This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Weezer are not supposed to be this in singing. They involve a bass player who predicted his own death, another bass player whose wife got into a gunfight with the LAPD, a front man who is obsessed with Kurt Cobain and who
maybe was Kirk Cobain. Wait a minute, what you'll see this was a front man who wasn't your typical rock and roll archetype, not a burnout or an outlaw or some doomed rock and roll savage. Now Rivers Cuomo was more of an analyst than an anarchist, the type of rock and roller who studied songs like they were calculus, and surprisingly, as a result, made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
That was a preset loop for my melotron called Kurt Cromo MK two. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Luther by Kendrick Lamar and Siza, And why would I play you that specific slice of Velvet Voice adjacent cheese.
Could I afford it? Because that was the number one.
Song in America on April eighth, twenty twenty five, And that was the day that Weezer got dragged closer to a true crime scandal than they ever had been in their thirty plus year history. On this episode, a death prediction, a gunfight, burnouts, outlaws and savages, the anti rock star, rockstar rivers Cromo and Weezer. I'm Jake in This is Disgraceland.
Earlier this year, twenty twenty six, a so called peer reviewed report by a team of private forensic scientists attempted to disrupt the official narrative that Kurt Cobaine's death was the result of suicide. The report argued that the evidence supports not a single self inflicted gunshot wound to the head,
but instead a staged homicide. The report questioned whether Kurt's body had been positioned or posed It raised the skeptical eyebrow at a receipt for bullets found in his pocket, and it noted the tidy condition of his works, the stuff he used to shoot heroin, most notably the capped needles that contained the heroin that he'd shot moments before he died. But despite all of this, the report is flimsy at best, not to mention, far from revelatory. No,
Kirk Cobain was not murdered. But this new report and the coverage it received in the media did cause another old internet theory to resurface, and that theory is that Kurt Cobain did not die at all.
That's right.
The theory is that Kurt Cobain faked his own death. Later on, the front man would laugh about how the clues have been there all along, like how he dressed in the music video for Nirvana's in Bloom, the horn rimmed glasses, the button down dress shirt. That video foreshadowed what came next. Kirk cut his long hair sh short, and he shaved his face until it was smooth as the bare bottom of that baby that was on the cover of never Mind, and as smooth as the voice
he was now using to sing. It was a different voice. Gone was his trademark punk rock howl. In its place was a clearer, purer voice. It was the voice behind his next hit song, a catchy tune inspired by that all of drab cardigan he'd famously worn during Nirvana's appearance on MTV Unplugged, and the song was called Undone the Sweater Song, and it was the lead single Loft, the debut album by Kurt's new band, a band that, like Nirvana, had a one word name. That's right, Kirk Cobaine did
not die. In nineteen ninety four, Kirk Cobane secretly became Rivers Cuomo of the band Weezer. As music conspiracy theories go, I gotta say this one is both pretty ridiculous and pretty hysterical.
Cuomo himself thought that it.
Was funny enough to actually entertain the concept a few years back on Rick Rubin's podcast, even playing along as if it were true and as if he were Kurt Cobain for real. But still though it's good for a lathanol. Imagine that you're Kurt Cobain, a bona fide rock star, badass to your core, and then further imagine that you are beset on all sides by rubberneckers who want everything from you, your blood, your sweat, your tears.
Would it not be in line with.
Your badass rockstar character? Would it not be the ultimate fuck you to all of these culture vultures? If you were to fake your own death and then live in secrecy as a nerd, now imagine the reverse. Imagine the tame nerd becoming the feral rock star. Imagine Rivers Cuomo becoming Kurt Cobain. That seems like a more unbelievable proposition,
but that's exactly what Rivers Cuomo wanted to do. Rivers Cmo wanted it so badly to become Kurt Cobain that he kept a three ring binder full of mathematical deconstructions of every Nirvana song.
He studied them.
He needed to understand how they were made, and by doing so he could then write his own songs.
It would be just as impactful and beloved.
