Campfire Tales of Shows Past

Here's a collection of show reviews I've copied form mailing lists or that some people have sent me. Some are mean, some are amusing. Thanks to everyone who took the time to write one up. No longer in any order whatsoever.

The wonderful Karl has generated a SG tour diary documenting all the shows from the past tour. Check it.

Viper Room and Che Cafe
by Ron Hall

on saturday night the special goodness rocked hollywood. the space twins opened the show, there were only two bands on the bill. the sets did seem short but you can never have enough of a good thing. rivers was there, braces and all. i was told that all of the songs for the new weezer album have been written and the band will regroup after the special goodness tour. pat said that the worst case is that the album will be out in january 2001. mikey flew down a couple of weeks ago to practice with rivers and brian (pat was not there so a friend of rivers sat in on drums).

last night the special goodness played in san diego
at the che cafe. the place was packed, there were 3 opening bands that i can not remember. i got a chance to hang out with mikey and lee, we went in my car to get food for pat and karl lee ordered a pizza that took forever, mikey and i got fish tacos from rubios. the show rocked hard and everyone was happy, thay said that san diego was one of the better stops on the tour. as for all of you kids waiting for the grand return of weezer, you dont have much longer to wait!!!!!!

This one has no known venue. But thanks to melissa anyway.


well, i just got home from the special goodness show, and they were even better than last time. the ever fabulous five speed opened, then some AWFUL accoustic guy who decided to be half an hour late played... his name was peter cornell..my sources tell me he's chris' (of soundgarden fame) brother. oh well..he sucked. sounded like he was auditioning for creed... you have to be DAMNED good to carry off being the only one onstage..and well, he just didn't.

aside from that..and missing the yuck band tolerance... i was a happy girl. special goodness played a wonderful set, i got tons of pictures of the boys, and pat looked as good as ever. :) i bought the "special tour edition pre-release cd" that they made themselves..and it rocks (of course). however, this show made me realize how ignorant people are. in the add, the promoters said: special goodness (members of weezer). so of course..all the dorky kids are like "ohmygosh!! i can't wait for weezer to get onstage..maybe they'll play buddy holly... i'm glad they got back together after breaking up..." etc etc. so my good friend peter before getting offstage goes "thanks!! weezer is up next!" further leading the moron kids on. so special goodness take the stage..they declare mikey is brian.. rivers (actually pat) has put on
weight..and the drummer looks "weird." some kid said "i thought there were
four guys in weezer?" then when they put the set list down, some girl goes "what? no weezer songs? i wanted to hear el schorcho!" my friend and i were standing there wondering what we did to be surrounded by such dorks. they take stage.. and people were just dumbfounded when mikey said "hi we're the special goodness" and the rock commenced. people amaze me.

Brownies, New York, New York
October 28, 1999
By: Mook

Holy shit, that was surreal...I just played pac-man with Pat at Brownies...
Anyways, the show rawked...Pat had his turquoise Dan Electro and a beanie hat on. Mikey grew his hair out, shaved his beard, and died his hair black. Karl was cool working the tee-shirt stand. They sold tee-shirts in 4 colors, hats in three colors, CD-Rs of The SG cd for $8...and my personal fave, Mikey's artwork I bought one with a picture of brandy and drew barrymore taking a bath together. I talked to Karl about all of the lost songs, and he said they were amazing...oh well, maybe someday. And I talked to Pat about stuff...I don't remember most of our conversation cause I was so shocked to meet him. He's reeeeally cool. And then came the show:

There weren't many people there, maybe 30 or 40 stayed for Pat, but the show was great...He played a few songs of the CD, and not one, but two songs have had their names changed:
A Hundred Times As Good = I'm With Your Sister
A Fortunate Mistake = Boy Am I Lucky

I got my hands on Mikey's copy of the setlist:

Its Only Natural
Life Goes By
Fatigue
Reason To Worry
BS
Lets Go Down
Conquistadors of Nothing
Pardon Me
What You're On
I'm With Your Sister
Riff
I'm Not Too Proud
Its All Here In This Book
Went Down Swinging
What You Can Forget

Went Down Swinging was an unbelievable song...in fact, all of the new songs rock ass. The beginning of one of the new songs, I'm pretty sure its "BS", is actually the guitar part for the old Suburban Advantage song "Lets Go To The Mall" They played for about an hour. They were unbelievably cool guys to talk to. Special Goodness is going to go into the studio come January, that is if another band involving pat isn't in the studio...but I didn't tell you that, It came from that new guy....

