreak at the youth club disco, culminating in this superb half-sung, half-spoken recounting of John and Sharon’s final conversation:

She said, “Let me explain, John!”
I said, “There’s nothing to explain, Sharon!”
She said, “I think there is, John!”
I said, “No there isn’t, Sharon. And anyway, my bus is here. So you can go back to Colin now…”
“Listen,” she pleaded, “I don’t fancy him! I was just giving him a birthday kiss!”
And I said “Oh yeah? For ten minutes? In the rain? I don’t believe you!
“Anyway, it’s not even his birthday!”

Although if there’s one problem with this otherwise perfect track, it’s that it throws up an odd continuity error – I Was A Pre-Pubescent had already established that John’s Mum and Dad were absent and deceased respectively, and that he lived with his gran. Going Steady had also made reference to this – despite being recorded beforehand – with the line “And my gran says you’re dead nice”. Although The Birthday Kiss does mention John’s gran (countermanding the earlier comment with “Anyway, my gran didn’t like you, she said you were dead common!”), the opening line states “I’ve just come back from the youth club / Mum and Dad are watching telly…” Which, in an album so otherwise carefully constructed, is a little odd to say the least.

The Birthday Kiss ends the first side of the original 12″ release – and it’s an appropriate break point. Because the entire second half of True Love Stories is an individual narrative of its own – a concept-album-within-a-concept-album, even. While the first half of the album had rattled through the first fifteen or sixteen years of its hero’s life, the second side tells a chronologically shorter, but significantly more detailed, tale. It starts with The Paperboy Song, as a now post-O-levels and newly-on-the-dole John ruminates on how much nicer and simpler things were when he was an early teen with a job delivering papers. Once again, that Adrian Mole-esque feel comes to the surface, particularly as John describes one of the highlights of his job:

At number forty-four
Lived a girl called Wendy Moore
And I sometimes saw her getting dressed
Through the window on the second floor
And once, I wrote her a rude letter
And put it in her Jackie
Well she stopped buying it
Called me a git
And told her brother to attack me…

The song culminates with, oddly, a short dialogue piece as John goes back to his old newsagent’s to ask about getting a job. The newsagent – also voiced by Fellows – tells him that, unfortunately, there are no jobs going; but the plot of the second side of the album is kicked off nevertheless, due to John’s meeting the new assistant, a girl named Karen (er… also voiced by Fellows).

The next track, True Love, sees the album venturing into a different direction musically – it’s cheesy as hell, but there’s a lot more depth of construction to it, and even Fellows’ vocal performance seems to have deliberately changed tone, reflecting the now-older John. Karen “her”self even makes a brief singing appearance right at the end, too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With John happy in love with Karen (his experiences with Sharon apparently not having taught him a sage lesson about jumping in with both feet), the album continues to get odder and odder. First, there’s In The Bus Shelter - an instrumental piece, with spoken dialogue over the top, as John and Karen, well… sit in the bus shelter, watching the world go by and eating crisps. That’s really all there is to it. It’s probably at this point that the decision to have Fellows do all the female voices feels its most misguided – but as with most of the album’s eccentricities, it’s carried along on a wave of innocent charm.

All is not as well in John’s world as he imagines, however, as we learn from Karen’s Letter - which, like In The Bus Shelter, is a spoken word track over an instrumental backing. This time, it’s a horrified John reading a quite literal Dear John letter from his beloved – who has decided to run away to London and find a job as a chamber maid in a hotel. He’s given hope, however, by the assertion that her actions have got nothing to do with their relationship – even though we the listener know that they surely must. This is conveyed in brilliantly subtle fashion by the portion of Karen’s letter that references her cousin Denise, who “ran away when she was engaged to Terry”. After all, why else make reference to a jilted fiancé if similar motivation isn’t also on Karen’s mind?

Apparently not noticing this, however, John follows the one natural course for a lovelorn teenager in the late 1970s – he hitch-hikes down to London to follow her. And this is where things get really weird. A second non-musical dialogue interlude sees John hitching a lift with a well-spoken older woman (I think this is Graham Fellows doing the voice yet again, but I can’t be entirely sure) – but that’s only the start of a whole new misadventure, as time has moved on when the song Shirley starts up, and we find out that… well, listen to the track yourself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

For a moment this almost feels like it’s going to be the beginning of an entire story-within-a-story – but sadly, the album’s rapidly running out of space. It’s a shame, as you can’t help but feel an entire third side could have been spun out of John’s adventures in London. Instead, however – without even learning exactly how John managed to escape the clutches of Shirley – we find in the album’s closer Goodbye Karen that he’s already given up on his quest:

For two whole days I’ve looked for you, Karen
I’ve been everywhere in London
But I can’t find you anywhere
And now I don’t care
I’m going back home 

There’s just time, however, for a moment of reflection that suggests our hero might actually have learned something from his escapade:

If it’s true
I mean the world to you
You would have let me know
And asked me to go… with you

And so, with a plaintive repeated refrain of “Goodbye, Karen…”, ends the Jilted John story. Although the CD re-release would tack on the single release of “Jilted John” – as well as two cash-in tracks by Bernard Kelly’s “Gordon the Moron” that don’t really merit much discussion (despite Kelly’s ever-present and oft-stated influence on Fellows, these particular tracks simply… aren’t very good) – that would be the last we’d ever hear of John, Karen, Sharon, Baz and the rest. It seems sad that they should be consigned to this solitary cult album, forgotten by all but the most avid of followers – and that Fellows himself would have to wait until the John Shuttleworth days before being recognised as the singer-songwriter of profound genius that he undoubtedly is (he did put out a solo, non-character-based album in the ’80s, but that sank with even less trace than True Love Stories).

But then, with a name like his, John was always going to be jilted by the world, wasn’t he…?

You can listen to True Love Stories on Spotify, or buy it stupendously cheaply from Amazon and iTunes. In case the rest of the article didn’t make it clear, that’s something I highly recommend you do immediately.

Postscript: Although True Love Stories appeared to be the end of Jilted John, it wasn’t quite. In researching background and audio content for this article, I discovered two little gems. First off, a track called “Mrs Pickering”, recorded in 1978 – presumably as an unused cut from the album – but eventually issued on a 1980 Rabid Records compilation called The Crap Stops Here. And secondly – and somewhat oddly – an entirely new song performed when Fellows briefly revived the character for a performance at the Big Chill festival in 2008, titled “Keira Knightley (Eat Your Dinner)”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s terrific, but sadly it didn’t herald a new era of Jilted John material…