For those who don’t know about it, this tradition dates back to 2007, when I put together a Christmas compilation with the help of my LiveJournal friends. I wanted to put my favourite Christmassy songs together, but I also wanted to discover some new, interesting and slightly obscurer festive tracks. This album was the result. It’s been tweaked a little most years since, but the core structure and rules remain the same: it’s largely indie/alternative, but with a couple of more well-known and poppier tracks in there. In general, it’s supposed to consist of the tracks that you don’t just hear in every shop you walk into in December. So even if they’re good, you won’t hear things like “Christmas Wrappin’” or “Stop The Cavalry” here.

(The one exception is “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, which thanks to its status as The Greatest Christmas Song Of Them All is featured not only in its original form but also as a surprisingly excellent cover by My Chemical Romance)

This year, I’ve subbed in and out a couple of tracks – Jonathan Coulton’s “Chiron Beta Prime” and She & Him’s new version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” were the things I wanted to add, so Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and the Pogues have made way (the latter because… well, as great as it is, it doesn’t really fit here, because it’s so widely-heard over the season).

Of course, if you like some of my choices but not all, you’re perfectly welcome to sub in your own tracks to make your own version! The album as it is here, though, is specifically designed to clock in at just under 80 minutes, and so to fit perfectly onto a CD-R should you wish.

Merry Chrimbo, and enjoy!

Download Now That’s What Seb Calls A Christmas Album! (2011 edition) (via Dropbox)

1. Vince Guaraldi Trio – Christmas Time Is Here (2:44)
2. Murray Gold & Neil Hannon – Song For Ten (3:29)
3. Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You (4:01)
4. Fountains of Wayne – I Want an Alien For Christmas (2:19)
5. Loudon Wainwright III – Christmas Morning (3:49)
6. Low – Just Like Christmas (3:08)
7. The Ronettes – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (2:41)
8. The Ventures – Sleigh Ride (2:22)
9. Grandaddy – Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland (2:59)
10. Bright Eyes – Blue Christmas (2:19)
11. Eels – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas (2:48)
12. The Vandals – Oi To The World (2:15)
13. The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick (2:10)
14. Zombina & The Skeletones – A Chainsaw For Christmas (3:11)
15. The Ramones – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight) (2:06)
16. The Kinks – Father Christmas (3:43)
17. Rilo Kiley – Xmas Cake (5:24)
18. Jonathan Coulton – Chiron Beta Prime (2:51)
19. Spitting Image – Santa Claus Is On The Dole (3:48)
20. The Long Blondes – Christmas is Cancelled (4:29)
21. Half Man Half Biscuit – It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas (3:48)
22. She & Him – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (3:42)
23. Badly Drawn Boy – Donna and Blitzen (4:19)
24. My Chemical Romance – All I Want For Christmas Is You (3:45)

It’s an oft-stated truism that there aren’t enough “strong female characters” in movies. But it’s also a truism that whenever people do decide to put together a list of “strong female characters” from movies, they tend to zoom in on one particular word – and one particular interpretation of that word – and focus on discussing characters who are, literally, physically “strong”. Look up any list of the best female characters in film, and you’ll usually be presented with a list that is largely made up of (with the exception of perennial favourites Holly Golightly and Annie Hall) ass-kicking action heroines such as Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley, The Bride, Trinity, assorted Milla Jovovich characters, and so on.

Some of these deserve their places on these lists (I’ll fight anyone who dares argue that Ripley, in the second film especially, isn’t the greatest action movie heroine of all time), and some probably don’t (hello Lara Croft). But I’ve also noticed a name that these lists don’t often tend to include – Fargo‘s Marge Gunderson. This despite the fact that she is, for my money, one of the best female characters in movie history. So in honour of International Women’s Day, and inspired in part by this latest from Kate Beaton showing up this morning, here’s a little bit about why.

Marge is the emotional centre of Fargo, a dark and violent black comedy about nasty and/or misguided people doing nasty things to one-another. She’s intelligent (showing a Holmesian display of deductive reasoning when first visiting the initial crime scene), kind, empathetic, insightful, funny, and satisfied with her lot – enjoying her work and a healthy and loving relationship with her husband that, while it doesn’t necessarily subvert traditional gender roles, certainly blurs them (their memorable introductory appearance is a flip on the classic “sleepy cop answers phone in middle of night” routine, as Marge takes the call while Norm trundles out of bed to make her some eggs).

Quite crucially, however, part of what makes Marge so great is the fact that she’s a woman. A problem with so many female characters considered as “strong” is that in order to be so, they’ve often had to make themselves become more like a man (Sarah Connor syndrome, if you like), taking on physical and/or emotional characteristics that enable them to play the same role as a traditional male hero. But in Fargo, although Marge is not averse to kicking ass and taking names – remember that she single-handedly brings down the brutal murderer Grimsrud with a well-placed gunshot – it’s her gender that sets her apart from everyone else in the film.

