in response to my review on weezer, chad threw in his two cents about the decline of weezer that i outlined in my post

i would argue that the downfall of weezer is the most depressing and upsetting musical development of our generation. i dont count nirvana because taht wasn't so much a musical development. but no other band has disintegrated musically in such a dramatic way. the potential was clearly there for them to put out 5 or 6 really really top level albums, and instead they have 2 great albums and a solid album and 2 pieces of shit (assuming niv is right about make believe)

i read this and thought immediately that this was a little over the top. the decline of weezer was inevitable, because, to quote geoff, "35 year old dudes don't make pinkerton", or to quote myself

weezer has softened up, either due to age or due to a need to make more 'acceptable' music - from what i know about the post-pinkerton rivers cuomo, it's hard to tell which it is.

i think this age factor makes weezer's descent into mediocrity less tragic and more inevitable, given the circumstances and their musical stylings. however, chad did put forth a very interesting question - if i think weezer has not been the most upsetting musical development of our generation, what HAS been?

geoff and i discussed this the other day, and i immediately named sublime. i would argue that sublime put out a couple of crappy cds, then they put out the overrated but still solid self-titled album, with the most focus from me going to both versions of 'what i got' and the incredible 'santeria'. i felt sublime was just about to hit their stride, just about to turn the corner into a full-fledged superstar band, but brad nowell, their lead singer, died just months before the self-titled cd was released. the more i listen to santeria, the more i think this was tragic in terms of not only, you know, the obvious reasons, but also in terms of musical development. geoff shut this line of argument down pretty quickly though, saying (along the lines of what chad thought when he side-stepped nirvana, i believe) that death is the easy way to answering this question, but there has to be a band that declined ... of its own volition. or something.

geoff proposed two bands sort of back to back, bush and stone temple pilots. i argued that razorblade suitcase wasn't that good, and nothing stp put out was that good, so they were more 'one album wonders' than bands that had a solid start and then just completely imploded. plenty of bands fall under the 'one album wonders' category (live comes to mind pretty fast, for example), so i didn't think that the decline of these two bands could be considered upsetting, because they never raised our hopes, as weezer did with two top-notch albums back to back.

i came back with two bands that i actually like a lot, the smashing pumpkins and soundgarden. the result of this discussion was, predictably, two-folded - the pumpkins pretty much did everything they could within gish, siamese dream. pisces iscariot, and mellon collie. secretly i like machina too but there was no point in broaching this with geoff. secondly, soundgarden broke up, so it wasn't as if they musically declined. i actually proposed them because i thought people didn't like down on the upside, their final album, but apparently geoff thought it was pretty good. this was great news to me, because i thought it was a guilty pleasure of mine, to be hidden and not announced on elscorcho. now, clearly, i do not think this anymore. feel free to yell. anyways...

geoff's next proposed band was the one we agreed on to fit our mold. their first cd, self-ttiled and released in 1994, was incredible. their second cd (1996) was not as strong, but it contained some real gems, including the one song that everyone associates with them. the downfall began on their third album, released in 1998, with some signs of artistic vision and the great songs of the first album, but a lots of continuation of crap from the second album. this band went on to put out 3 completely crappy albums, and they show no signs of recovering to the band we both liked before 1999. to us, at least, the crap that this band puts out is pretty upsetting, and their descent to abysmal has been pretty drastic.

the band that i'm referring to is korn.

discuss.