Rivers Cuomo Readies Live Disc, Collaborates With Rainn Wilson of "The Office"

Weezer's Rivers Cuomo will release a live CD and DVD documenting his in-store performance at the Fingerprintz record store in Long Beach, California, according to the official Weezer site. Recorded in December 2008 while Cuomo was promoting his Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, the set features a mix of Weezer songs played to a small crowd, with 150 members of the audience joining Cuomo for an encore jam. Both formats will be released April 28th, with the DVD featuring an interview between Cuomo and Rushmore actor/Coconut Records man Jason Schwartzman.

Cuomo and Schwartzman will also team up on April 11th when they plot an Alternative Radio Countdown Takeover on Sirius Radio and play new material they've been working on. And here's where things get strange — stranger than the Red Album cover, the Alone II cover and even that train conductor costume Cuomo wore to Fingerprintz: Actor Rainn Wilson, or The Office's Dwight Schrute, joins Cuomo on the Weezer leader's new material. Wilson was in The Rocker, so it kind of makes sense. Plus, maybe Wilson can inspire Cuomo to break out those Green Album-era glasses again.

In news more Weezerian, the band have announced their first tour date of 2009, a gig at Tokyo's Fujirock Festival on July 26th. The official site also hints, "Beyond that date there will be more international and North American shows announced when they are confirmed," perhaps in support of their seventh album the band is rumored to be releasing this year.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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