Fargo is all about the failures and incompetencies of men – men who succumb to rapacious lusts and desires (primarily for money, but let’s not forget the significance of the somewhat grim sequence in which the two kidnappers enjoy the services of a pair of bored prostitutes) – but at the centre of it all is Marge, the only truly competent person either on the side of the good or the bad. All around her are men acting or being stupid – Jerry, Carl and Graer, Lou (“I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou”), even her old high-school classmate Mike – and she just calmly gets on with doing the right thing, the right way.

In addition to the powers of deduction that make her such a great cop, Marge’s intelligence is emotional, as well. Throughout the film, she instinctively knows how to approach characters in exactly the right way – taking different tones and approaches to the extent that she never comes off the worst out of a conversation (or an interrogation). Not that there ever seems to be anything planned or cynical about this – it’s just the way she is. And if I can say this without it sounding patronising, a huge part of this is undoubtedly the fact that she’s a woman (and an expectant mother, at that), making her empathy seem all that more natural.

In this manner, Marge “kicks ass” in a far greater way than any literal instance of high-kicking or smart-mouthed sassy quips from a hundred “empowered” (yet still strangely over-sexualized) cinematic peers. And she even finds time to be the film’s philosopher, as demonstrated by this really quite profound (and spoilerfic, obviously) sequence towards the end. A superb creation in both writing and performance (the film rightly won Academy Awards for both elements – the role being the finest and most nuanced moment in the particularly exceptional career of Frances McDormand, one of the best screen actors – male or female – of the last fifty years), she may not have the complex intrigue of Annie Hall, or the sheer bloody-minded determination and will of Ripley, but Marge Gunderson is still undoubtedly one of cinema’s greatest ever women.

“Hautman’s blue-winged teal got the 29-cent. People don’t much use the three-cent.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Of course they do. Whenever they raise the postage, people need the little stamps.”

I’ve been watching lately a fair few episodes from what I’d call the “Late Imperial” era of The Simpsons - that is, the era in which, at its best, it was still the best thing on television; but in which it wasn’t hitting its “best” with every episode. This has largely involved watching most of season eight, but I’ve also watched odds and sods from seasons seven and nine as well. And this got me thinking in more detail about a theory I’ve had for a little while, which is this:

I believe a Simpsons episode is more likely to be good if it opens with an in-universe TV show/film/radio show than if it doesn’t.

I’ve come up with this theory based on the fact that the “show within a show” kinds of fiction (largely covering TV shows, but also including movies and radio stations) often tend to be among the funniest and most memorable moments in the series’ history (particularly when they involve Krusty, Kent Brockman or Troy McClure). And for some reason, when an episode opens with one of these scenes, it instantly feels sharper and more imaginative than one that just brings us in to a random scene somewhere in Springfield or at the Simpsons’ home. This is particularly noticeable during these later seasons (and when I say “later”, I mean “later in the good period” – we’re going by the assumption that the programme is largely not worth watching, and thus non-existent in my head, after around season eleven), when it’s the more dull and boring episodes that seem to start in this mundane way, and the better ones that give the laughs by opening with – for example – the Krusty Komedy Klassic, or an edition of Eye on Springfield. It therefore feels to me like I’m simply more likely to enjoy an episode if it’s got one of these opening scenes (which from now on I’m referring to as “TV openings”, even though they also covers other forms of media).

So, I’ve decided to test it out. And count up data in Excel. And turn it into a graph. Because that’s how I roll.

The test, then, goes like this. I’m going through four seasons – the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth. This is because I think figures would be unfairly skewed by looking either at the first five seasons (during which the show is as close to consistently perfect as anything can be, and so attempting to graph it would be useless), or any from the tenth onwards (where I simply don’t know a lot of the episodes well enough to pass judgement on them, or where I know that the majority are too weak to offer fair data). This “middle period”, however, seems to be the most variable in quality – in that there can be utterly fantastic episodes in the same season as major stinkers – and so the most interesting to test out.

