It seems silly to admit this, but I never really loved Weezer’s El Scorcho until I heard Dashboard Confessional cover it. I know, rag on me, tell me I’m dumb—and maybe you’d be right. The few times I’d heard El Scorcho as done by Weezer, I thought it was good but not great, a fun song but not the next thing to take over my stereo.

Then, in October of 2007, I went to see Chris Carrabba (aka Dashboard Confessional) on his first solo tour in 5 years. It was one of the absolute best shows I have ever been to. Most of the time when I hear “sold out show at La Zona Rosa” it makes me cringe with thoughts of screaming fair weather fans attacking the bands and making it hard for me to enjoy the show. But there was a bit of an older crowd that night, and there was a really nice vibe.

Anyway—I’m getting a bit off track here—on this tour, they sold a limited tour-only CD called “The Wire Tapes, Vol. 1,” which is all covers. Being the rabid Dashboard Confessional fan I am, I bought it and started listening to it as soon as I got home that night.

Although there are many good covers on the album, for me, the El Scorcho cover was love at first listen. A quieter, more toned down and put together version of the song, it highlights the fantastic lyrics (“I asked you to go to the Green Day concert/you said you never heard of them/how cool is that?/so I went to your room and read your diary”).

Through this cover I learned to love the original, in all its glorious weirdness (and isn’t glorious weirdness what Weezer is all about?), but this cover remains dear to my heart. And it many ways, it seems perfect that such two such extremely influential bands (for a certain generation, of course) would come together in this way. Both bands impacted a lot of teenagers (and even some cool adults!) in the 90s, and both are continuing to put out consistently awesome material to be enjoyed by fans new, old, and future.

So come down on the street and dance with me!