But rivers Cuomo wanted much more than to simply crack Kurt Cobain's code. I seriously thought we were the next Nirvana, Rivers told Rolling Stone in twenty nineteen, on the twenty fifth anniversary of Weezer's debut.
And I thought the world was going to perceive us that way, like a.
Super important, super powerful, heartbreaking heavy rock.
Band, and as serious artists.
In May of nineteen ninety four, one month after Kirk Cobain's death, When Weser released their self titled debut album, or the Blue Album as it's now known, the quartette of Rivers Cuomo on guitar and vocals and Matt Shark on bass, Brian on guitar and Patrick Wilson on drums were not seen as a super important, super powerful, heartbreaking heavy rock band, nor were they seen as serious artists. Instead, they were seen as four lovable dorks.
With a couple catchy songs.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, and this isn't to say that they weren't commercially successful either, because they absolutely were. After a slow burn on the charts nine months, to be exact, their debut album reached number sixteen on the Billboard two hundred and it's three excellent singles undone the Sweater Song, Buddy Hawlly and Say it Ain't So All cracked the top ten on the Modern Rock Churn. It wasn't the charts that didn't take Weezer seriously, though,
it was the world. That same world had now turned and left Rivers right here with his bowl cut and his thick black glasses, looking far younger than his twenty three years strumming a powder blue stratocaster and a goofy Spike Jones directed video that recreated the set of the Let's Be Honest, Pretty Lame TV show Happy Days.
Rivers saw how the world saw him, and it hurt him deeply.
He had thought he'd been betrayed by his own arm and it wouldn't be the first time Rivers thought of meditation to take his mind off of things. He closed his eyes and hoped the process would come back to him like riding a bicycle, the breathing, the focus. Years earlier, in the mid seventies, he was made to perform meditation daily at Yogaville, a Hindu ashram in Connecticut where he lived with his family. But silence and stillness were not
for Rivers Cuomo. He knew this as young as a seven year old when he heard real rock and roll for the first time. The girl was a stranger, a fleeting visitor to the otherwise insulated Yogaville community. Under her arm, she carried an album rock and Roll Over by a band called Kiss. She passed the album to Rivers Cmo as though it was a secret. If he gazed shyly at the cover art lost in the dizzy and cartoon collage of Paul, Jean, Peter and Ace. The face paint,
the curled devil's tongue, the X ray eyes. It all felt forbidden and dangerous, primal and animalistic. One of the guys in the band even looked.
Like a cat. It was the coolest.
Thing young Rivers Cuomo had ever seen. And when they put the record on the turntable and the needle hit the groove, all Rivers wanted to do was run around the room in circles. The music took possession of his mind and body. It consumed him. By high school, he was fronting his own metal band, and at age nineteen, Rivers CMO and his band made the move from Connecticut
to Los Angeles to hit the big time. But even though Rivers had long ago and switched on by Kiss, he was no face paint wearing, tongue wagging showmen.
Instead, he remained.
The shy wallflower ashroom kid at heart. The LA scene, on the other hand, was run by rock and roll animals, the deviants, the savages.
It was no place for the meek and mild.
When Rivers CMO's high school band was quickly chewed up and spit out, still Rivers remained determined he would follow the path of the true artists, the path forged by the Beach Boys Brian Wilson, who Rivers learned about while working at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard, the same path later trampled by Kurt Cobaine, whose songs Rivers cmos studied like they were fourth period algebra. With Weezer, Rivers played
a ton of shows. He gigged hard, He worked harder than most to plant his own mild mannered flag and a scene full of unruly animals.
Now, finally it looked.
As though success come, but it was success on someone else's terms. Spring nineteen ninety five, Rivers Cuomo reclimbed in his seat as Weezer's tour bus rumbled down the highway. A mischievous grin crept across his face as he thought about the previous night, not about the show itself, but the after party his hotel room. Ten maybe fifteen women, attractive, excitable, all of them. They're not so much because he was Rivers Cuomo, but just because he was a rock star.
