Some Might Call It A Loophole, I Call It An “Opportunity Clause”

Yes! After several weeks of being depressed and lethargic, Tom Scharpling was back in good form last night, accompanied by Jon Wurster, who’d also been missing from the show. To hear Wurster’s new character sparring with Scharpling, listen to this archive and advance to the 36 minute mark. It’s very funny, but not quite as great as when in an episode from a few weeks ago (advance to 1’34), Tom’s other collaborator (the man responsible for the incredibly depressed office worker, Paul Crenshaw) called in leaving a very miserable response to a personals ad. That character, Samson, is a classic. I’m hoping that Scharpling releases the Paul Crenshaw epic and the Samson skit on a cd sometime soon, a la Rock Rot And Rule.

If you want to hear some of Scharpling, Wurster, and the other guy’s best recent work, here’s some recommendations:

The Paul Crenshaw Saga:

Part One Advance to the 2 hour, 11 minute mark.

Part Two Advance to the 2 hour, 24 minute mark.

Part Three Advance to the one hour, 3 minute mark.

Part Four, the best of the set. Advance to the 2 hour, 25 minute mark

Tony Torgvoort, aka Mr. Loophole

Advance to 1’29 mark.

Tom’s Daddy

Advance to the one hour mark.

Philly Boy Roy

Part One Advance to the 44 minute mark.

Part Two Advance to the 1’25 mark.

Barry Dworkin and “Rock N’ Roll Dreams’ll Come Through”

Advance to the 1 hour, 14 minute mark.

Slap You On The Face, And Enjoy The Show

Courtesy of Badger, how is this for head-scratching revisionist history? I don’t think this guy really gets Weezer. I think a suprising number of people don’t. They’re not an ‘indie’ band, they’re not an ’emo’ band, they’re a pop singles band. Stop thinking about the albums – think about the singles, how each one of them is catchy, fully formed, distinct from one another but similar enough to be familiar immediately as Weezer. Think about how this band is going to have a very solid greatest hits album someday – “Undone – The Sweater Song”, “Buddy Holly”, “Say It Ain’t So”, “El Scorcho”, “The Good Life”, “Hash Pipe”, “Island In The Sun”, “Photograph”, “Dope Nose”, “Keep Fishin'”. I can’t think of any other American band of the same vintage who’ve had a solid string of quality mainstream hits – even if you think the band is sort of generic, you’ve got to admit to the quality of their hits.

I think that Weezer’s obvious desire to be liked by the people is what betrays the wrong-headed notion that they were embracing some kind of nebbishy indie attitude on Pinkerton – Weezer themselves never at any point tried to ditch their audience, and there’s several songs on Pinkerton which could have been big pop hits (“Why Bother” immediately comes to mind), it was all in the timing. People who think that a few creepy lyrics on Pinkerton were the main reason for its initial commercial failure are deluding themselves and insulting the tastes and sensibilities of millions of people. The marketplace killed Pinkerton, it was all corporate politics. The other thing about this guy’s writing is the notion that indie people in the mid-90s had anything other than antipathy for Weezer. C’mon, man, I was there. They were a punchline! At best, they were considered a guilty pleasure by indie rock elitists. At this time in their career, “Pavement Lite” was practically synonymous with their name!

The secret of Weezer’s success, and why they kept so much of their audience intact after five years of absence, is that they have never at any point said or implied anything that would exclude anyone from their audience. I maintain that a lot of people are scared of indie rock because they are nervous that the indie rock people don’t like them, that they’re being judged by indie people when they step into their shops – people don’t like rejection. Weezer are there for all those people who feel alienated by most everything else on tv and on the radio, but feel too uncool for indie. Their songs are accessable, relatable, fun. They strike a nice balance between being goofy and being earnest. There’s nothing indie, in the perjoritive sense of what the guy was implying, about that at all.