Weezer Songs From The Black Hole Download
Analisa Wisdom
Aside from merely ruminating on what a great album it may or may not have been, there's a further consequence of the revelations about SFTBH. Among the songs that were intended to be on the album were four that ended up on Pinkerton - "Tired Of Sex", "Getchoo", "No Other One" and "Why Bother?". It's worth noting that they ended up on the album as the first four tracks - the six that follow were all songs that Rivers had written after scrapping the project - or, at least, while he was on the process of abandoning it. Pinkerton is an extremely overanalysed album, due to the highly personal nature of most of its lyrics and its position as a forefather of modern "emo" music. All of a sudden, though, learning that those songs were intended to be part of a narrative, and therefore are written by Rivers in the third person rather than being about himself, adds a whole new complexion to them. This is particularly notable in the case of "Tired Of Sex". As the opening track on Pinkerton, it's a raw and harsh abandonment of the poppy sound of The Blue Album, and furthermore its lyrics seem to detail Rivers' dissatisfaction with the rockstar lifestyle; how he's fed up of sleeping with groupies every night and yearns for something more meaningful ("Monday night I'm makin' Jen / Tuesday night I'm makin' Gwen / Wednesday night I'm makin' Catherine / Oh why can't I be making love come true?"). Learning, then, that it is in fact supposed to detail the dissatisfaction of a fictional character (probably Jonas, although possibly "Donno") - and furthermore that it wasn't originally intended as an opening track, seems to tear away a lot of preconceived wisdom about the song. Of course, it could still remain the case that Rivers was drawing from his own experiences and placing them onto his fictional creation, but still. The long-held perception that Pinkerton was a cathartic, in-one-go explosion of Rivers' feelings in the post-Blue Album years suddenly has a significant rethink demanded of it. Instead, it seems like "Across The Sea" onwards represents the "true" Pinkerton, and the opening four tracks are merely the legacy of the album it could - and perhaps should - have been.
It's unlikely that the band would ever go back to those songs, write some more, and record the whole thing properly - not least because so many of the songs did get a proper release in some form or another (in addition to the four Pinkerton tracks, we had IJTOTLOMD and "Devotion" as full-on, studio-recorded B-sides to the singles "El Scorcho" and "The Good Life"). But could we ever see either of the demo tapes released, online or otherwise? Weezer fans can but hope, as SFTBH harks back to an era when Rivers and Weezer were creatively at the top of their game. Even in demo form, it would certainly piss over anything they've done in the past five years. Which, on reflection, is probably the main thing that would stop them from doing it...
What we're left with, then, is a handful of great (although raw and choppy) songs, and a tantalising glimpse of what might have been. Every Weezer fan who knows the SFTBH has their own version of the album, because you can work from different tracklistings and you can use different versions to fill in the gaps (some people prefer to use Pinkerton versions of the songs that were properly recorded - others prefer to use earlier demos in order to retain a more consistent, unpolished feel to the record). In this sense, Songs From The Black Hole really is a SMiLE for the 21st Century. And hey, it only took thirty-odd years to get that released. It's now been ten years since the SFTBH sessions - should we pencil in a release for 2025...?
Another quick point, by the way, is that the oft-discussed name of that "other" female character (the one that Jonas falls in love with, as opposed to the slightly stalkerish "bad girl" Maria) is said here by Rivers to be "Laurel". So that's Jonas, Wuan, Dondo, Maria and Laurel - and the lyrics that we get on the Alone songs help to cement the idea that the basic story (at least, what existed of it) unfolded as follows : The five cadets are heading out on their deep space mission, when Wuan and Dondo point out that one of the girls assigned with them is Jonas' ex-girlfriend - his "favourite bitch in the Academy" ("Blast Off!"). Maria takes umbrage at their language, and complains to Jonas ("Who You Callin' Bitch?") - something which, it quickly transpires, is part of a ploy to try and rekindle his affections ("Oh Jonas"). After initially rebuffing her advances ("Please Remember"), he gives in ("Come To My Pod"), and the two get it awwn (to use the parlance of our time). Immediately regretful ("This Is Not For Me"), Jonas confides in his friend Laurel, realising at the same time that he's been in love with her all along - but she shoots him down ("Superfriend"). Before Jonas can proceed any further, though, we jump nine months ahead in time to where the ship has reached its destination ("Dude, We're Finally Landing") - and where Maria's had a baby girl ("She's Had A Girl"). Meanwhile, Laurel starts to wonder if she's made the right decision in knocking back Jonas ("I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams"), but Jonas is busy realising that although he doesn't much like Maria, she's all he's got ("No Other One" and/or "Devotion"). And that's basically all we've got, with no real indication of where it would go from there, save that the second half of the album would appear to consist largely of the various characters whinging about their respective situations.