For months, Rivers hadn't been able to work up the courage to do what he thought a true rock star would do to engage in some wild and debauched orgy hammer the gods type stuff, which left these female fans milling around, raiding the mini bar and talking about how much they loved Green Day or whatever. Because you know, normally Rivers wasn't all about that, but last night was different. Last night, Rivers even surprised himself when he boldly made the announcement who wanted.
To stay had to get naked.
In the room cleared out, almost four women stayed behind it, four women who proceeded to remove every article of their clothing, just as Rivers had instructed them.
But anything goes.
Encounters with fans of the opposite sex wasn't enough to keep Rivers Cromo on the hamster wheel. He'd been out on the road with Weezer for a year straight, and already the monotony was crushing his soul, playing the same ten songs from your one record every single night, giving the same dumb responses to a different dumb journalist every single day. And he wondered if Kirk Kobein had felt this way, like he was slowly watching his own life
waste away. Actually, he didn't have to wonder because he knew the answer. So, like Kurt, Rivers decided to do something about it. But unlike kurk Rivers didn't turn a shotgun on himself and pulled the trigger. Because Rivers Cromo was a different.
Type of rock star. He was the opposite of Kurt Cobaine.
So Rivers Cuomo quit his own band and went to college. The Elizarov technique, developed in the nineteen fifties by a professor in the former Soviet Union, is a surgical procedure that uses an external device to help reconstruct, reshape, or lengthen bones, usually in the limbs, following surgery. The Elizarov apparatus, or a fixator, as it's also known, is attached to the exterior of the body with a series of rings, raws, adjustable nuts, and wires. It basically looks like metal scaffolding
around your body. The thing works via distraction osteogenesis, which is a fancy way of saying that this gnarly looking apparatus gradually separates a surgically cut segment of the bone in order to allow new bone to grow and fill
the gap. Though it may seem like an archaic process, the Elizarov technique is still used to this day in orthopedic surgery when someone has, for instance, legs that are two different lengths, which is exactly the problem that Rivers Cuomo faced when he put his rockstar career on hold to enroll at Harvard University in the fall of.
Nineteen ninety five.
A jolt of pain shot up Rivers's leg as he twisted the screw of the metal cage apparatus that enveloped his right leg. He winced alone in his small dorm room, and then prepared to do the same with the next screw forest screws in total. Every day he was excruciating. Rivers's right leg was almost two inches shorter than his left almost two inches, and after doctors cut his femur in half, they set him up with an E. Lizarev fixator.
Over time, the painful daily ritual of turning the screws would pull the two halves of his femur apart and allow for new bone to develop, until both of his legs were roughly the same length. The whole thing was conspicuous and embarrassing. Rivers limped across Harvard Yard from one class to the next, his apparatus rattling the cane in his hand to keep him upright. He looked like an old man, and the beard he was growing only added to the picture of frailty, but it also made him
unseen in a different way. The kid in the Weezer shirt sitting next to him on the tee had no idea who Rivers was.
Neither did his.
Classman or the girl, the one he pined for from afar. She had no idea he existed, not as a musician or a celebrity, or even as another student, a pitiful one at that, popped up on pain meds with this janky piece of medieval steel protruding from his leg. The unknown, unrequited love, the isolation, the pain. It all dovetailed with a swift disillusionment in academia, or at least when it
came to his chosen major classical music composition. What was he trying to prove that a quote unquote serious artists belonged not on the road but in a classroom.
He didn't have to be here at Harvard.
He could be in the studio doing what he'd always wanted to do since he held that kiss record in his hands. This time there was an opportunity to cease. It was staring him in the face. Put Harvard on hold, get Weezer back together, and record a batch of new songs, transformative songs, songs that were nothing like the songs on the.
Blue album, Songs that would prove once and.
