The Smack FAQ with Karl Koch

The Smack was a Weezer fan website that was actively ran from 2000 to 2002. A section of the website titled "karl faq" included a number of questions that had at one point been answered by Karl Koch, collated from his postings on the Usenet Weezer newsgroup alt.music.weezer, on which he was an active poster. The site claims that the questions were posted with Koch's permission, which was confirmed when Koch briefly mentioned the site in the Weezerpedia Discord server in 2022.Weezerpedia Discord Q&A with Karl Koch - March 2022
==Archive==
Rare and interesting Information from Karl
the "karl faq" is the best name i could come up with for this section. its not really a "faq". Most of the answers are directly from, half-man half-amazing, karl koch (apologies to kenny smith) when he posted in the weezer newsgroup, a long time ago. they are posted with his permission. i've also noticed some people take information from here (and other parts of the website) for their owm pages, please ask first and give credit!
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my evaline
in '93 the guys were going to a vocal coach, and practicing barbershop stuff on the side, because its an excellent tool for learning to sing harmonies (despite the goofy ol' lyrics from back in the {OLD} day). my avaline was one of many done at that time. both p.wilson and i traded off randomly for the role of "fourth guy" in the quartet. it was actually pretty fun. yeah, riv did do it in high school, which is probably why he suggested doing it in practices. it was recorded (wilson as the 4th guy of course) kind of as a joke, and it came off pretty well, so it was saved. all agreed it would be sorta funny to put it on a single. the mystery is why it only went on the Australian one. i guess the UK geffen folks saw the earlier-released Australian version and were like "we need to be more serious here in england". and the other "import" countries then followed suit to the UK style (as is often the case for foreign releases of US stuff)
-karl
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what were the samples that were supposed to be used for the sweater song?
i did it twice, first for the Nov. '92 4 song demo. that was like darth vader and Gollum and stuff. then i did it for the blue album, which was a combo of charlie brown , the Black Hole story record, various old radio shows (bogart,etc), animal noises, six million dollar man, and a little Christian radio drama stuff. but yeah, we had to do the vocal things at the last minute. my samples are still on the original masters. Anyone got $2000 so i can reserve a day at Electric Lady and do a new mix with the samples?
-karl
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Who is weepel? (mentioned in 'my name is jonas')
his sled.
(i.e. rosebud...)
-karl
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who is suzanne?
Suzanne Filkins, (an employee of DGC) who was super nice to us. im not sure where she works now. In any case, she definitely deserved the song.
-karl
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wasn't wanda supposed to be on the angus soundtrack?
weezer was actually asked for a slow song to use 'during a dance scene' and rivers came up with 'wanda' after reading the script (we all read it). but 'wanda' is like a theme song to the characters lives, so i think the director got confused, like why would they be slow dancing to that? so as you see in the film, they instead dance to mazzy star's 'fade into you' (which was well-known), and weezer got switched to the fast song part of the dance,with the more fitting 'you gave your love to me softly'
-karl
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the writing of tired of sex
tired of sex was written almost before rivers was even famous, like fall 94. i Remember him playing me a demo of it like xmas 94, it was really slow, and like sad, not aggressive. at the time he was fairly monogamous with one main girl and perhaps one or two others on occasion. the impression i got was that he was indeed searching for love, but he and the chick(s) really got on well in the physical way , so he kept getting tempted back to the, uh... 'darkside'. ......... by the time pinkerton came out he went through like 20 more phases and was getting into the "time to party down" phase, which seems to have peaked during the summer 97 pinkerton tour that all these girls 'horror' stories seem to stem from.......... hence the irony: singing that song, but not at all actually "tired of it". and the seeming contradiction
-karl
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the pinkerton "sound"
rivers wanted it raw. that plus his Japanese thing added up to a record that less people would like (i.e. 'buy'), but those that did seemed to like it more than 'blue'. he was simultaneously not giving
a crap if it did well and totally assuming that it would be enormous. this is a paradox that in fact seems to sum up rivers's psyche at the time. and maybe still does for all i know.
-karl
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who is in homie?
the drum loop was actually pat wilson's playing. Soul-coughing guy did something else, bass i think. matt "co-produced" it, basically suggesting recording ideas and yelling and whooping in the background. i think brian did some backup vox, along with the weezers a+r guy todd sullivan. rivers sang and did rhythm guitar.
-karl
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the future of a b-side and unreleased album
IMHO, an official b-sides CD is very likely, but not till well after the fabled 3rd CD is released. Such a CD would only include songs and versions of songs most of you are already familiar with. (you know: all the official b-sides and live versions from import cd's.) plus i'd imagine, the possible b-sides of any future weezer singles from the 3rd CD.
If i have any say on the matter at the time , I will definitely voice my "insider/outsider" opinion to those in charge, and plead the case for including "i swear its true" and "getting up and leaving" (the never released 'pink triangle' b-sides. because they were almost finished anyway.) obviously this would boost sales, because these are particularly hard (impossible) to get, and fans who want it all would want it ALL. (i was this way about plenty of bands, i know the feeling) . And of course to make a nice package with never seen photos and stuff, so its not lame.
as far as all the rare demo type stuff, you guys have no idea how much of this there is. i literally have piles of this stuff. but its always been a sensitive issue, particularly for rivers, he feels demos and stuff are half-assed and embarrassing. Even the 'jaime' from rarities was debated by rivers, he was worried that it sounded too rough. you know, that whole perfectionist thing. so i strongly doubt theyll put me on a "weezer anthology' project anytime soon, though id gladly do it and have 98% of the material needed to pull it off.
-karl
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Why was "My Best Friends are Gone" chosen to be recorded?
(Hash Pipe, Island in the Sun, and My Best Friends were the only 'older' songs recorded at the green album sessions)
Ric did push for this song, he really liked several songs of this vintage, including "No More Disappointments", but Rivers and him had a voting game and Rivers kept pushing for newer stuff, so most of these era songs went away.
The guys soundchecked it a few times that summer, but never played it during a show. I think it was fading (by) then, and Ric revived it by insisting they try it. He also did that for an even older demo, "Island". Ric didn't like Hash Pipe too much.
-karl
==See also==
*Original archive
*List of interviews
==References==
Category:Interviews
Category:Karl Koch Interviews
Category:Fansites