Weezer
w/ The Flaming Lips & Dinosaur Jr
Acrisure Arena – Palm Desert, CA
Saturday, October 12th, 2024
Review and Pictures: Marie Randall
California nerd-rockers Weezer and their spaceship touched down in Palm Desert for the band’s final stop on the Voyage to the Blue Planet Tour. Their mission: to save the blue planet, to rock the faces off desert Weezeroids, and to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Weezer album (a.k.a. The Blue Album).
The band has been around for 30+ years and they now can boast a multi-generational audience. Early in the evening I saw a family – a mom and dad with their four children in tow each wearing a blue t shirt and each with a letter spelling out the word Weezer.
Along for the voyage, Weezer enlisted Massachusetts grunge rockers Dinosaur Jr. and psychedelic rockers The Flaming Lips.
At 7:00 Dinosaur Jr. played a no- frills 45 minute set. The band, featuring the legendary J. Mascis on guitar, was heavy and LOUD. Although the crowd was still sparse during their set, they were enthusiastic and LOUD right back at the band.
Before their set, the Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne was full of nervous energy: coming out onstage to check things, then going behind the curtain to countdown the minutes until his band’s set.
Onstage Coyne is like the Gallagher of rock. For those too young to remember, Gallagher was a comedian who accentuated his routine with props of all sorts, most memorably watermelons and a mallet.
Wayne Coyne is very theatrical and has props for every song: fake blood, searchlights, confetti streamers, giant inflatable pink robots, inflatable eyeballs, lips and rainbows. Sadly he didn’t have the giant bubble balls he used to crowd surf with.
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Weezer’s set started a 9:15 with a faux breaking news report projected on the giant video screens alerting us that the blue planet was in trouble and the Weezer astronauts were to save it. Then a countdown to liftoff started. The Weezer spaceship blasted off. The band emerged from their spacecraft to play fan favorites like “Beverly Hills“, “Hash Pipe“, “Island in the Sun“, and “Pork & Beans“.
On the journey, the ship, Betsy and it’s crew encounter Bokkus, the band’s nemesis who drains the ship of its power. The astronauts crash but the band is able to make repairs and land on the blue planet. The planet, we learn is dying and to revive it, the band must play the Blue Album to bring it back to life.
It’s at this point that lead guitarist and vocalist Rivers Cuomo– now donning a Star Trek like uniform, stabs a Weezer flag into the surface of the blue planet and proclaims, “One small step for weezer, one giant leap for weezerkind.” And with that the band proceeded to play the entirety of The Blue Album.
Apart from the goofiness of the blue planet narrative, the heart of the show was the music. Weezer’s charm lies in their blend of nerdiness and nostalgia. Oh! And Rivers Cuomo can shred on guitar!
When the show was over, I caught sight of that Weezer t-shirt family again-the mom and dad each carrying an exhausted sleeping child and dragging the other two. That’s rock and roll, kids.