For all that he was a serious artist, that he was deep and tortured, that he really wasn't all that different from Kurt Kobein after all. It was this line of thinking that led to a decision that Rivers Cuomo would later see as one of the greatest mistakes of his professional life. Weezer's sophomore studio album, Pinkerton, was released in September of nineteen ninety six. Musically and lyrically, the
record came as a shock. The Blue album's sonic template was in part defined by their producer, Ricoques of the Cars, who turned the gain on their amplifiers all the way up but turned the volume all the way down, thus capturing a crunching guitar sound that wasn't noisy and didn't feed back. But on the self produced Pinkerton, the guitars routinely squelched out of control. The bass and the drums
were pushed into the red. Rivers, still in his Elizarov apparatus, still in physical and emotional pain, delivered raw, physical and emotional vocal performances of lyrics that were extremely personal and nakedly documented this current state of alienation.
It was an.
Abrasive about face for Wezer, and honestly, Pinkerton is fucking awesome.
This record is great.
It's so much better than the so called blue album. I don't care what anybody says. However, the intention for Rivers was to prove Weezer's biggest critics wrong. The critics hated Pinkerton, so did many of the fans. It was voted the third worst album of nineteen ninety six in a Rolling Stone reader's poll, right behind Bush's Razor Blade
Suitcase and DJ Spooky's Songs of a Dead Dreamer. And while Pinkerton did have his cohort of diehard fans, Rivers started to believe what the detractors were saying about Pinkerton. He bared it all, ripped his heart out and put it on his sleeve, beating and bloody, and no one.
Cared at all. It seemed.
The Rivers Cuomo needed a distraction, something deeper than meditation. He needed to get back to the good life, the life of the road, shaking booty and making sweet love every night. You know how the song goes. The life that once bored him to tears would now dull the heartache that he was feeling as he tried to escape that life. Make that makes sense. The Pinkerton Tour of nineteen ninety six In nineteen ninety seven was happening just
as the Internet was evolving at move fast and breakshit speed. Soon, word of the Weezer front man's sexual conquest spread to a Geocity's website with the unfortunate title Rivers l Pervo. Now on the website Rivers el Pervo fans or former fans, I don't know. They detailed both Rivers's alleged methods to select and lure women backstage like he was David Lee Roth or something, and also his again alleged interactions with
girls who were barely of legal age. Rivers freaked out when he came face to face with Rivers el Pervo. He no doubt immediately thought of the lyrics to the Pinkerton song Across the Sea. It's a song he wrote in response to an actual letter that he received from an eighteen year old female Japanese fan. The lyrics to the song layout his moral quandary in how or if he should respond to this barely legal fan, and he even wondered aloud in the song quote I wonder how
you touch yourself on quote. Not that he'd done anything wrong, not legally anyways, certainly every word out of his mouth. Now with this Rivers l Pervo website was going to be scrutinized and worse documented online. So rivers Cuomo stopped with the naked hotel room Shenanigan's. He stopped having assistant scoured the audience for women who were, you know, looking like they wanted to hang out with a rock star.
Yet rivers Cuomo's libido raged on, which is how Rivers Cromo began visiting massage parlors every show in every city now with a guaranteed happy and hush hush ending. The massage parlors offered a discrete location, offered a discrete solution. The encounters were anonymous, and these were his secrets, the secrets of a rock star, which, despite what the world thought of him, was still what rivers Cuomo yearned to be, that is, until a real rock star entered his life.
Boston the South End. Mikey Welsh walked confidently.
Into the Deluxe.
The collection of lights glowing from behind the bar made it look like it was Christmas time, even though it was spring. Mikey pushed past the collection of off duty bike messengers who went by the name of the Boston Blackouts. There were nursing bottles of high life over by the Kitchie Elvis Lamb. Mikey caught the bartender's attention in order it,
as usual, a glass of red wine. At twenty seven years old, Mikey Welsh was already a legend in the Boston rock scene, a real, if you know you know kind of dude, not to mention a hell of a bass player for bands like Heretics and Jock o' bono and Left Nut. But Mikey's notoriety was just regional again if you know you.
Know that kind of thing.
So when Mikey Welsh saw the diminutive, bespectacled dude making his way through the Deluxe, headed in his general direction and then immediately clocked him as a River's Cuomo of Weezer, one of the most badass rock dudes in Boston felt something that he didn't feel every day.
