Longtime Sunshine
"Longtime Sunshine" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Demo by Weezer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Album | Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Released | December 18, 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Recorded | 1994 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Length | 3:15 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Label | Geffen | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Writer(s) | Rivers Cuomo | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RC# | 171 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Producer(s) | Rivers Cuomo | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Status | officially released | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Live debut | June 7, 2011 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo track listing | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Rivers Cuomo song chronology | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Pinkerton (Deluxe Edition) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Longtime Sunshine" (sometimes rendered as "Long Time Sunshine") is a song written by Rivers Cuomo. It is the seventh track on Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo.
Appearences
- Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2007)
- Pinkerton (Deluxe Edition) (2010)
- Alone III: The Pinkerton Years 1994-1997 (2011)
- Official Bootleg series (Live)
- Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years (2020)
Overview
In the midst of struggling to make it as a rock star in Los Angeles, I started longing for the safety, peace, quiet, simplicity, and family structure of my New England childhood. I thought back to one of my favorite memories, lying in the bottom bunk, my brother in the top, in our bedroom in our farmhouse in Eastford, Connecticut, in the hot, hot, summer, 7, 8 p.m., sun still up, but having to go to sleep because it's our bedtime, one of those big box fans blowing, and my parents, Ma and Steve, sitting at our bedside, singing an old hippie song to us, to calm us down and ease us into sleep, "May the Longtime Sun Shine Upon You."
I borrowed the hook phrase from this song and set about writing my own song to capture my feelings of loss and longing. I wrote it on my mom's piano when I was back in Connecticut at Christmas. My mom had a piano because I told her that the house seemed too quiet and I was worried about her living in silence, all alone after my step-dad left. So that is how "Longtime Sunshine" came to exist. When I recorded this track, I had just bought a clarinet and figured out how to play a few notes. Because of my poor embouchure it sounds very much like a kazoo.
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"Longtime Sunshine" was written by Rivers Cuomo in December of 1993 or January of 1994, while visiting his mother for Christmas at her home in Connecticut. The title is borrowed from "May the Long Time Sun Shine," a section from the track "A Very Cellular Song," written by Mike Heron of psychedelic-folk group the Incredible String Band for their 1968 album The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. As a standalone song, "May the Long Time Sun Shine" has became very popular among the hippie movement and even in Sikh religious services in the years since its release and has often been assumed to be a much older or more traditional composition.[1] Cuomo released this demo to fans online in the early 2000s, and later on the demo compilation Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo in 2007.
Cuomo later retrofitted "Longtime Sunshine" as a song in consideration for a planned (albeit ultimately unfinished) "rock-opera" concept album, Songs from the Black Hole (itself intended as a metaphor for Cuomo's disillusionment with rock stardom). Early drafts of SFTBH featured "Longtime Sunshine" as the closing track, intended to be sung by Cuomo as the story's protagonist, Jonas. The story for the album concept, however, was never fully developed. In one early draft, wherein the characters learn the space voyage depicted in the story was, in fact, some sort of filmed experiment, Jonas sings "Longtime Sunshine" after volunteering to remain on a doomed planet orbiting a supernova in order to allow his crewmates to escape.[2] Weezer worked on "Longtime Sunshine" at Electric Lady Studios in New York during early sessions for the band's second album (at this time still planned to be Songs from the Black Hole). During these sessions, the band experimented with an extended coda wherein Cuomo, Matt Sharp, and Brian Bell sing a medley of "Longtime Sunshine," "Why Bother?," "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams," "No Other One," and "Blast Off!" Though this experiment was apparently discarded thereafter,[3] it appeared on the Deluxe Edition of Pinkerton in 2010. Short vocal demos for the coda, as well as a potential reprise, later appeared on the compilations Alone III in 2011 and Alone IV in 2020.
Though Songs from the Black Hole would ultimately be scrapped, Karl Koch has noted[citation needed] that "Longtime Sunshine" was meant to close Pinkerton until "Butterfly" was recorded on the final day of recording at Sound City in June of 1996. Cuomo revisited the song in 1997,[4] recording a home demo in September of that year and and rehearsing it as part of his short-lived side project, Homie. None of these recordings currently exist in circulation and it was not performed live during this period. During the filming of the second video for "Island in the Sun" in 2001, Cuomo played "Longtime Sunshine" on an acoustic guitar for director Spike Jonze, a few seconds of which could be seen in a behind-the-scenes video released on weezer.com. It is unknown why Cuomo was playing the song.