For each season, I’ve listed the episodes and – from memory, without looking them up or checking whether or not they have TV openings in order to avoid subconsciously skewing the data – given each my own rating out of 5. It’s worth noting that these are my own, personal opinions – I’m basing this survey on my taste, and not on any sort of general consensus or view of objective quality. I’ve also excluded, in each season, the Treehouse of Horrors and clip shows (or, in season eight’s case, the Spin-Off Showcase), as they stand somewhat separately from “normal” judgement. Finally, I’ve gone through and marked out which episodes count as having “TV openings” (there’s got to be a better phrase for this, right?), and which ones don’t. Here are the ground rules:

- The first scene of the episode has to feature an in-universe TV show, movie or radio programme, being watched/listened to by onscreen characters
- For the most part, the first shot of the episode should be a shot of the screen in question. However, I’m also allowing episodes that have an establishing shot (e.g. Bart and Lisa switching on the TV in In Marge We Trust) so long as it’s clear that the TV show is still part of the first scene
- Circumstances where the TV show in question is talking to us the viewer (rather than characters onscreen) shouldn’t count. Since I’ve excluded clip shows, Treehouse and the Spin-Off Showcase, though, I think the only example of this is The Springfield Files.

After that, I gave an average rating for each season, and then for each season’s episodes with and without the TV openings. And then I put it all in a graph. So without any further ado… on with the data!

Season Six
Although this season has a couple of episodes I’m not keen on – Bart vs Australia is the first ep, post-season-one, that I’d only rate at 2 out of 5 – it’s still remarkably strong on the whole. The average rating is 4.26. Nine of these episodes have TV openings, and they’re all pretty spectacularly good – five get the full 5/5 rating, and four get 4. Therefore, their average is a whopping 4.56. Meanwhile, the average of the 14 “without” is a mere 4.07. So far, so good.

Season Seven
The average ratings start to drop with this season – down to 3.57 already. Things are also much closer when testing the hypothesis – of the seven episodes that have TV openings, only one is a 5er (Two Bad Neighbors: “It’s the grand nationals of sand-castle building… preview!”) , while there’s also one I’d only rate at 2 (Scenes From The Class Struggle In Springfield, which opens with the family watching Bumblebee Man – I’m being generous by counting it). This all makes for an average of just 3.57. Meanwhile, of the remaining sixteen eps, there are four stone-cold classics (including Radioactive Man and Team Homer), and despite some clunkers, there’s an overall average of 3.56. So for season seven, it seems clear that opening with a fictional TV show doesn’t really make a difference.

Season Eight
Ah, the season whose watching caused me to have this theory in the first place. Will the figures bear it out? Well, the overall season rating is down again, to 3.48. But we’ve got seven TV openers again – and this time it’s a much stronger crop. The average rating is 4.00, with an excellent set that includes Bart After Dark and Homer’s Enemy. Even the weak My Sister, My Sitter (opening with an Eye on Springfield ep) can’t bring the average down too much. Elsewhere, though, it’s disappointment – the remaining sixteen episodes only average at 3.25, despite including Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment and You Only Move Twice. So in season eight the contrast is much more stark – the funnier, more imaginative episodes, on the whole tend to open with footage of a spoof TV show or film. But the mundane episodes on which this season often falls back are easily identifiable by not doing so.

Season Nine
Finally, a season that does still have its moments, but also a lot of duff filler. Average rating is just 3.30 – the only five-star ep I’d count in the entire season is The Trouble With Trillions. Interestingly, though, that ep doesn’t actually fall in the TV openings – and all of a sudden, my theory is thrown out somewhat. Because the five TV-opener eps include two rated at only 2/5 – making for an average of 3.30. This compares with the rest of the season’s average of 3.39. It seems that by this point, the makers had got bored of these sharp and funny pop culture spoofs – and as a result, the episodes that feature them are no longer generally the funniest.

Here, then, is how those four series graph against one-another:

ON THE WHOLE, HOWEVER
Despite season nine being the one at which the bottom falls out of my theory, it still just about holds true over the course of the four seasons. Of 92 episodes counted, with an overall average rating of 3.65, there are 28 with “TV openings” – and they hold an average score of 3.89. Meanwhile, the episodes that don’t have them only average 3.55. Therefore, the results are clear: Simpsons episodes that open with a spoof TV show or movie are (a bit) more likely to make me laugh than ones that don’t.

There. Was it worth all that? Probably not. But graphs are fun. And my mom says I’m cool.

If you want to browse more Blackwell excellence, there’s now – finally – a pretty much complete archive online, courtesy of this excellent site (a far cry from the days when searching for “…Dukla Prague Away Kit” lyrics would give you reference to something called “Sub-U-Dome”). And if you’ve never listened to HMHB, in the Spotify age there’s really no excuse not to start.

It’s funny ‘cos it’s true
Observational comedy at its finest. McIntyre, take notes. Actually, don’t.

