McHank’s Column #1 – Weezer’s Pinkerton

In 1996, I had moved out of my house and from San Jose to San Diego. I didn’t have ANY money, and I had very few friends in San Diego, and the ones I did have, I didn’t get to see very often. I worked at The Juice Club on Robinson in Hillcrest, (it’s still there but it’s Jamba Juice now) and I would leave work and go to Blockbuster music and sit for hours trying CDs on headphones. I didn’t think I was a Weezer fan at that point but the Pinkerton album cover lured me in, and I listened. I remember the first time I did I only liked one song, but I wanted to like more.

Over the next few days I’d find that “Buddy Holly” was on the Juice Club tape looping every 90 minutes, and I’d started to look forward to it every time it came on. So I kept trying and kept trying. 
This album grew on me through those Blockbuster music headphones to the point where I liked each song, one song at a time, but I knew I HAD to get this album the next time I got paid.

I loved it so much that I started listening to the Blue Record, which I had dismissed when my friend’s roommate, Jason, was WAY into it initially. It was such a departure from the Fugazi/ Jawbox/ Tool / Sunny Day Real Estate regime I had loved so much, but it wasn’t such a departure from Radiohead (we’re talking the Bends era… which is an album I fell in love with when it wasn’t that cool to love Radiohead, because they had released that turd Pablo Honey, which yes, I still think of PH as a turd).

So, I finally got this CD, and felt like I could relate every song to something in my life at that time. That is powerful.

I turned all my friends on to it, and it turned out a few of them had kind of been digging the Blue Album but weren’t sure of what to make of Weezer. I even saved up and bought the vinyl of this at Off The Record on 5th Ave in San Diego back then, and I wrote to their fan club and got a booklet with the lyrics back in my SASE.

I still have that inside that record.

The way I related to this song was that all my friends and crushes were back in San Jose, and I was what may has well have been half a world away.