Starstruck. Hey man, are you Mikey Mikey the bass player, Rivers asked, when he was close enough.
The Bostones guy said that I should talk to you the Bostones as in the Mighty Mighty Bostones. Later, Mikey Welsh wouldn't remember exactly what he said. The words just sort of nervously tumbled from his mouth. But whatever it was, that must have been good enough, because Rivers Cromo Weezer wasted no time and asked Mikey Wells to jam with him.
Mikey didn't know it at the time.
Many didn't, but by the end of the Pinkerton tour, Matt Sharp, Weezer's bass.
Player, would be out of the band.
It wasn't the first time that Weezer had experienced turnover.
During the making of the Blue Album, founding.
Guitarist Jason Cropper was fired and replaced with Brian Bell. Matt Sharp later revealed that he was also fired like Jason before him, although Rivers says that the real reason Matt left was to focus on other band, the so called Friends of p The rentals, whatever the case, By nineteen ninety eight, Matt Sharp was out and Mikey Welsh
was in. Mikey left Boston for la moving into an apartment with Rivers on Sepulvt Boulevard in Culver City, and doing so, Rivers got a front row seat to a true rock and roll animal because Mikey Welsh was the one. Mikey was the one mixing Klonopin, speed and red wine. Mikey was the one dropping LSD right before Weezer's first secret show, playing Nirvana covers under the name Goat Punishment.
Mikey was the one tripping his balls off on no Effects as tour bus, eating mushrooms while watching a Porno.
A Fat Mike in the Gang on a large screen TV.
Mikey was the one hanging around the kinds of people your mother warned you about. Fuck Mikey was the type of person that your mother warned you about, but Mikey hung around with them because these are the types of people who had drugs. And for a guy like Mikey Welsh, not only did you play rock and roll, you got
high and yet it was dark. But to a guy like Mikey Welsh that's what rock and roll was, and Mikey brought that darkness and the danger that went along with it to Weezer in a way that Rivers Cuomo never could. And pretty soon all that darkness and danger became too much even for a rock and roll animal like Mikey Welsh to handle, because in just a few years time, as Weezer hit the biggest peak of their career to date, Mikey Welsh would go missing.
We'll be right back after this word, word word. New Year's Eve nineteen ninety eight.
Beck was talking, but Mikey Welsh could only make out every other word, something about Tommy Lee of Motley Cruze falling sideways into the bushes outside. Mikey just smiled and nodded. He was only half paying attention anyways. His mind was likely squarely fixated on the baggy of cocaine stuck inside of his pocket.
The ship waited.
A ton standing next to him, having better luck in the conversation department was Rivers Cuomo, who was chatting up their host, Gwen Stefani, who had invited the guys to her New Year's Eve party after Weezer opened a few dates. For no doubt, Rivers was obviously having a good time, and Mikey loved to see it. Over the last few months, Rivers had become something of a recluse, Depressed, not writing, the muse had packed her things and flown the coup.
Mikey couldn't help but wonder if that muse had been the guy he replaced Matt Sharp. Anyway, Mikey had been spending lots of time with the seventy two Hour Party people up in the Hollywood Hills. The benders were so insane that they bordered on lethal. It was a miracle that Mikey stumbled home alive every night. One time, he found his way back to the apartment that he shared with Rivers, only to find that his roommate had painted the walls and the ceilings of his bedroom black. He
also covered up his windows and disconnected the phone. It was just fucking weird, and it worried Mikey. But tonight New Year's Eve, he told himself that he wasn't going to worry about all that, not with back mumbling in his general direction and no doubt boring.
The shit out of him. The cocaine was calling.
Mikey asked when Stefani where the bathroom was, and then he excused himself, leaving Rivers Cormo to handle the small talk. Mikey hit the bathroom, locked the door, dumped the contents of the baggie onto the sink, rolled up a dollar bill, and snorted it all. Hours later, morning came the first
day of nineteen ninety nine. Mikey's head was pounding. He went looking for some hair of the dog, and instead found Rivers Cuomo, not hiding away in his blacked out bedroom and not nursing a hangover like Mikey as bass player, but typing furiously on his computer.
