Albums That Never Were

We’ve all heard the stories, a hotly anticipated album doesn’t get released for whatever reason, either its rejected by label, rejected by the band, or simply the band split up before the album can be released. Well in a new feature the AGCS team will be bringing you the stories behind, and tracks from, some of these lost albums. First up, Weezer…

Following on from the immensely popular (and to this date best-selling album) debut full-length ‘The Blue Album’, River’s Cuomo began work on what he envisioned as a rock-opera concept album entitled Songs From The Black Hole.

The story of SFTBH was in the style of a 60’s kitschy view of the future and space-travel, in which 3 guys (Jonas, Wuan and Dondó, voiced by Rivers, Brian Bell and Matt Sharp respectively), 2 girls (Laurel, voiced by Rachel Haden of that dog, and Maria, voiced by Joan Wasser of The Dambuilders), and a computer (M1, voiced by Weezer historian, webmaster, archivist, and unofficial 5th member Karl Koch) who, in the words of Rivers, “are on this mission in space to rescue somebody, or something. The whole thing was really an analog for taking off, going out on the road and up the charts with a rock band, which is what was happening to me at the time I was writing this and feeling like I was lost in space.”

During the writing of the album, Rivers enrolled at Harvard and his inspiration changed from science fiction, to the Madame Butterfly theme that runs through Weezer’s second album Pinkerton. SFTBH was abandoned, although reworked versions of 4 tracks (Tired Of Sex, Getchoo, No Other One and Why Bother?) made it onto Pinkerton, and yet more were reworked and released as b-sides. Over the following years demo versions of original tracks were leaked onto the internet, and others were released on Rivers’ collection of demos (Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo), yet this was not enough for Weezer fans who have petitioned for the recording and release of the entire album, unfortunately hindered by issues between the band and Geffen president Jordan Schur.

Possibly destined to remain an album of fragments, 8-track recordings and bootlegs, Songs From The Black Hole exists in unofficial forms floating around the internet, little more than roughly edited compilations of the available tracks. I’ve posted two tracks from the album below that have been floating around the net for years, so if you haven’t heard them before, enjoy :o)

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