Goat Punishment

Weezer completed their touring for Pinkerton in the summer of 1997. The members of the band took a break, with drummer Patrick Wilson returning to his home in Portland, Oregon to work on his side project, The Special Goodness, Matt Sharp left to complete the follow-up album for his group The Rentals, and Brian Bell went to work on his group, Space Twins. Rivers Cuomo returned to Boston, Massachusetts, but took a break from Harvard to focus on songwriting. Cuomo gathered together Boston-area musicians and rehearsed unreleased material, including possible new songs for the next Weezer album. The group, referred to by fans as the Rivers Cuomo Band, had several different lineups and played several shows at local clubs, including their first show at T.T. the Bear's on October 8, 1997. Future Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh was a constant of the group's evolving lineups. Pat Wilson eventually flew to Boston to sit in on drums. The Boston songs were later abandoned and not used on the next Weezer album, but live recordings of the Boston shows are openly traded on the internet. In February of 1998, Rivers left Boston and returned to Los Angeles. Pat Wilson and Brian Bell joined Cuomo in L.A. to start work on the next album. Matt Sharp did not rejoin the band and officially left the group in April of 1998. The group decided on Mikey Welsh as Sharp's replacement. Weezer continued rehearsal and cut demos until the fall of 1998. Frustration and creative disagreements led to a decline in rehearsals, and in late fall of 1998, drummer Pat Wilson left for his home in Portland pending renewed productivity from Cuomo. Rivers Cuomo went into a period of admitted depression, painting the walls of his home black and putting "fiberglass insulation all over the windows and then black sheets of fiberglass so that no light could get through." The band would not reunite until April of 2000, when the Fuji Festival in Japan offered Weezer a high-paying gig to play in August 2000. The festival served as a catalyst for Weezer's productivity, and from April to May, 2000, the band rehearsed and demoed new songs in Los Angeles. The band returned to live shows in June 2000, but without the Weezer name. Instead the shows featured the group's first use of the pseudonym Goat Punishment. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.