Tha Garage, Washington DC
By: Keem BearLEE

I got a ride to this show with a guy named Louey who is from around Baltimore. I found him through AOL towards the beginning of the school year when I was desperately in need of Weezery friends, but just met him last night in person on the way to see the Special Goodness. He was NOT (thank God) a psycho.

The Garage is nice club. Tiny. Like half the size of the 9:30 or less even... with a garage door ver the stage that the acts can open with a switch.

They ran out of albums to sell, but I got Mikey art and a shirt and KARL and Pat. I felt shitty because I didn't have stuff for them to sign so I gave Karl a dollar bill to sign but he said i might need to it to spend so he signed the back of a CD-R thing and so did Pat later on.

God damn it's early. Standard time is kicking my ass. I didn't get much sleep but my body woke itself up.

I'm too hyper to type everything so I'll summarize it:
I touched Mikey, Pat, and Karl.
Mikey is sorta psycho, but in a fun way.
Pat is exactly.... PAT.
I did not get murdered.
I ran into this guy that I've been searching for (TOTAL COINCIDENCE).

Club Laga, Pittsburg PA
November 2, 1999
By: Sam

ok.. i got back from Pittsburgh last nite.. Sg was great.. There were like i'd say 100+ people at club laga, which is some weird place on the 4th floor of a building where they have raves or something afterwards. The opening bands weren't that great... umm SG was so awesome.. Mikey is perfect for weezer, and is a good replacement for Matt onstage.. he has a lot of stage presence and has all the "moves" on stage.. very rock. he will not disappoint. not to mention how cool he was taking swigs from his bottle of what looked like whiskey constantly. my hero.

I got a setlist:

It's only natural
life goes by
fatigue
reason to worry
BS
lets go down
conquistadors of nothing
pardon me (sounded rad live)
what you're on
i'm with you sister (a hundred times as good)
riff
i'm not too proud
it's all here in this book
went down swinging
what you can forget

then the craziest part... everyone wanted more songs, so mikey whispers in pats ear and suddenly they are like "who wants to hear weezer songs"? And so they told everyone to get on stage and sing so like half of the crowd went onstage it was nuts.... they played undone with all of us singing it.. it was unreal. then after that pat was about to put his guitar down when mikey goes into Tired of Sex and so they did that.. after the show i was talking to pat he said it seemed so surreal, and it was.. haha i was on stage with half of weezer.. unbelievable.

the new songs were pretty heavy, and after the show when most people left they all came out and it was just like me and like a few others and the band... they said they were gonna record a new SG in January on an American label... can't wait. i got my SG cd signed by them all which is bonus time..

i think some morons went thinking it was weezer that was playing with no clue as to what SG was anyways, but a lot of people were pleasantly surprised at SG whereas some weren't.. especially this one girl that like ran backstage and yelled at them and demanded her money back cuz she came to see weezer.. like the singing on stage wasn't good enough for her.. i would have been totally cool had they not done any weezer at all.. the band was joking with us about how she was wigging out... overall the bands really cool and easy to talk to...

hmm.. my roommate taped the show for me, and it came out pretty good... please don't email me about it for a while i'm gonna transfer it to cd to keep it in shiny shape.. and yes.. i got the part w/ the sing along on tape..

umm.. karl was there selling t-shirts and hats and mikey's artwork, which was pretty funny. I think they ran out of CD-R's of SG for now... I got a shirt... hooray!

i guess there's a lot more but i forget a lot because of what happened on the way back from the concert.. at the last leg of the 2 hour trip back to school, about 4 miles from my dorm, we hit a goddamn bear in the road. no joke. it just ran out in front of the car.. so my roommate's car got fucked up a little in the bumper.. unbelievable. a bear. i feel bad for it, but not that bad since it ran out in front of a car..
oh well special goodness was super.. go see them.. but don't hit any fucking black bears, cuz that totally sucks.. only in pennsylvania....... i can't believe i go to school in this goddamn state