Even men with steel hearts love to see a dog on the pitch
(Even Men with Steel Hearts)

When you’re holding tea and toast
And there’s no-one else around
Do you switch the kitchen light off with your chin?
(Lock Up Your Mountain Bikes)

Not long now before lollipop men are called Darren
(Totnes Bickering Fair)

Darts in soap operas: oh so wrong, oh so wrong
No-one’s scoring, and there’s too much chat between each throw
Worse than this, though, is when cheers are raised for the bull
Granted, bull’s a double and an out – but I know that they don’t know
(Surging out of Convalescence)

Opinionated weather forecasters who tell me it’s going to be a “miserable day”
Miserable to who? I quite like a bit of drizzle, so stick to the facts!
(A Country Practice)

She stayed with me until she moved to Notting Hill
She said it was the place she needs to be
Where the cocaine is fair trade, and frequently displayed
Is the Buena Vista Social Club’s CD
(The Light At The End of the Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train))

A woman who described herself as “A little bit Bridget, a little bit Ally, a little bit Sex And The City” and chose to call her baby boy Fred as a childishly rebellious attempt at a clever reaction to those who might have expected her to call him Julian or Rupert. Bit of advice: call him Rupert, it fits, and besides it’s a good name. Don’t be calling him Fred or Archie, with all its cheeky but lovable working class scamp connotations, unless you really do have plans for him to spend his life in William Hill’s waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbot.
(Breaking News)

I want to perch myself halfway up a metal staircase with the Polydor girls and talk about meerkats
And come out with statements like:
“Well of course music these days is the slave of mammon, and as a result has become corrupt and shallow
Its real essence is industry
Its moral purpose is the acquisition of money
Its aesthetic pretext is the entertainment of those who are bored
Though yes, we’re really excited about going back into the studio
Hotly tipped, highly anticipated and slated for release”
(Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not)

So I’m walking down the road, and heading towards me
Is somebody I know, but not like a brother
He’s seen me, and we both realise that we’re going to have to put into operation
The tricky manoeuvre that is
Acknowledgement without breaking stride
(Soft Verges)

Neil Morrisey’s a knobhead
(Bottleneck at Capel Curig)

Poetry & wordplay
Blackwell has two particular skills as a wordsmith – first off, although not displayed as often as his humour, he can have a brilliant way with metaphor and phrasing. And he’s also a fan of making puns that wouldn’t even have occurred to anyone else…

They say “Plenty more fish”
I say “Amoco Cadiz”
(Keeping Two Chevrons Apart)

There’s a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets
(National Shite Day)

Nero fiddles while Gordon Burns
(Joy Division Oven Gloves)

Who’s afraid of Virginia Wade?
(Outbreak of Vitas Gerulaitis)

You never hear of folk getting knocked on the bonce
Although there was a drive-by shouting once
(For What Is Chatteris…)

Did you play in the Garden of Eden?
Were the goalkeeper’s gloves to you tossed?
‘Cos it seems to me you’re the reason
You’re the reason why Paradise lost
(Paradise Lost (You’re The Reason Why))

Your optimism strikes me like junk mail addressed to the dead
(Depressed Beyond Tablets)

On touching the trig point, I found my thrill
To the east Brokeback Mountain, to the west Benny Hill
I’ll give you the grid ref, you might like to go
SO224350
Could this be heaven, would that be the Severn
Twmpa, Twmpa, you’re gonna need a jumper
(Lord Hereford’s Knob)

I didn’t take much time convincing her:
“Baby, I’m from the Wirral Peninsula”
(A Lilac Harry Quinn)

Following a commendable stab at “Sylvia”, Helen shouted at the guitarist:
“Are you knackered, man?”
To which he replied, “No, I’m Jan Akkerman!”
(Tour Jacket With Detachable Sleeves)

Just downright funny
Sometimes the lines are just uncategorisably, indefinably, laugh-out-loud hilarious. Such as…

I’m gonna feed our children non-organic food
And with the money saved, take them to the zoo
(Totnes Bickering Fair)

I tried to put everything into perspective, set it against the scale of human suffering. And I thought of the Mugabe government, and the children of the Calcutta Railways. This worked for a while, but then I encountered Primark FM.
(National Shite Day)

U is for the Umpire, which I wish I’d been instead. You never hear a cricket crowd chanting “Who’s the bastard in the hat?”
(The Referee’s Alphabet)

Aleister Crowley knew my father
Or rather:
Business once took Dad up into the Glens
Where in a small hotel bar Crowley asked,
“Have you got change for the fruit machine, chief? I’m all out…”
(Get Kramer)

But I could put a tennis racket up against my face
And pretend that I’m Kendo Nagasaki
(Everything’s AOR)

I ring up Dial-A-Pizza
And say “That’s not how I would spell Hawaiian”
(Petty Sessions)

His paranoia is absurd:
“Are you thinkin’ ‘bout my bird?!?”
(On the ‘Roids)

