It's been a few days now that the statements, retractions and denials have been building on this whole issue over whether surf & skate apparel company Hurley funded Weezer's new album, and the results leave me no choice: it's time to reanimate that old monster of a feature: I Call Bullsh*t.
Weezer’s “raw rock” LP Hurley is due out very soon, Sept. 13 to be exact, through a new deal with Epitaph. And in case you haven’t seen it, the album cover is simply Jorge Garcia’s face. If you've been in a coma for the past half decade, Garcia played a character called Hurley on "Lost".
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You got used.
Still with me? Good - here's where it gets sticky: There's a very good chance that Garcia's lovable chubby face was just a smokescreen, used for the simple matter of throwing the scent off the trail of the fact that Weezer's new album was sponsored by, and named after, a company (Hurley) which is owned by a notorious sweatshop-exploiting shoe giant (Nike).
How can that be so? Isn't Rivers just a huge fan of "Lost"? Actually, no. He's never watched the show.
Frontman Rivers Cuomo had previously explained the album title to Spinner as such:
“We struggled super hard trying to come up with an album title, trying to find some kind of phrase that summed up the whole aesthetic behind the album… ultimately, we just went with some random word that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. I just loved this photo of Jorge Garcia — it just had this amazing vibe. We didn’t want to do a fourth self-titled record and we knew people would refer to it as ‘the Hurley record’ even if we left it without that title, so we just called it ‘Hurley.’ No words are on the cover because all we wanted was his amazing face.”
The story sounded quite different in an interview with Weezer guitarist Brian Bell at this month’s Mile High Music Festival. The video's been removed, but here's the transcript:
"The inspiration [for the LP title] came from a surf company called Hurley that was funding the record at the beginning of the recording process and we actually did some sort of advertisement– I don’t even know how they’re tied in so much although we got some clothes and we did a photoshoot: we’re wearing these clothes, and I think we’re selling these clothes in malls. So how that’s tied in, I don’t know. I think it’s this whole, like, tying in different medias. And then using Hurley, the character from LOST, which I’ve never seen in my life, as our mascot almost, for this record, is somewhat post-modernistic maybe. I hope people don’t look at it as too jokey. Cause it certainly comes across that way, without reading into it a little more deeply. That’s it as far as the name and the album cover goes.”
Fascinating. Seems like a pretty clear-cut admission that not only is this guy up his own ass enough to call his record "post-modernistic," but that there's also a distinct possibility that he just inadvertently blew the cover off the "random" story. Remember, Rivers explained that Hurley is simply "some random word that doesn't really have anything to do with anything."
Yesterday, Bell took to weezer.com to clarify:
Just wanted to clear something up
Recently I did an interview in Denver where I was asked why we called the album Hurley. I mistakenly said that Hurley funded the album. I later found out that it wasn’t true at all. Weezer paid for every penny of this recording. The reason the record is called “Hurley” is because Hurley (Jorge Garcia) is on the cover. We thought about leaving the record untitled for the fourth time, but that causes a lot of problems and he knew people would http://stereogum.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpend up calling the record “Hurley” anyway. We got no money for calling the record “Hurley.” thanks folks,
-Brian
That's all fine and good with a nice bow on it, but something smells like bullshit. That could possibly have something to do with the fact that his frontman starred in a web commercial for Hurley months before the then-untitled album was even announced (not to mention that he's claiming the album had a cover before a title).
Not only that, but the band is fully engaged in a Back To School promotion through Hurley, in which "the band will offer unique access, new music and an exclusive line of clothing making for a perfect convergence between artists and fans," according to the press release. Here's another bit of potentially damning info from the announcement:
"Weezer will be releasing a brand new album cleverly titled Hurley with their new label Epitaph Records, but PacSun will have the album exclusively for sale on Sept 10th with nationwide listening parties at all PacSun locations. So if you want it first this is the only place to get it."
So yes, just because Weezer recorded a good chunk of Hurley at Hurley Studios in Costa Mesa, California, is running an extensive promotional clothing campaign with them and releasing their album exclusively through their stores a day early, that doesn't mean the company actually paid for it.
You can also consider the following weezer.com comment from webmaster Karl as an official statement on the situation:
hi folks. its not that hurley and weezer have *nothing* to do with each other – yes the album is going to be carried in Hurley’s PacSun stores, and they are doing some new weez clothes, etc. But the point is that Hurley didnt fund the recording nor do they have anything to do with the music – the album was independently recorded and paid for by the band, and put out on Epitaph. Weezer has been doing promotional and merch deals and etc for 15+ years, that sort of stuff is nothing new. But Brian misspoke when he thought Hurley paid for the album.
Notice anything? LIke the careful omission of any mention that the company paid to have the album named after their brand?
Hence, I Call Bullshit on this entire charade. It's utterly ridiculous to imagine that the album was named completely at random - the name of which happens to be the name of the company that's spearheading a multi-pronged business deal the band's immersed in. Jig's up, bitches.
Furthermore, that "Memories" jam is starting to grow on me, and I don't feel very good about myself for that, being that my first impression was the equivalent of a sonic shart.