I forgot who wrote this (sorry)
November 13, 1999
Clunk Music Hall, Fayettville AR

 When i fist got to the venue i walked around the corner of the building where me and my friends parked and there was the tour van and all 3 of what we know as The Special Goodness just "chillin out" before the show. Lee was talking to someone, mikey was sitting in the van, and pat was pratcing his "ollie" on a skateboard. I thought about talking to them but i left them alone and went into the hall. Karl was sitting behing a table selling sg stuff...they had 2 hats one was red and the other was a tan hat with a green bill both just had "the special goodness" accross the front , a white t-shirt writing just like the hat and a ton of cd's with 4 different types of cover art, there was also a copule of more choices of cover art that Karl said was for this show only. Each cd had the same tracklisting no matter the cover and the track listing is slightly different to the mp3's offered on W.H.A.T and weezertunes....

1. Congratulations
2. Fatigue
3. Pay No Mind
4. I'd Like To Know
5. Conquistadores of Nothing
6. I'm With You Sister
7. Pardon Me
8. Boy Am I Lucky
9. I'm Not Too Proud
10. It's All Here In This Book
So i brought a t-shirt and a cd and just to do something stupid i showed Karl my Fan-club card and he "updated" it for me (he drew bokkus on the back) which i thought was pretty awesome.

there were 4 bands playing and the first was this local band with a drummer, bass, tennor sax and 2 female vocals that just sang scaling harmonies over the music....it had a really jazzy feel and when the sax and the bassist actually played in the same key it was pretty neat....i thought it was pretty cool to here something different...i dont know how the rest of the crowd felt though.

The second band was called Today's My Super Spaceout Day and they're from chicago. and in my opnion were really good they were a 3 piece that had a sound alot like Hum in the Electra 2000 era. If you get the chance to see them i'd reccomend going.

Then The special goodness came out and by that time the place was pretty crowed i was standing right infront of Mikey about 3 people back and could hardly see pat and couldnt even see lee's drum kit.... but they just brought the place down it was awesome they rocked out better than the cd and mp3's that are out there (and im not saying that the tracks are bad). Having not heard many of their songs (i only d/led the mp3's the day before) i know they played most of the stuff off the mp3's and a few new ones the only new song i remeber them naming was called "B.S." and it was great. The crowd was kinda sedated untill the end when mikey kept tellin everying to "go fu**ing ballistic" or words to that effect and the show ended with about 15 to 20 people jumping on stage....pat seemed kinda annoyed and about 3 or 4 of these "hoochie-mamma groupie chicks" were patting mikey on the back......it looked rather weird from where i was

the next guy up was wesley willis and i really dont know anything about him my friend says hes some crazy guy but i was already outside and from what i heard hes wasnt really my cup of tea and i consider myself to be a farily open minded person.

I ended up out by their van where there were alot of people getting autographs and talking to them and stuff i lent pat my sharpie so he and mikey could sign stuff and when my friend gave me my cd i had him hold for me i hand them sign it too.

Some stuff they said about the sg in general and the tour as of late

...during the show they said they would be recording new (sg) stuff soon (???)... the show the night befor in KC must have been really sedated....mikey was saying something about it was an 21 and over show and i guess from the way he was talking they werent into it they metioned alot of stuff about weezer, rivers and the sg...alot of it was them just goofing off im not going to type everything they said because i dont feel like spreading rumors and stuff

I actually met someone from the mailing list/newsgroup.....so if anyone reads this..heres a hey....i was the guy in the green weezer/rock music shirt...

all in all it was an awesome show everyone was very cool .....it must be weird for karl, mikey,lee and pat....having people talk to them that they have no idea who they are and these people know an awful lot about them, but thwey seemed to take it really well...i was surprised at the turnout there were alot of actual "fans" there that knew what was going on, not just people seeing a show....so if you have the chance to go see them i dont think i have to tell anyone that they would be stupid not to go...so i think ill stop rambling now and apoligze for the horrible spelling and grammar..