During a Memories Tour concert in Austin, Texas on June 7, 2011, Weezer performed the song live for the first time, featuring a new arrangement. The song was played live a number of additional times, including on the Weezer Cruise. The song was brought back for a performance for NPR's Tiny Desk concert series in 2019.[5] The song was also performed solo by Cuomo at Weezer concerts in 2023.
Known recordings
Performer(s) | Title | Filename | Date of recording | Recording location | Length | Appeared on | Notes |
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Rivers Cuomo | Longtime Sunshine | December 1993/January 1994 | ?, Connecticut | 3:15 |
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Rivers Cuomo | Longtime Sunshine | 1995 Longtime Sunshine Reprise.mp3 | 1995 | ? | 1:23 | Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years | Demo of coda |
Rivers Cuomo | Longtime Sunshine | 1995 Longtime Sunshine Vocals#1.mp3 | 1995 | ? | 0:25 | Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years | Vocal demo of reprise |
Rivers Cuomo | Longtime Sunshine | 1995 Longtime Sunshine Vocals#2.mp3 | 1995 | ? | 0:28 | Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years | Vocal demo of reprise |
Rivers Cuomo | Longtime Sunshine | 1995 Longtime Sunshine Vocals#3.mp3 | 1995 | ? | 0:36 | Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years | Vocal demo of reprise |
Rivers Cuomo | Longtime Sunshine | 16 Longtime Sunshine.mp3 | 1995 | ? | 0:49 | Alone III: The Pinkerton Years 1994-1997 | Truncated audio from "1995 Longtime Sunshine Vocals#3.mp3" + reprise of "Superfriend" |
Weezer | Longtime Sunshine | August/September 1995[3] | Electric Lady Studios, New York, NY | 4:18 | Pinkerton (Deluxe Edition) | With coda experiment | |
Weezer | Longtime Sunshine | September 6, 1995[3] | Electric Lady Studios, New York, NY | ||||
Rivers Cuomo | Longtime Sunshine | September 1997[4] | Boston, MA | ||||
Homie | Longtime Sunshine | Fall 1997[4] | ? | ||||
Weezer | Longtime Sunshine | June 7, 2011 | Stubb's BBQ, Austin, TX | 3:49 | Live in Austin, Texas (Pinkerton) | ||
Weezer | Longtime Sunshine | July 13, 2011 | Zepp Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan | 3:41 | Live in Tokyo, Japan (The Blue Album) | ||
Weezer | Longtime Sunshine | January 21, 2012 | Palladium Lounge, Carnival Destiny | 3:43 | Live on the Weezer Cruise - Palladium Lounge | ||
Weezer | Longtime Sunshine | July 29, 2012 | Stir Concert Cove at Harrah's Council Bluffs Casino & Hotel, Council Bluffs, IA | 3:45 | Live in Council Bluffs, Iowa |
Live performances
- Weezer concert: 06/07/2011
- Weezer concert: 07/13/2011
- Weezer concert: 08/27/2011
- Weezer concert: 01/21/2012
- Weezer concert: 05/31/2012
- Weezer concert: 06/10/2012
- Weezer concert: 07/14/2012
- Weezer concert: 07/29/2012
- Weezer concert: 11/11/2012
- Weezer concert: 02/27/2019 (a)
- Weezer concert: 04/24/2023
- Weezer concert: 07/04/2023
Personnel
Demo version
- Rivers Cuomo – piano, lead vocals, percussion, bass guitar, clarinet
Studio version
Audio
Lyrics
Solo demoSometimes I wanna pack it all up |
Pinkerton sessionsSometimes I wanna pack it all up |
See also
References
- ↑ Wittstamm, Willem. "May the Long Time Sun Shine Upon You: Where It All Began..." Aquarian Times Feb/March 2009. https://studentsofyogibhajan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Where-it-all-began.pdf
- ↑ Cuomo, Rivers. The Pinkerton Diaries. 2011. Self-published.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Weezer Recording History - Page 8
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Weezer Recording History - Page 10
- ↑ NPR Music. "Weezer: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert" YouTube. 9 April 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8UKQJZsv4o
- Citation needed
- Known recordings table
- Songs from the Black Hole
- Weezer songs
- Rivers Cuomo
- Homie songs
- Songs that appeared on the 4 and 5 Star Demos of Rivers Cuomo list
- Songs on Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo
- Songs on Alone III: The Pinkerton Years
- Songs on Alone IV: The Blue-Pinkerton Years
- Alone series