Karl's Corner - 05/17/2005

05/17/05 Make Believe, Treacle People

...Make Believe hits the charts!

USA: debuts at #2 on the Billboard Top 200! Weezer's best ever album placing on the top 200. (#1, as widely predicted: Dave Matthews.) This also marks Weezer's second best album sales week ever, just behind the opening week of The Green Album.

Canada: debuts at #1! First #1 for weezer in Canada!

UK: debuted at #11, the second highest debut of the week, and (possibly?) the best album position ever for weezer in the UK!

Ireland: debuted at #7, the highest debut of the week and the highest (i think) debut for weezer in Ireland!

Australia: debuted at #19 on the ARIA (Australian Record Industry Association) album charts!

Norway: debuted at #7! Highest debut of the week there.

Spain: not out till 5/23.

No info yet for other countries, such as New Zealand, Japan, France, Germany, Indonesia, and others. Not that it will necessarily have stellar first weeks in those places, but you never know...

...meanwhile, in radio land,
Australia: Beverly Hills at #19 on the Triple J Net 50 Saturday Chart show, (vote for it here!) and is still on the Triple j "Hitlist".
UK: Beverly Hills down to #9 from #19 on the UK Singles Chart, up to #10 from #29 on the UK Download Chart.
Iceland: I think this chart means its at #5, down from #4?
And back in the USA, we're hearing some reports that 'Beverly Hills' has recently been 'popping' up on some "top 40" stations...
And on 96wave (Charleston, SC) "Perfect Situation" got a spin, out of the blue.

...French review of Make Believe by Nick Kent here. Norwegian review here.

...some weezery things cropping up on Live 105's Miles the intern page...

...crazy Beverly Hills Mashup from Q101 Chicago available here.

..."Make Believe" listening parties went global, witness this (excerpted) report from Indonesia: "Jakarta, Indonesia, May 13, 2005: By your standards it might be a little late for a listening party, since the album already hit the stands, but me and a few friends decided to throw one anyway...so we did our best to get a place, gather round materials, and of course, funds. i still can't quite get it how, but we miraculously managed to secure all necessary resources by a week...the appropriate plan would be gathering no more than 50 weezer fans, listen along to the album, give thoughts, throw some giveaways and watch some acoustic performances...words got spread out via the mighty friendster and ever-reliable chain text messages. a day before the event we caught wind that our little party has even become city-wide radio talk! we contacted Universal, who seemed real supportive to us (of course, free promotion)...we gathered on Aksara Bookstore, who's kind enough to give us space and sound system for free (much thanks). got prepped up, so far everything's looking good. biggest surprise of the night came when the Universal reps came over and brrrought two boxes of promo cds! most are the beverly hills promo cds, but they also got "weezer - prime cuts", which is a mini-greatest hits, consisting of 7 songs! By 8.30 pm around 30 people has gathered so we started the show, playing the BvH video for starters, and then playing track by track interspersed by giveaways and comments from the crowd. we got some local musicians and journalists in the crowd too so we gather comments from them too. the general response is the album is quite catchy, but maybe a few more spins would give them more impression." ---Yoga N.

...and yet another weezer tribute band here: Wepeel.