| Songs From The Black Hole |
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HISTORY Most of the album was recorded by Cuomo in 8-track form at his home in Connecticut . On these tapes he wrote all the lyrics and music, and played all the parts himself. The characters were to be Jonas (played by Rivers), Lisa (played by Rachel Haden of That Dog. ), Maria (played by Joan Wasser of the Dambuilders ), Wuan & Danno (played by Matt Sharp and Brian Bell of weezer), and a robot, M1 (played by Karl Koch , weezer's unofficial fifth member and band historian). Until recently, Joan was unaware of Rivers' intention of having her play a role on the album. To this day, SFTBH tracks remain a ) , and several more were modified and added to Weezer's second official release, ''Pinkerton''. Nevertheless, many fans hope to one day see the entire album released in its original form (as unfinished as it remains). The SFTBH material resurfaced (albeit briefly) on October 4th, 2005 during a Weezer show at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois. The band invited a fan up onstage to play the rhythm guitar for Undone - The Sweater Song. The fan took advantage of this moment to attempt to get the band to play "Blast Off!" by beginning to play the intro to the song and sang the first four lines of the song before Rivers laughed and jokingly pushed him away from the mic. After they finished "Undone", Weezer guitarist Brian Bell and Rivers all shared a nice laugh at the fan's clever idea. In early 2006 a low-quality video bootleg of the show began to circulate around various Weezer message boards and included the fan's special performance of "Undone" and Rivers' subsequent reaction. Three copies of the album are known to exist in CD-R form. Two of them are in the care of Karl Koch, while the third copy is in Rivers' personal archive. These CDs contain the tracks from tracklist 2 (see below). TRACK LISTING Of the two tracklists composed for the album, the second tracklist is supposedly closer to what the finished album's tracklist would have looked like. Rivers compiled the second tracklist using several newly recorded songs and one mid 1994 demo that was not previously part of the album concept, and took out numerous songs that apparently were no longer needed, either due to their new status as 'real' second album songs, or due to simple creative changes of heart. Tracklist 1 #" Blast Off! " #" You Won't Get With Me Tonight " #"Maria's Theme" #"Come to my Pod" #"This is not For Me" #" Tired Of Sex " #" Superfriend " #"She's Had a Girl" #"Good News!" #"Now I Finally See" #" Getchoo " #"I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams" #" No Other One " #" Devotion " #"What is This I Find?" #" Longtime Sunshine " #"Longtime Sunshine (reprise)" Tracklist 2 #" Blast Off! " #"Who You Callin' Bitch?" #"Oh Jonas" (renamed from "Maria's Theme") #"Please Remember" #"Come to My Pod" #"Oh No This is Not for Me" #" Tired Of Sex " #"She's Had a Girl" #"Dude, We're Finally Landing" (renamed from "Good News!") #"Now I Finally See" #" I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams " #" Superfriend " #"Superfriend Reprise" #"You Won't Get With Me Tonight" #"What is This I Find?" Other Songs #" Why Bother? " #"Waiting on You" #"Longtime Sunshine: Special 'Coda' Mix experiment" Note: these songs are not officially on either tracklist but were worked on along with the rest of the SFTBH tracks at the time. The Special Coda Mix is an overlapping medley of vocals from "Longtime Sunshine", "Why Bother?", "Waiting on You", "Blast Off!", and possibly other songs. Songs 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 12, and 16 on tracklist 1 are available online. "You Won't Get With Me Tonight" may also be found on the compilation disk " Gimme Skelter " by Buddyhead Records . "I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams" and "Waiting on You" may be found on " The Good Life - OZ EP " single and "Devotion" may be found on the " El Scorcho " single. A poor quality version of "Superfriend" can be found on the Weezer DVD, '' Video Capture Device ''. Formal studio versions of "Tired of Sex", "Getchoo", "No Other One", and "Why Bother?" are available on '' Pinkerton ''. THE FUTURE Rivers Cuomo has stated on his myspace blog that he is unable to release any of his demos (including Black Hole songs) because of his contractual obligations to Geffen Records . Geffen has the exclusive right to release his music: "...Someday that may change but it won’t be anytime soon...Until I can figure out a way to compensate Geffen records (and in the case of covers songs, the songwriters) I can’t give away my recordings." In his blog, Rivers also talked about playing his demos to Jordan Schur, the president of Weezer's label, Geffen Records: "...when we were starting to work on Make Believe in 2003, I sat down with Jordan and played him hours of my old demos, going all the way back to the beginnings of Weezer. He didn’t think any of them were album-worthy. Neither did I. The one song he thought was good was “Blast Off” but it “needs a new chorus.” I agreed." But Rivers did leave fans with some hope that the songs could eventually be heard: "Thanks to all who have expressed their interest in my unreleased recordings. I hope that everything of quality is eventually made available." In a recent interview, commenting on speculation that '' Make Believe '' would be Weezer's last album, Pat Wilson (the band's drummer) stated that he would be interested in releasing a compilation of "lost" Weezer tracks. This fueled rumours that the band would release previously unheard Black Hole songs or a completely re-worked version of the "Songs from the Black Hole" concept album in the near future. Rivers' photo on his mySpace page on December 25th, 2005 was an image of the Wonder Twins , "sidekicks to the Super Friends in the Hanna-Barbera animated television series of the same name". Some fans believed that this was a sign that the 2005 holiday treat would be a high quality mp3 of "Superfriend" but this was later proved to be false. On April 30th 2006, Rivers released lyrics to the unheard SFTBH songs "Who You Callin Bitch?", "Oh Jonas", "Please Remember", "She's Had a Girl", "Now I Finally See" on his MySpace blog. Rivers also released this statement in his blog, and in the process confirmed that the home recordings of the black hole songs will be released sometime in the future: "Thanks for your interest in these songs! I'm putting up the lyrics now because I suddenly realized that I can. I'll also put up the sheet music (when I have time) so that you can play them for each other! I'll release my home demos as soon as I am legally able." It is unclear however if the recent online petition which garnered over 1000 signatures has influenced his decision. EXTERNAL LINKS
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