I should have just got a job on the bins
The pay’s better and I’d know some hard blokes
And I wouldn’t have to pretend
That I know what “rhetorical” means
I could have been like Lou Barlow
But I’m more like Ken Barlow
(Lark Descending)

Oh help me Mrs Medlicott
I don’t know what to do
I’ve only got three bullets
And there’s four of Motley Crue
(Upon Westminster Bridge)

Curse those in charge of plots, curse these forget-me-nots
I’ve been sharing my innermost thoughts with an Edward Macrae
I’m inconsolable, and at times uncontrollable
Ah, but she wouldn’t know, ‘cos she’s two hundred metres away…
(Tending The Wrong Grave For 23 Years)

Have I missed your favourite? Drop it in the comments!

1. Your first comic
2. A comic that made you laugh
3. A comic that made you cry
4. A comic that reminds you of a place
5. A comic that reminds you of a person
6. A comic you received as a gift
7. A comic you gave as a gift
8. A comic about your favourite character
9. A comic you bought because of the writer
10. A comic you bought because of the artist
11. A comic you should have bought
12. A comic you’re glad you bought
13. A comic you lost
14. A comic you own, but haven’t read
15. A comic you should have read, but haven’t
16. A comic you’ve read that more people should have
17. A comic you own more than one copy of
18. An issue #1 you bought the month it came out
19. A comic you’ve read but don’t own
20. A comic you love in a genre you hate
21. A comic you’d like to see retold in another medium
22. A comic that’s significant to you as an object
23. A webcomic you love
24. A miniseries you never finished
25. An issue that made you drop an ongoing series
26 & 27. A poorly-regarded comic you like, and a well-regarded comic you don’t
28. A comic that’s inspired you
29. A comic that changed your life
30. The last comic you read

For the uninitiated – in 2007, with the help of my LiveJournal friends, I put together a Christmas compilation of my own, with a mixture of the handful of well-known Christmas songs I actually wasn’t sick of yet, along with some great suggestions for indie-orientated songs, a lot of which I hadn’t heard before. I’ve gradually honed the tracklisting since then – although this year I’ve made no changes – and posted it each December. People seem to enjoy it, so if you’ve been looking forward to getting your hands on a copy again, here it is!

(Note that although the tracklisting is the same as last year, at some point shortly I’ll be posting an additional RAR file containing a couple of “bonus tracks” that almost made inclusion this time but would have taken its length past the “fit on a CD” rule I set for myself. If you like the sound of them you can feel free to download them too and tack them on to the end.)

Download Now That’s What Seb Calls A Christmas Album! (via Dropbox)

1. Vince Guaraldi Trio – Christmas Time Is Here (2:44)
2. Murray Gold & Neil Hannon – Song For Ten (3:29)
3. Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You (4:01)
4. Fountains of Wayne – I Want an Alien For Christmas (2:19)
5. Loudon Wainwright III – Christmas Morning (3:49)
6. Low – Just Like Christmas (3:08)
7. The Ronettes – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (2:41)
8. The Ventures – Sleigh Ride (2:22)
9. Grandaddy – Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland (2:59)
10. Bright Eyes – Blue Christmas (2:19)
11. Eels – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas (2:48)
12. The Vandals – Oi To The World (2:15)
13. The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick (2:10)
14. Zombina & The Skeletones – A Chainsaw For Christmas (3:11)
15. The Ramones – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight) (2:06)
16. The Kinks – Father Christmas (3:43)
17. Rilo Kiley – Xmas Cake (5:24)
18. The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl – Fairytale of New York (4:33)
19. Spitting Image – Santa Claus Is On The Dole (3:48)
20. The Long Blondes – Christmas is Cancelled (4:29)
21. Half Man Half Biscuit – It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas (3:48)
22. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Christmas Eve (1:51)
23. Badly Drawn Boy – Donna and Blitzen (4:19)
24. My Chemical Romance – All I Want For Christmas Is You (3:45)

Dear Sir or Madam,

On the 17th of December the Romans celebrated Saturnalia. It was marked by high jinks and japes and reversal of social roles, in which slaves and masters switched places. It was a time to eat, drink, and be merry, and indulge in lascivious and licentious behaviour.

On 17th December 2010 we are serving the XXXXXXX Christmas Lunch at the London XXXXXXX XXXXXX…

Amazing.

(And it goes on to quote Catullus (“Saturnalibus, optimo dierum”) at the end, completely unironically and detached from the original context.)

This is how it goes with Weezer. They show up – at the moment, apparently on an annual basis – with some form of ludicrous story in the music press that usually has little to do with the content of the actual record. Then a record comes out, and it’s largely terrible – at times embarrassingly so – although it still usually manages to contain one or two tracks that remind us that yes, Rivers Cuomo did know how to write a song once upon a time, and which are just about enough to keep us from giving up on them entirely, though we swear that if the next album is this bad, we’ll definitely stop paying attention.

