Things have been pretty quiet lately with everybody’s favorite band that used to be great and now just releases stuff that makes us long for the old days. They released a bunch of unfinished studio records as mp3s on their website back in July, 2002, but these have yet to see any official release. I had planned on writing a review of those albums at the time, but since I assumed Rivers and Co. were going to stick to their “new album every year” plan, I decided to wait for the real thing to come out. Word on the street is they’ve scrapped that stuff and the new album will eventually be produced by Rick Rubin. Hopefully, he can pull a Johnny Cash on their asses, and not a Donovan. (As much as I love Donovan, Sutras is not a good album. And I may be the only person who really gave it a chance.)

Karl has even stopped updating his “Korner” on weezer.com, which had been the single most informative site of any band ever. But we recently received an update of what’s happening in the land of Weez.

1. Weezer guitarist Brian Bell has finally released his first “Space Twins” album! See spacetwins.com for a listing of stores carrying the album, and an online store to order the album from. There’s also other info including the cover art, tracklisting, etc.

2. On July 1st, a very special double 7″ record is being released, which includes an exclusive weezer track. The record includes a live recording of “Why Bother?”, recorded last summer in Atlanta on the Enlightenment Tour. It also includes exclusive tracks from Phantom Planet, Ben Kweller, and Rivers’ faves AM Radio. Proceeds from this record go to benefit Petra Haden. Petra, an original member of weezer buddies That Dog was the victim of a hit and run back in 2000, and lacks the insurance to cover her massive medical bills. So weezer and some fellow bands have contributed tracks to help out one of the coolest gals in music! See vegasrecords.com for the full details, as well as an online store where the 7″ can be ordered from come July 1st.

3. While there isn’t a release date set yet, a previously unreleased weezer track [not even available in mp3 form!] will be featured on an upcoming compilation cd called “Gimme Skelter”, on Buddyhead records. This comp is gonna be sweet. Besides the exclusive Pinkerton-era weezer track, it has excellent cover art by legendary Black Flag cover artist Raymond Pettibone, and is jam packed with cool exclusive music and spoken word by such artists as Iggy Pop, Primal Scream, and Le Tigre, amongst many many others.

4. Weezer DVD info: No, NO release date has been set yet. But, a LOT of progress has been made at last. The molasses-slow legal muck has been swum through, and we’re at the stage where we’re cleaning the mud off our boots, looking ahead towards nice clean video studios to get this darn thing assembled at. So much material was thrown into the mix that the legal team at Geffen was bogged down for a while. They ended up shutting down some cool stuff unfortunately, but we came back with a right and a left and replaced the “outlawed” material with different, possibly even cooler footage – and more of it! The DVD will cover everything from 1992-2002 as best it can. You’ll get all the band’s music videos, several new videos created for the DVD, several different live performances from all different time periods, rare alternate take video footage, lots of behind the scenes album making stuff, and plenty of previously unseen backstage/in-the-studio craziness! When a release date is known, it will be announced on weezer.com. Unfortunately the hoped-for springtime release came and went, so we’re looking to summer now. The good news is that even though you’ll have to wait longer for the DVD, its gonna be full of even more cool stuff.

-karl

I’m very excited about the Pinkerton-era song on the Buddyhead comp. And I’ll buy the 7″ to benefit Petra Haden. And that DVD could actually end up being pretty cool. We’ll see.

Coincidentally, it was exactly two years ago today that we ran my article, Weezer vs. the Record Industry: Guess Who Won.