SHEEZER with DJ MIKE SMALL and DJ VJ BJ at the Garrison (1197 Dundas West), Friday (August 20). $8. 416-537-1620.
There’ve been three critical moments in the life of Sheezer.
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One: the invention of their name, the most perfect thing – really the only thing – you could call an all-female Weezer tribute band.
The second moment came shortly thereafter, when Rivers Cuomo shouted them out on Twitter.
“In real life we didn’t exist at all,” says drummer Dana Snell during a Skype call joined by keyboardist Robin Hatch. “That was kind of like, ‘Oh, wow. Well, now we have to do it.'”
And so they did. Sheezer played a New Year’s Eve show at the Tranzac, opened for Gentleman Reg in February at the Drake Hotel, and that’s it. But if the amount of press coverage afforded this self-described “bar band” leading up to their Garrison show Friday seems disproportionately high, it’s because there’s more to the band than a smart name and Twitter props from the head of Weezer.
With members coming from the Bicycles (Snell), the Hidden Cameras (Laura Barrett), Sports: the Band (Hatch), the Phonemes (Magali Meagher), plus guitar shredder Alysha Haugen, Sheezer is a quasi supergroup culled from the micro-culture of Toronto’s independent scene. It’s another case of the internet’s power to make an offbeat idea materialize in real life and a rare instance of women transgressing the boundaries of nerd rock, a sub-genre overrun by dudes and bros.
But none of those things were ever really the point for a band that had a name before anything else. (Hell, Barrett had to learn bass and Hatch guitar – though keyboards are her main Sheezer duty – prior to the band’s first show.)
Their main objective is “just to sound as much like Weezer as possible,” says Snell. Which they really do, as proven by some distorted-sounding YouTube videos of their Drake show. When I say so, Hatch says, “Thank you. I mean, we know.”
Which brings us to the third critical moment for Sheezer: their upcoming show, their biggest yet and a promising night of communal early-to-mid-90s nostalgia. (Declares their Facebook page: “BLUE ALBUM AND PINKERTON ONLY.”)
“It’s awesome to go to a show where everyone knows the words and sings along,” says Hatch. “It’s a fun experience.”
Interview Clips
Dana Snell, on Sheezer’s Bizarro World counterparts in Weezer
On that fateful tweet from Rivers
The story of how they came up with their perfect name
Don’t hold your breath for a Sheezer album, Snell says
Video Clip
Sheezer performing Say It Ain’t So at the Drake Hotel:
music@nowtoronto.com
