By Bryan Menegus
I recently met up with Bomb the Music Industry singer Jeff Rosenstock outside Silent Barn- a well-kept secret of the punk scene in Queens; part oversized apartment, part art installation and part venue- to discuss their Weezer covers shows that took place this past weekend. The show consisted of the entirety of The Blue Album and “Pinkerton,” broken up into two sets, with a second band sandwiched in between. After helping a band mate work out a xylophone part to soon-to-be-played ‘Across the Sea,’ Jeff answered my questions while walking to a nearby bodega for a popsicle.
The Chronicle: Why a Weezer show?
Jeff Rosenstock: These two records (“The Blue Album” and “Pinkerton”) are amazing, and we had heard that they were doing “The Blue Album/Pinkerton” tour. The second I read that I was like, ‘man these are gonna be like 75 bucks to go to; if I even wanted to go I wouldn’t be able to afford it.’ If went, it would be the most boring replaying of these records, ever. Weezer are bad now. Weezer’s new records are not good. Everything from this era is so amazing, we thought it would be really funny if we were like “okay, let’s do a punked-out version of this show.”
TC: How does this compare to (your previous band) ASOB’s cover shows, playing as Radiohead or Nirvana?
JR: Those were way different. Those were, like, Halloween shows where we sat down and tried to rearrange everything and make it kind of suit a ska band or a punk or whatever. And with this, we wanted to do it straight-on, just fucking rock these songs out as much as possible. When you listen to anything from this era, there’s no room for improvement and nothing that you could change that wouldn’t make it worse, I think. We just wanted to do it with some energy and some heart behind it instead of the idea of making money behind it
TC: What are your thoughts on the decline of Weezer?
JR: I guess I don’t really care all that much, because they put out two records that are just so good. I didn’t want this to be a ‘yo, f–k Weezer’ type of thing. We like this era so much. If say, Bridge and Tunnel were gonna play both of these records, I’d be like ‘f–k yes, I’m gonna be there and that’s gonna be awesome.’ So we figured somebody’s gotta do it.
TC: Weezer were recently offered 10 million dollars by an aggravated fan to break up. Would Bomb the Music Industry take 10 million to throw in the towel?
JR: We’d take ten million dollars to break up! We’d just all start another band together, and call it something else…or not, and just have ten million dollars. We’ve had such a good time so far, that if everyone was like, ‘alright, that’s it,’ I’d be like, ‘okay, that’s fine, we’ve done everything beyond what I’ve ever expected we were gonna do.’ Ten million dollars would be pretty great. I’m not making Weezer money though. That [offer] must hurt their feelings a little bit.
TC: I heard their drummer responded by saying if they could get 20 million, they would give a ‘Deluxe Breakup’. I think they took it with a smile.
*laughing* Good for them. They’re laughing all the way to the bank.
Who’s the band playing right now?
Signals Midwest is playing tonight. They are friends of ours from Cleveland who just happened to be in town tonight. Figured, yeah, let’s play with them, they’re good buddies and we play together whenever we’re in Cleveland, and the kid, Max (vocals, guitar), has set us up with so many shows.
How do you guys find these other bands?
I don’t know where we fit into it, but I have an insane amount of appreciation for all these bands that we’re friends with, like Good Luck and Cheap Girls and Andrew Jackson Jihad, The Cans and So Many Dyanmos. *While eating stars and stripes popsicle* I think we all really appreciate what we’re doing, because we’re all punk rock bands but none of us really play three-chord punk rock, so I think that’s kind of drawn us to each other.
Plans for the future of Bomb?
I have no idea. We’re going to Europe. Hopefully we won’t die. Come home. Make a new record, and hopefully…people will like it. But who knows, people will probably not like it. I think it’s okay though. There are a bunch of songs that are written for it. I don’t know how to describe it yet. There are a lot of long songs on it. A lot of shredding and a lot of falsetto- that must come from these Weezer shows.