Rivers was beginning.
To catalog all of his songs in a spreadsheet, organizing them, analyzing them.
Not unlike his.
Three ring Binder of Old, in which he did the same thing with the songs of Kurt Kobein this labor intensive process was so not rock and roll, but it somehow had creatively recharged Rivers. Perhaps it was the call to action of a new Year's resolution. Years later, this academic fascination with the mechanics of the perfect pop song would inspire Rivers Cmo to use algorithms in his own songwriting, even to write an entire album with the help of
a computer formula he had developed. Mikey didn't get it. His version of rock and roll was about losing yourself, not making sense of yourself with ones and zeros. But then pretty soon nothing much was making sense to Mikey anymore. Two thousand and one was the year everything changed for Weezer. It was the year that they released their third studio album,
which became their highest charting record to date. The Green Album, as it's known, went all the way to number four on the Billboard two hundred and Just to be clear, it's called the Green Album because, like their self titled debut, it was self titled and also featured a cover photo of the band against the solid color background, this time
green instead of blue. The album was led by the rousing single hash Pipe, which Rivers called a totally insane song about a homosexual transvestite prostitute.
The Rivers wrote hash.
Pipe while using a short lived creative technique, no doubt inspired by the antics of Mikey Welsh. This technique involved chasing a riddlin pill with three shots of tequila. It proved to be unsustainable, just as Mikey Welsh's lifestyle was unsustainable, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Hashpipe combined the witty, power poppy charm of the Blue album with the sonic intensity of Pinkerton, but it did so with Rivers's very
public rejection of Pinkerton. Speaking with the press, he called Pinkerton a sick album, sick in.
A diseased way.
As he put it, he didn't care if Pinkerton was amassing its own cult of fans who loved it more than anything, who loved it more than his other records. He never wanted to play or even hear those songs ever again.
It was too painful.
Besides, he was living out his rock and roll fantasy, playing is Riddlin and Tequila song hash Pipe of the MTV Movie Awards in front of a full on pyrotechnics display that would make Gene Simmons kiss happy. But two thousand and one was not all pyrotechnics and rock and roll dreams. For Mikey Welsh, two thousand and one became a nightmare. The MTV Movie Awards were part of an
insane stretch for Weezer. They toured the States, played Coachella, played Saturday Night Live, played Late Night with Conan O'Brien toward Europe, taped Top of the Pops, and then returned back home to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. As they stepped onto the NBC studio stage in Burbank on July twenty seventh, Mikey Welsh was hanging on by a single tattered thread. His drug use had spiraled out
of control. He'd lost seventy pounds. You wouldn't know that something was wrong if you watched the Leno clip now, because Mikey Welsh is super engaged, as always, the most animated one in the group, repeatedly interacting with the crowd as the band performs the Green album's second single, Island in the Sun. But by the time and that performance aired on The Tonight Show later that evening, Mikey Welsh had disappeared. It would be days before Rivers, Brian and
Pat even knew that anything was wrong. They found it strange when Mikey didn't show up to rehearsal, a stranger still when no one in the band could reach him on the phone. It's unclear exactly how they found out, but before too long, word reached the Weezer camp that Mikey had suffered a mental breakdown shortly after taping on Jay Leno. He had tried to commit suicide by overdosing his heart nearly quit on him. He slipped into a coma, and when he regained consciousness, he discovered that he was
locked up in a psychiatric hospital. Mikey Welsh suffered from bipolar disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder. He'd gone undiagnosed his entire life and had been fueling the psychological fire with copious drug use. It was a near fatal combination. But by getting the help he needed, by leaving Weezer and the music industry, and by refocusing his creative life as a painter, Mikey Welsh was now
safe for a moment, at least. After he left Weezer, Rivers Cromo had lost his rockstar Avatar, not to mention Weezer's rock star street cred, so Rivers immediately made a call to an LA music scout with a deep roll index of professional musicians. Rivers knew and no on certain terms what he was looking for.
