At Rock on Wall, we love series - not the inept soap operas that TV serves us by the mile to prevent us from thinking, but rather the vinyl record covers that echo each other through a logo, a character, a layout, or a theme, thus creating a common thread throughout an artist's or band's career. So we decided to share with you our favorite series, starting with the "college radio band" Weezer, and hoping to infect you with the virus of the quest for the lost series!
Anti-Radiohead
Weezer is a rather anecdotical band that has never been taken seriously by critics, a kind of anti-Radiohead that hit the jackpot with a few singles based on mi-la-ré-sol (Buddy Holy, Island In The Sun) surrounded by a lot of "fillers". But if by chance you fell in love with them when you were little, your unconditional love for the L.A. quartet with saturated guitars is probably proportional to the aggressiveness you will display towards anyone who dares to speak ill of them. You will have understood that we belong to the second category. In 25 years of a career that began in 1992, Weezer has given us no less than 10 albums that we will refrain from criticizing here (for a ranking of their discography from worst to best, we highly recommend reading this article) to focus only on this graphic accident that is the reunion of the "blue", "green", "red" and "white" albums.
Century Gothic
The story begins with the release of the "blue album" in 1994, on whose cover you can see the 4 original members of the band in a row on a blue background. The least we can say is that our young musicians do not exude glamour. The band's name appears in black in a custom font very close to Century Gothic - we don't yet know that it will become a real logo. This cover is attributed to Karl Koch, self-proclaimed webmaster, historian, archivist, and unofficial 5th member of the band. The image, easy to détourner, has given rise to numerous parodies and the rare version on which the protagonists' feet appear is the Holy Grail of any self-respecting Weezer fan.
Visible feet
The "Green album", released in 2001, marks the band's return after a 5-year break that we feared would be permanent. The similarities with the blue album (same logo, same plain background, same row) are as striking as the differences: oversized name, neat look, hairdresser budget, visible feet showing a mix of sneakers and patent leather loafers, and above all a rock'n'roll pose - it's amazing how an electric guitar can change the atmosphere. This nod to the first album was a way of saying: we are back. As an anecdote, the background color was chosen by Rivers Cuomo, their psychopathic leader, from different versions displayed on the shelves of a record store: that's professional!
Village People
The "Red Album" is already the band's 6th. It was released in 2008, 7 years after the "green" and 14 years after the "blue" (are you following me?). Again, identical logo, neutral background and band in a row. But this time, a small halo effect is added to the logo and above all, the musicians are photographed bust-length and in such bizarre outfits that fans and the press initially thought it was a joke. The influential webzine Pitchfork even compared them to the Village People with, from left to right, the bartender, the professor, the cowboy and the biker.
At the top of cool
With this frequency of 7 years between the band's monochromatic albums, we expect (at least I expect) a new color for 2015: wrong (by not much) since the "white album" was released in April 2016! Logo: checked! In a row: checked! Monochrome: almost checked! But there is more to see on this cover than on the other three combined: here we are in Venice Beach on a Sunday, between a languid couple and a bracelet seeker, as if to remind us that Weezer's music owes a lot to the Beach Boys and that the band will always be at the top of cool.
Well, maybe we invented these links between 4 vinyl record covers released over two decades, but in the end, it's high-level "rock on the wall"!
