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[miles]

TOUAMB NEWS ALERT:  PAT SIGHTING
Maybe there should be a Pat sighting thread.

Someone wrote my Univerisity's newspaper in response to a review of an All-American Rejects (AAR) album.  I pasted the text below because you'll probably have to register if you click the link.

It's not exactly Pat, but, well, it's close, I think:

Hogan was wrong about All-American Rejects
Issue date: 1/23/06 Section: Letters to the Editor

Editor:

I read the review of The All-American Rejects by Marshal Hogan ("All-American refuse belongs in landfill" Jan. 18), and was thoroughly appalled at how far off in right field his review was.

I don't know Hogan well enough to know if he actually listens to the music or just hits the scan button on his CD player. If he had taken the time to listen to the album, he would have found that the first 10 seconds of the album have a catchy guitar riff that ensnares the listener to keep listening.

I consider myself to be an avid music lover who knows music like the back of my hand. I don't know if you, Hogan, have ever heard of a little band called Weezer.

Weezer uses a "recipe" when it creates its songs, and they turn out to be fantastic. A vast majority of Weezer's songs deal with love, being in love, women, girls-just as Hogan states about AAR, "The album is full of formulaic predictability-dual vocal choruses about breakups, makeups or just plain being in love."?

Just about any Weezer song fits his criteria for what he calls a "pile of wreckage."

Here is a tip for Hogan: sit in your car, turn on the title track, "Move Along," (that is track No. 3, if you actually bothered to look at the album cover) and turn it up as loud as your deaf ears can stand, and play it over and over till you can hear just how good the drums and bass are.

How popular was Weezer's second album Pinkerton when it first came out? Not very. But every Weezer fan I know thinks that Pinkerton is its best album. It is also their second album, just like Move?Along is AAR's second album-so pull your head out of your butt so you can hear just how good of an album it is.

Drew Williamsen
Senior, Mass Communication

[V-Adore]

"a little band called Weezer" swayed me over. It's Pat, but about totally mainstream stuff! Holy crap!

[Thee]

That made me dumber.

Dumber

[Doc]

That's something else, a wonderfully supercillious defense of mainstream music.

[JorgeFabregas]

Every band's second album is awesome.

[Hobo Frenzy]

Don't you mean sophomore album?

[jough]

Oh wow.  That's so not the case.

I mean, it's a cliche that sophmore albums tend to suck.  Weezer is an exception, sure, but for the most part it's accurate.

The band has umpteen years to put together their first album.  They've hashed out songs in shitty bars and bat mitzvahs up and down the coast, and honed them to a science.  It may take ten years to put together a great album's worth of songs, but the proof is in the listening.

Then they make it big, go on tour playing the same songs, and enjoy being rock stars.

Then they go into the studio for two weeks and crank out a second album as fast as they can.

It almost has to suck.  It's science.

Then they either get their shit together and put out a really great third album, or never rise above their mediocrity every again and they become "one hit wonders."

Artists whose second albums did not suck:

The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Jimi Hendrix
Weezer
Nirvana (regardless of whether you consider Bleach or Nevermind their first big album)

I'm drawing a blank after that.

[Thee]

The Stooges
Beck
Pixies
Cake

[V-Adore]

I will argue that R.E.M.'s sophomore effort (I'm gonna say it's Murmur here and count Chronic Town as a real album) didn't suck, but about the first three CDs R.E.M. put out were all from the same "ten years fiddling" back-catalog, so it's hard to say.

[JorgeFabregas]

Upwardly mobile slinkies, people. I was demonstrating the ridiculousness of his comparison of albums based on the ORDER THEY CAME OUT. William Hung's second album will get a lukewarm reception, but people will eventually come to agree that it's his best--JUST LIKE WEEZER.

[Limmo]

Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique   

Smashing Pumpkins – siamese dream

Jimi Hendrix – Axis: Bold As Love

Nirvana – Nevermind

Frank Black – Teenager of the Year

Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back

Beck – Odelay!

My Bloody Valentine – Loveless

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica

Jefferson Airplane: Surrealistic Pillow

Jane’s Addiction: Nothing’s Shocking

Neil Young – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Black Sabbath – Paranoid

The Stooges – Fun House

Radiohead: The Bends

Elvis Costello and the Attractions: This Year’s Model

The Pixies: Doolittle 

Queen II

The Velvet Underground: White Light/White Heat

PJ Harvey: Rid of Me

[jough]

Well, some of those you mentioned are among those bands' worst albums, but I just want to correct that "Odelay" was not Beck's second album, but his third.

[CortJstr]

I just want to correct that "Odelay" was not Beck's second album, but his third.

I thought we were defining "sophomore album" as the the album released after a band attains commercial success not necessarily as their 2nd album ever.

[theinevitable]

shit shit shit

did this boy seriously say that Weezer wrote their songs by formula on the 2nd album???


The whole reason Rivers had a complete mental breakdown and took like 6 years off is that pinkerton had no songs written by pop-music formula. it did horribly, and he thought he had essentially failed at life.
the famous "songs written by analyzing the chord progressions of Nirvana songs" didn't come until later. You know, when they started mostly sucking.


That first album is, as far as I care, their best. The second, perhaps just as good, but not my favorite.

internet pat, who is not the real pat, you are not my friend.

[miles]

Well, some of those you mentioned are among those bands' worst albums, but I just want to correct that "Odelay" was not Beck's second album, but his third.

Which ones?  I don't much like The Bends, but I don't much like Radiohead, so I can't really judge.  Same with PJ Harvey, Beck, and Elvis Costello.  But I think every other album listed is a really good one, and in some cases, my favorite of the band's (Pixies, for example).