Send me the baddest, meanest, most evil guy you got, he said so.
In other words, the exact opposite of Rivers Cromo, and with that Weezer got their new bass player and retained their rockstar street cred. But most surprising of all, they also unknowingly set in motion the most true crimey chapter in their thirty plus year career. And when the smoke cleared, someone would be shot and wounded by the lapd and Weezer would never be looked at the same again. Scott Shriner certainly looks like Rivers Cuomo's vision of the baddest, meanest,
most evil guy. He's the one member of Weezer who has tattoos visible at east He's got a gold tooth, and when he was hired to replace Mikey Welsh on bass, he showed up with that authentic rock and roll stench, unwashed, dirty leather, smoldering Marlboro red hanging from his lip. In fact, his appearance was so narrowly the Rivers Cmo actually mistook Scott Schriner for Scott Shrine bass tech.
When he first auditioned.
But by twenty ten, when Weezer released their eighth studio album, Hurley, their fifth album with Scott, some fans of the band were no longer finding Weezer anywhere near as narrowly a Scott's appearance at that first audition, The hardcore legion of fans who were ride or Die for Pinkerton, the album that Rivers had bitterly turned his back on years prior, was only.
Growing in size.
Emo bands that had since gone on to mainstream success were shouting out, Pinkerton is a record that meant as much to them as Kisses rock and roll Over once meant to Rivers, and that same legion of fans also believed that Rivers' algorithmic songwriting methodology had cranked out the same sounding.
Record over and over and over again.
Whether it was maladroit Make Believe, the Red album, Ratitude, or Hurley, the complaint.
Was the same.
These songs about pork and beans and Beverly Hills they suck in comparison to any song off Weezer's strip Bear cathartic nineteen ninety six masterpiece Pinkerton. So when Hurley came out, one fan started a Kickstarter campaign online with a gold raise ten million dollars in order to convince Weezer to break up. The campaign fell far short of its lofty goal, but not before Weezer's drummer Patrick Wilson tweeted make it
twenty million and we'll do the deluxe breakup. One year later, in September of twenty eleven, Patrick's former bandmate Mikey Welsh was the one posting on Twitter, though unlike Patrick, Mikey wasn't joking around. On September twenty sixth, he tweeted, dreamt I died in Chicago next weekend heart attack in my sleep. Need to write my will today. Hours later, he tweeted again correction the weekend after next, and then two weeks later, on October eighth, Mikey Welsh's body was found in his
room by employees at the Raphaelo Hotel in Chicago. Prescription narcotics and a ziploc bag containing white powder presumed to be heroin, both of which were found in the scene, are thought to have contributed to Mikey's death, but the official toxicology report came back inconclusive. Mikey Welsh was just forty years old. The way in which Mikey seemingly predicted his own demise on Twitter caused the Internet to question if the whole thing was an eerie coincidence or if
it was intentional. It's a similar rabbit hole now to the one the Internet fell down to find out if Whover's Cuomo was actually Kurt Cobaine or vice versa. But when it comes to Weezer, predictability is baked into the cake, so to speak.
Where should I say?
It's mathematically determined by Rivers's very unrock and roll, very scholarly process of cataloging, writing, and arranging songs. And I don't mean that as a pejorative folly.
I guess I.
Mean I like some Weezer as much as the next guy, but not as much as I like Pinkerton Wheezer. This is a band that released an album of covers in twenty nineteen, mostly songs from the nineteen eighties, performing them note for note with zero hints of irony. And with that, it's not a lot of creative risks, which is what makes the events of April eighth, twenty twenty five not just unpredictable but shocking.
This morning a true hardwood crime with all the twists and turns.
Of a blockbuster.
But she just looked at it up Jillian Schriiner. The Life of bass guitarist Scott Schwiner shot by Plenty's and arrested for attempted murder, multiple commands given to drop the guy and drop the weapon. There were three men and one of them in the cop for him right now, Please say they then shot Shrine.
