WEEZER, Cold and the Start in concert Monday evening, Sept. 17, The E Center; one performance only.
Ah, the power of music. Just give a geeky looking guy a guitar and he becomes a rock star. Just ask Rivers Cuomo, the token nerd of Weezer.
Weezer — singer/guitarist Cuomo, guitarist Brian Bell, drummer Patrick Wilson and touring bassist Scott Shriner — cranked it up Monday night with old and new songs that spanned a rising three-album career. Boy did the band rock.
While the stage show wasn't a huge flash-pot laden bombast, the billowing smoke and chase-lighted band logo was enough to highlight the music without overshadowing the set.
Older songs like "In the Garage" from the band's "Blue" album called "Weezer" to new songs like "Photograph" and "Crab" from the band's recently released "Green" album, also called "Weezer," were some of the catchy poppy punk tunes played to a young, energetic audience.
In fact, the audience was as intense as the band, if not more so. Vicious mosh pits and waves of body surfers rolled on the floor and had security earning its pay. There was so much going on in the audience that sometimes the spectacle took away from the somewhat low-key image of the band.
Still, the sound mix was balanced — at least during Weezer's set. And it wasn't too loud that the guitars and drums became a mountain of mud.
Instead fans, when they weren't moshing or surfing, could hear tunes like "Knock-down, Drag-out," "Tired of Sex" and "The Sweater Song" bouncing out of the suspended speaker stacks on either side of the stage. "Don't Let Go" and the head-banging "Hash Pipe" set the tone for the encore sock-hop of "Buddy Holly."
Opening bands the Start and Cold, played muddy sets. While the Start got some of the audience in the mood, Cold seemed out of place. It's dark brooding metal was more geared to the rants of Disturbed or Linkin Park. But Weezer did ask the band to go on tour. So the audience had to live with it.
E-mail: scott@desnews.com