Okay, it's hardly Dickensian, but at least it's a fairly straightforward and follow-able structure upon which Rivers could hang his ideas about his own life. Indeed, fast forward almost exactly year, and following the success of the first volume, a second collection - the imaginatively-titled Alone II (reviewed right here on NTS) - was released, containing rather more detailed sleeve notes (following the development of the songs chronologically rather than the order they appear on the album, and coming off as far more cohesive and readable for it - and fuelling my desire for Rivers to sit down and write a whole book about his career one day), and more on SFTBH :
When writing the original article, I surmised that songs like "Tired of Sex", now that we knew they were originally intended to be sung by Rivers' characters, may not have been true reflections of his feelings. This is clearly not the case - he most likely would have been speaking through the characters in a lot of cases (which is, in fact, a pretty logical assumption to make anyway - I was just being dumb). The problem is, with what exists of SFTBH, we're only really getting half of the story - the loose plot framework - rather than the real character (and internal) investigation that might have come along had he got round to fully fleshing out the second half of the record. Indeed, when it came to digging out SFTBH songs for Alone II, the selection was altogether more thinly-spread - all we got was a three-track suite, of 30, 40 and 90 seconds respectively - and the latter piece, "Come to my Pod", was already widely available online and "enjoyed" the distinction of being probably the weakest-sounding track heard so far. "Oh Jonas" and "Please Remember" are nice additions to the canon, though - the former a lament by Maria, followed by (and seguing beautifully into) a punchy, keyboard-driven companion that more concisely addresses the subject matter of "You Won't Get With Me Tonight" (sadly, in the process, rendering that song kind of irrelevant to the whole affair).
1. Blast Off! (Alone)
2. Who You Callin' Bitch? (Alone)
3. You Won't Get With Me Tonight (Buddyhead compilation) - I love this song too much not to include it, so let's just assume that in true musicals fashion, the first half of the song is reiterating what the previous track said, and the subsequent tracks reiterate this song's second half
4. Oh Jonas (Alone II)
5. Please Remember (Alone II)
6. Come To My Pod (Alone II)
7. This Is Not For Me (demo, from sftbh.com)
8. Tired of Sex (demo, from sftbh.com)
9. Superfriend (Alone)
10. Dude, We're Finally Landing! (Alone)
11. She's Had A Girl (fan cover) - downloaded from a forum, this was one of many covers made possible by Rivers releasing lyrics and sheet music for unreleased tracks online
12. Superfriend (reprise) - I pieced this together from another fan cover, and the DVD footage, as it includes a much rockier chorus that could be taken as an all-out reprise of the earlier song
13. Getchoo (Ft Apache demos) - I use these demo versions of the Pinkerton songs in order to fit in a bit better with the recording quality of the rest of the record
14. I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams ("The Good Life" b-side)
15. No Other One (Ft Apache demos)
16. Devotion ("El Scorcho" b-side)
17. Longtime Sunshine (Alone) - this doesn't quite seem to fit with the rest of the album, but I think some other, never-written tracks towards the end and/or after it might have put it in better context
Much of the information in this article comes from the extremely helpful sftbh.com (where you can also download the raw versions of the tracks that were originally released via weezer.com), and from the fantastic article here, which also contains the full Q&A session with Karl Koch in which he explains a good deal of previously unknown information about the album's story.
I'm not too big on "American Girls" either. The problem with this era is that the best songs are only available in the form of really bad recordings, but "Fun Time" and "Autumn Jane" are great. It's a shame that we'll probably never get to hear any of the original Album 3 demos from 1998.
And anyway, it's not like it's WILD speculation as to whether or not the album would have been any good. The songs that exist from the album, with the possible exception of "Come To My Pod", are all absolutely brilliant. "You Won't Get With Me Tonight" is just classic, classic Weezer, while "I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams" is, as I outlined in the article, the strongest indication of what the album would have sounded like production-wise, and it's one of the best songs they've ever recorded.
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