And then, just when we pretty much don’t want to listen to another album of his ever again, Rivers puts out a rarities compilation. It’s almost by way of penance – “Look,” he’s saying, “I know we can’t make a decent album for toffee any more, but back in the day we made fifty albums worth of good stuff, and you still haven’t heard most of it yet. Give me another chance, please.” And invariably, the rarities collection turns out to be EXCITING AS HELL, and we forgive his little face.

Well, after the double-whammy of Raditude and Hurley (decent track total: four, by my count, and that includes the “Viva la Vida” cover), he’s got a lot to apologise for. So not only have we got Death to False Metal (of which more another time) and a third Alone compilation on the way, but we’re also finally (arguably four years late) getting the Deluxe edition of Pinkerton. And after just a first listen through – hell, after a look at the tracklist – there’s a lot to talk about, so that’s exactly what I thought I’d do. Track by track, in painstaking fashion.

Hey, look, I used to run an entire website about this band. You were warned.

Disc 1

You Gave Your Love To Me Softly
This is the single version (as heard on the B-side to “El Scorcho”) rather than the one from the soundtrack of the film Angus (for which the song was originally written/recorded). There are slight differences in the style and tempo, but both versions have their merits. I’m more familiar with the rockier Angus one, but this one’s got a slightly less urgent pace that’s quite nice.

Devotion
The other “El Scorcho” b-side, this is seen as a bit of a classic by some – I’m less keen on it, but it’s still a strong track. It was also originally intended as a Songs from the Black Hole song (and if you don’t know about that album, I suggest a quick skim either of Weezerpedia or of my article about it so you know what I’m referring to elsewhere in this post).

The Good Life (Radio Remix)
The single version of “The Good Life” is less distinguishable from the album cut as “Pink Triangle” (of which more later) is – but you can spot the subtle differences if you listen full-whack on headphones in the dark, as I did last night. It doesn’t feel hugely essential, though, as more of a slight variant on the album track than anything else. Nevertheless, listening to it with an attentive ear makes you realise just how unconventional a song it is – I honestly don’t think anyone else has ever really recorded anything like it, and certainly not with a tempo like it.

Waiting on You
One of two tracks from the frankly quite brilliant “Good Life” EP, this is – like “Devotion” – another 3/4 ballad, but in my opinion much, much better. Lovely song. The Pinkerton b-sides are interesting, in that the four of them have a distinct style/sound of their own (particularly keyboard-driven, and a bit more produced and polished), and so couldn’t really have fit on the main album (which is rawer and looser) – but they work well together as a set of four. It could perhaps be seen as Rivers allowing some of the intended feel of SFTBH to come through on these tracks, rather than on the album itself.

I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams
And here’s the fourth b-side. And also the best. With excellent guest vocals from Rachel Haden, an insanely catchy melody, and a powerful keyboard-led sound that explodes with the last chorus (when Rivers brilliantly comes in on backing vocals), it’s simply an exquisite piece. It’s also the biggest available indicator of what SFTBH would have sounded like (Haden was even intended as one of the lead female characters).

The Good Life / Pink Triangle (Live and Acoustic)
A couple of tracks from an unnamed session – although, amusingly, they’re tracks that I’ve had in MP3 form for years. I think it was possibly recorded at a school/college of some kind, considering the apparently small size of the audience. Most interesting about this pair is the way the audience whoop and cheer every time the “I’m dumb, she’s a lesbian” line is sung in “Pink Triangle”…

Pink Triangle (Radio Remix)
Whoa. This is made of awesome. Unlike “The Good Life”, this is significantly different from the album version – so much so that I even think the vocal take is a different one – and is clearly the version from that Karl-made video on the Video Capture Device DVD (for those who don’t know, “Pink Triangle” was intended as the third single from Pinkerton, but was shelved when the first two flopped; that’s why this single version hasn’t been widely heard, and why there was never a proper video). But it’s fantastic. It’s a lot beefier and punchier, particularly when it gets to the fantastically rocky final chorus (after the solo), and the keyboards are clearer as well. As with the b-sides, it’s basically more polished – so wouldn’t have worked within the context of Pinkerton itself. But as a single, it’s terrific, and it should have been a bloody massive hit.

I Swear It’s True
I can see why this was included – it was one of the intended “Pink Triangle” b-sides – but it doesn’t really grab me, as it’s somewhat plodding. Plus, of course, we’ve had it before – in rough 1993-era demo form, courtesy of the Blue Album deluxe edition. This version isn’t even much more polished than that, either. A bit flat, really.

