Weezer - Raditude

My wife and I chaperoned the senior trip a year or so ago. It was mostly a pain in the butt, but there were a few perks. My wife, who is an employee of the school, drove one of the vans and I rode shotgun. I found out pretty quickly that the high school students we were in charge of had very different ideas about what constitutes music. The current generation seems to only like music made by robots who sing about how great tonight is going to be. Thank goodness I grew up in a decade with half-decent music.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time on that trip with my headphones on because the crap churned out by robots such as the black eyed peas makes me uncomfortable. I literally cannot exist in the same space as that crappy music. It feels like a violation of my soul. Anyway, after three solid days of crappy crap, one of the students asked to see my minidisc collection. He actually asked if we could listen to "Can't Stop Partyin'" by Weezer. I put the song on, and everyone loved it. We played it four more times in a row with the windows down, the volume cranked, and everyone singing along. We played the rest of Raditude, which they loved, and then I started pulling stuff from earlier albums. As it turns out, people will listen to decent music if you play it for them.

One of the more interesting things about Raditude is that it makes Weezer sound young. Their collaboration with Lil' Wayne notwithstanding, the songs on Raditude don't sound like they were made by a bunch of guys in their 40's. I say this is strange because the previous album (the self-titled Red Album) was keenly aware of age and the fragility of life itself. Back in 1996 I didn't know if Weezer would make it past the failure of Pinkerton. Now that they're rocking in their second decade as a band, Weezer shows that they've still got it.

Oh, and I would give this album a full five stars were it not for "In the Mall," which is the only officially released Weezer song to date that I actually don't like at all (I say officially released because I still don't like "Mo Beats" and "Misstep" which were scrapped album 5 demos).