Turn lockdown to your advantage, they said. Learn something useful, they said. Learn a new language, they said. Learn to play an instrument. Read more. Get fit. Take a course.
While many of us ignored this clearly sound advice, treating lockdown as an opportunity to laze about in our underpants and eat donuts, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo did the opposite. Instead, the Buddy Holly hitmaker enrolled in an online class and learnt the programming languages Python and JavaScript.
The results are now online. Cuomo has created an online archive featuring an unprecedented 2655 previously unreleased demos. They're separated into chronological bundles that sell for $9, although Cuomo warns that he's not entirely sure about the contents of each batch.
"I really appreciate it when you alert me to stuff that shouldn't in a given bundle or shouldn't released at all," he says. "Also, please let me know if there's anything I wouldn't want public in all the voice notes. I never thought I would be releasing those. I don't know what's in them. Thank you."
He also warns that the recordings might feature periods of silence and poor sound quality, and that the audio might feature "me rambling, talking, making sounds" or that it might simply be "wildly inappropriate."
"Programming this website has been unbelievably fun for me, since day one," he adds. "That being said, I want to limit my time working here to 4-6 hours a day, so I still have time to work on new music."
Since postponing their Hella Mega tour with Green Day and Fall Out Boy in May, Weezer have compiled a playlist for the Hungarian Formula 1 Grand Prix, released Beginning Of The End – a single taken from the film Bill & Ted Face The Music – and teamed up with Todd Rundgren to release another single, Down With The Ship.