Blue vs Pinkerton (Interview)
An amusing little radio/phone interview (with a caller asking about the production style differences between the two albums), the most interesting element of which is just how much Rivers talks, and how nicely he comes across. It’s a far cry from later years, I’ll say that. Pat still sounds exactly the same, though.

Disc 2

You Won’t Get With Me Tonight
I’m not sure that this should strictly speaking be on here, as it’s not a Weezer demo – it’s Rivers on his own, playing all the instruments and singing both vocal parts. On the other hand, if it had come out on an Alone compilation, fewer people would probably have heard it, so I can see why it’s been held back. It is, of course, my favourite track from the shelved SFTBH, and it’s wonderful. Brilliant to see it finally getting a proper release on an official =W= record.

The Good Life / El Scorcho / Pink Triangle (Live at Y100 Sonic Session)
The Y100 Session is a great little set (I’ve already got the entire thing in my collection), although it’s slightly disappointing that two of the tracks featured here have already had acoustic versions featured on this record. And it’s also a shame that by far the best track of the session – “Undone”, featuring beat poetry by Timothy “Speed” Levitch – isn’t included. The reason why is clear – it’s not a Pinkerton track – but still. I’d like the inclusion of these tracks more if we were being given the whole set (it’s only about five songs), in full context.

Why Bother? / El Scorcho / Pink Triangle (Live at Reading 1996)
By this point I’m not minding the repetitiveness of tracks so much, since what we’ve got here is at least completely different-sounding from the previous acoustic tracks, and it’s nice to hear how the band sounded live on the festival stage back in the ’90s. But…

The Good Life (Live at X96) / El Scorcho (Live and Acoustic)
Do we really need these, too? They’re good versions, but they’re not wildly different from the acoustic cuts elsewhere on the album – and if I want a multitude of different live sets, I… well, I already do, but the point is I have them in their entirety, and clearly marked. This is just starting to become a random pick and mix at this point.

Across the Sea Piano Noodles
This is a bit more interesting, if entirely disposable. It’s exactly what you’d expect from the name – a different version of the little piano intro to “Across the Sea”. Annoyingly, about half of its 30-second running time is a single low note fading out.

Butterfly (Alternate Take)
Interesting, this. It opens by making you think it’s going to be a capella, but it turns out it’s just Rivers practicing the opening line. Then there’s an actual – if short – guitar intro, absent from the final version. Otherwise, it’s simply just another, slightly different, acoustic performance of the song. Not hugely exciting, particularly if you see “Butterfly” as Pinkerton‘s weak link, but it’s rather nice all the same.

Longtime Sunshine
Well, wow. This is almost, almost the standout of the album – entirely unexpectedly, and for unexpected reasons. Here’s the thing – this is a song we already know. It was another Songs from the Black Hole tryout, but also happened to be one of the handful of tracks that had found their way online long before the Alone series started (it subsequently appeared on Alone 1). It’s an odd one, though – a gentle, reflective ballad in which Rivers (or, more likely, the “Jonas” character) reflects on his desire to go and live a simpler life. The problem is, it doesn’t really fit the SFTBH narrative – it’s intended to be the final song of the record, but Jonas’ character arc hasn’t really been brought to this point, as approximately half of the album is missing (i.e. not recorded or possibly not even written by Rivers). As such, it’s always felt slightly “off” putting it as the last track on fan mixes – and it seemed far more at home on Alone, where it could be taken at face value as a post-Blue Album Rivers having grown weary of the rockstar lifestyle. It was also surprising to see it on the tracklist here – could this version really do anything different?

Well, yes. It could. Because this is the fabled “Special Coda Mix”. Which suddenly, after the last chorus “proper”, swells out to include four additional, harmonised vocal lines – each singing lines from earlier SFTBH songs (in order, “Why Bother?”, “IJTOTLOMD”, “Waiting on You” and “Blast Off!”). It’s done in a similar style to the overlaid harmonies of “Dude, We’re Finally Landing”, suggesting that – along with the keyboard-driven power pop of “ITJOTLOMD”, another recurring sonic theme on the album would have been this almost barbershop-style use of vocals. It raises other questions, too – such as, for the first time, confirming the status of “Waiting on You” as a SFTBH track (it’s not listed on either of the demo playlists of Rivers’, but had been assumed by some fans to be part of the album due to its style and its presence alongside the others as a Pinkerton b-side); plus, one of the voices at the end is clearly Brian Bell, and not Rivers, which furthers the suggestion that there are some full-band recordings of the concept album’s songs out there – the other previous hint we’d had was the clip of a recording session on the DVD, in which the band were seen recording a much louder, punchier version of “Superfriend” (one we’re all desperate to hear, but which has apparently been lost for good).