There is not a clear view of what she did with that firearm, and it's not clear at case time if she fired, if the officers or not.
You see in this body camera footage lying face down in the middle of the street. Arms are stretched out wide. He's injured, but a line.
The whole thing was surreal, like a white knuckle standoff in the Sergio Leoni film. On one side of a weathered wooden fence, members of the LAPD in the California Highway Patrol, their service weapons drawn, safeties off, standing their ground. On the other side, Gillian Lauren aka Jillian Shriner aka the wife of Weezer's bass player Scott Shiner, pacing barefoot in the backyard of her Eagle Rock home with a
block nine millimeter in her right hand. Just moments earlier, had been in pursuit on foot of the suspect from a hit and run incident, but the chase was interrupted when Jillian Shriner unexpectedly emerged from her house holding a loaded gun. The cops identified themselves, repeatedly shouting at Jillian to drop her weapon.
She did not comply.
Instead, she raised the glock, pulled the trigger, and fired. The cops returned fire.
Immediately, unloading twelve rounds in the bass player of Weezer's wife's direction. One of the bullets caught her in the arm.
She turned, retreating inside her house until about an hour later, when she at last surrendered, was arrested, and was subsequently charged with the attempted murder of a peace officer, all while and I shit.
You not wearing a Weezer T shirt.
Nearly six months later, a judge determined that Jillian Shriner was eligible for her mental health diversion, meaning no jail time. As she complied with the court's demand to ten therapy, to swear off firearms, and to avoid the use of drugs and alcohol for two years, all charges would be dropped. There are questions over what Gillian was able to hear during the altercation and exactly who or what she thought
was on the other side of that fence. A police helicopter was reportedly circling overhead the whole time, making it hard to hear anything clearly. One neighbor said that a stranger, possibly the hit and run suspect, had jumped the fence into Gillian's yard, and that Gillian had seen this happen while still inside her house, and she was home alone with her two children at the time, so she grabbed
her gun and sprung into protect her mode. Details like these matter, of course, but for Weezer, and for Weezer's fans, the bigger shock is more simple. Weezer were not supposed to be a band that got within ten miles of a violent confrontation of guns drawn cops shouting blood spilled. Rivers wasn't built that way. Rivers Cuomo went from a massage parlor enthusiast in the nineteen nineties to a guy who took a self imposed vow of celibacy for years
in the two thousands. He wasn't the hard living Mikey Welsh, he wasn't the hard looking Scott Shreiner, and he certainly wasn't Kurt Kobe, no matter what they tell you. Instead, he was the spreadsheet guy, the analyst. Rock and roll was something he could examine, catalog and control, but the feral lifeblood that is.
Rock and roll, it kept showing up anyways.
It was there and some of the men that he called his bandmates, and then again in the wild life surrounding.
One of them.
And so in the end the world looked at Weezer a little differently than they had in the beginning, which is to say the band had a dark side after all, a serious side, a side that could veer off to the margins and flirt with this grace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. All right, guys, thanks for checking out another episode of Disgraceland, this episode on Weezer.
Listen before we get into the Question of the Week.
If you do not have automatic.
Downloads turned on in Apple Podcasts, please make sure that you do that so you get every single Disgraceland episode automatically on your phone as it's released. Now for the Question of the Week, we talked about my favorite Weezer album in this episode, that being Pinkerton, which is their weirdest album, and it just begs the question, I think, which record by which band is your favorite? That is all so their weirdest, their biggest outlier.
The album that.
Doesn't necessarily sound like the band sounds on their other albums, but.
Is still great.
Okay, let me know six one seven nine oh six sixty six three eight voicemail and text at disgrace Lampod on thesocials disgrace Lampod at gmail dot com.
You want to.
Email me, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network.
In iHeart Podcasts.
Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
We really appreciate it, and.
If not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod dot com slash Membership members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free, rate and review the show, and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook at disgracelampod and on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at disgracelamp Odd rock a Roller.
He's a bad, bad man.