Before Weezer played a note on Tuesday night, the screen at Nationwide Arena showed a boy getting picked on. In the video, bullies mock him for claiming Weezer will play a party at his house. Weezer's manager also turns him away, because 98 cents doesn't book a band. His flyer reaches the band anyway, and they show up in his yard. Then the lights came up on that yard: a single-story house with a white picket fence and a working doorbell, palm trees on both sides, and a crescent moon hanging over the roof on the video wall.
The story has a real-life parallel. In early 1999, a Florida teenager named Mitchell Schop wrote to Cake asking them to play his bar mitzvah. By John McCrea's account he wrote more than once, and each letter closed by politely telling the band he'd understand if they couldn't come. He also sang a Cake song to them over the phone. Cake flew to Deerfield Beach and played the party, and that became the opening night of their 1999 tour. Weezer staged its version as theater. Cake actually did it.
The number on the front door was 2226. Weezer fans know it. The band rented a house at that number on Amherst Avenue in West Los Angeles when they were unknowns, and the songs that became the Blue Album took shape inside it. The garage where they rehearsed gave "In the Garage" its subject. The house has since been demolished. On this tour, Weezer rebuilt a copy of it on arena floors across North America and named the tour The Gathering. One fan in the front row held up a yellow license plate reading W33Z3R, with the tour's message printed across the top: all are welcome.
Columbus has been on the guest list for a long time. Weezer first played outside the West Coast at Newport Music Hall in July 1994, opening for the Smithereens. They came back to the Newport that October opening for Live, and again in January 1997 on the Pinkerton tour, when the record was considered a commercial misstep. Value City Arena followed in 2001 and Polaris in 2002. In 2010 they played Columbus twice: a State Fair date, a booking that usually goes to acts with their biggest years behind them, and a free show on Ohio State's South Oval that filled the lawn. After that came a co-headline with the Pixies at the Schottenstein Center in 2019, Historic Crew Stadium with Green Day and Fall Out Boy in 2021, and Nationwide Arena in 2024. Tuesday was their eleventh Columbus show in 32 years and only their fourth in an arena.
Silversun Pickups opened at 7 p.m. They formed in 2000 in Silver Lake, a few miles from Amherst Avenue. "Lazy Eye" broke them nationally in 2006, and the band earned a Best New Artist Grammy nomination a few years later. Before doors that afternoon, they played an in-store at Used Kids Records. Their arena set was five songs in about half an hour. Three came from Carnavas, "Panic Switch" came from Swoon, and "The Wreckage" came from Tenterhooks, released in February. The sound was thick fuzz over Nikki Monninger's steady bass. They closed with "Lazy Eye," and people still finding their seats knew it within a couple of bars. Monninger came back later in the night.
The Shins took the stage at 7:50. James Mercer started the band in Albuquerque in the late '90s, and Sub Pop released Oh, Inverted World in 2001, the same year Weezer returned with the Green Album. Three years later a scene in Garden State introduced "New Slang" to a much larger audience, and Mercer has kept the band going through several lineup changes since. The 13-song set opened with "Simple Song" and covered five albums, with the most songs from Chutes Too Narrow and Wincing the Night Away. They played a cover of Hot Chocolate's "Every 1's a Winner" while the arena did the wave, and "Caring Is Creepy" and "New Slang" kept the early material in the set. They closed with R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It," a cover choice that drew the whole room into singing.
Weezer opened with "Shine Again," the first single from the Gold Album, then played "Surf Wax America" and "Keep Fishin'." Photographers in the pit get escorted out after the third song, so those three are what came through my lens. Rivers Cuomo played a seafoam guitar covered in stickers. Brian Bell wore a long, worn work coat over paint-spotted pants. Scott Shriner played a Precision bass with most of its finish worn off. Patrick Wilson played in headphones behind a Ludwig kit with the flying-W logo on the kick drum. This lineup is in its 25th year, the longest the band has gone without a change.
The rest of the 26-song set, compiled from setlist.fm and the tour's earlier dates, shows where the evening went. The Gathering tour revived several deep cuts. "Slob" returned after more than 20 years off setlists, along with "Lonely Girl" and a full-band "No Other One." In "Beverly Hills" and "El Scorcho," Cuomo changed lines to mention Columbus and a Twenty One Pilots show.
After "Across the Sea," the telephone poles beside the house threw sparks and the arena went dark. The blackout was staged, and it happens at every show on the tour. When the lights returned, the band had moved to the porch. Cuomo played piano on "Longtime Sunshine," a song from the Pinkerton era that he never put on a Weezer album, while Bell played clarinet and Wilson played guitar. Then they played "In the Garage" acoustically, a song about the garage at the house the set recreates. Afterward the roles traded: Cuomo went to the drums and Wilson took guitar for "Pork and Beans," which ended with brief teases of "Eruption" and "Joy to the World."
Monninger came back for "We Might as Well Be Strangers" and "Go Away," then sang lead on "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams." Weezer recorded that song in the '90s for the shelved Songs from the Black Hole project, and having another band's bassist sing it fit the night's theme of welcoming guests. The closing run is the one Columbus has heard since 1994: "Undone," "El Scorcho," "Say It Ain't So," "Buddy Holly," and "Island in the Sun." The show ended before 11.
Eleven of the 26 songs came from the first two albums, and four came from the Gold Album. The band that once played Newport for whoever showed up now builds a house in an arena and fills it. The kid in the video got his party. So did Columbus.