So, yes. For those of us interested in the Black Hole legend, this is another compelling piece of the puzzle. For everyone else… well, you may not see what the fuss is about. But “everyone else” isn’t really who these albums are aimed at, is it?

Getting Up and Leaving
The other lost “Pink Triangle” b-side. Better than “I Swear It’s True”, I think – still quite a raw and unpolished recording, and it sort of hints at a few of the ways Rivers’ songwriting would go on later albums – but it’s fairly catchy and melodic.

Tired of Sex / Getchoo (Tracking Roughs)
Ooh, crunchy. If you thought the original “Tired of Sex” felt like having your face rubbed against the strings of a guitar like a cheese grater, wait until you hear this considerably scrappier version. There’s still something irresistably compelling about it, though – and of particular interest is the way it’s got a slightly different lead guitar melody over the top of it – well, I say “different”, it sounds like it is the same riff as on the album version, but put in a slightly different place. As for “Getchoo”, meanwhile, it’s interesting to note that this features different lyrics from the Pinkerton version – but they are the same lyrics as on the widely-available “Ft. Apache” demo recordings, and which are assumed to be the originally-intended words for the SFTBH version (e.g. “I used to run around / Sometimes I’d fall and skin my knee” instead of “Sometimes I push too hard / Sometimes you fall and skin your knee”). Indeed, I can see both these tracks replacing the scratchier Ft. Apache versions in a number of fans’ Black Hole tracklists (including my own).

Tragic Girl
And then there’s this. Forget all the Black Hole pieces – this is the track that makes Pinkerton Deluxe special. As far as we know, this song had nothing to do with Black Hole – it postdates that idea, and is instead simply a “lost” Pinkerton track. Properly lost, in fact – Weezer have recorded hundreds of songs over the last two decades, and there’s a public record (courtesy of recording logs posted online) of just about every session for fans to pore over. “Tragic Girl”, however, isn’t in any of them. It’s the quintessential lost gem (as Rivers put it in a recent tweet, “Tragic Girl” is [...] like “You Know You’re Right” for Pinkerton fans.) We don’t know why or how it disappeared, or why or how it was recently discovered – but we can be thankful it was. It’s astoundingly good. It slots in to Pinkerton like it was always meant to be there, it sounds like you’ve jumped back in time to 1996 and heard a brand new track from this once-brilliant band at the height of their powers. It’s big, it’s loud, it’s moving, it builds with each repetition of a stupendous chorus until it hits key-change-breakdown-screamy-vocal-bit territory. And frankly, it makes a better closing track than “Butterfly” does. No, really.

So what’s missing?
There are still a few known tracks from around the Pinkerton era that sadly haven’t made their way onto the Deluxe edition. We can discount the remaining short SFTBH pieces, as they’re due to show up next month on the third Alone volume (will I be track-by-tracking that as well? You bet your ass I might), although it’s worth pointing out that a full-band version of “Blast Off!” is known to exist that we’ve never heard. But the Ft. Apache demos I mentioned earlier might have been worthy of inclusion – the version of “No Other One” that was done in that session is particularly special. Since they found room for no less than five versions of both “The Good Life” and “Pink Triangle”, it might have been nice to also get the rarer Angus take of “You Gave Your Love…”, too. And there are a lot of tracks from ’97 – some of which morphed into songs for side project  Homie, including the fan-favourite “American Girls” – which may not strictly count as Pinkerton stuff but which it’d be nice to see get a release somewhere (they’re not slated for Alone 3, but perhaps we can hope for a fourth volume next year?)

On the whole, though
It’s a corking set, despite the repetitiveness of the acoustic tracks. A thirty-six-track, two-CD Pinkerton reissue is simply a marvellous thing to be able to have in our hands considering everything that bloody album has gone through in terms of reception and reputation. And it contains a handful of truly staggering tracks, some of which are not only great in and of themselves, but which shed a little more light on the whole crazy Weezer-in-the-1990s story. Top stuff.

Next…
Yeah, I’ll probably be taking a look at Death to False Metal – the new compilation of ten “actually recorded and finished, but not used on an album” tracks dating from the pre-Green, Make Believe and Red Album years. Hold me.

To mark Hallowe’en this year, I’ve decided to sit down and watch The Simpsons‘ annual “Treehouse of Horror” episodes, in order, at least up to the point where they stop being any good (probably about season 11 or 12). And I thought I might as well throw out a link to something I wrote three years ago – a list of what I think are the ten best individual segments.

Whether I still agree with that list after watching ten or eleven of the things in a row, meanwhile, remains to be seen…