Weezer, buoyed by their hit version of Toto's 'Africa,' to play with Pixies Saturday at Mattress Firm with Pixies

San Diego Union-Tribune

Aug. 7, 2018 3:05 PM PT

Who gets the credit for getting Weezer to record a cover version of “Africa,” the chart-topping 1983 Toto song that recently gave Weezer its first radio hit in eight years?

Take a bow “Mary from Cleveland,” the 14-year-old Weezer fan who mounted a Twitter campaign — as @weezerafrica — to implore the band to cover “Africa.”

Mary’s tweets, however serious (or not) they may have been, got the attention of Weezer drummer Patrick Wilson.

Then, almost as fast as you can sing Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you, Weezer recorded its simultaneously wry and reverent version of “Africa.” Lo and behold, it became a hit.

Toto has now responded by covering Weezer’s “Hash Pipe,” as Toto guitarist Steve Lukather noted in a Union-Tribune interview last week.

“Do I think Weezer are Toto fans? Absolutely not,” Lukather told us. “They make fun of ’80s bands, even though we’re a ’70s band. Toto is going to play (Weezer’s) ‘Hash Pipe’ at our shows, and we’re going to own it!”

Of course, Weezer is not averse to performing songs by other bands, as its versions of The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” and Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” attest.

It remains to be seen if Weezer’s Saturday concert at Mattress Firm Amphitheatre includes the band’s cover of the Pixies’ “Velouria,” if only because the still mighty Pixies are co-headlining the show here.

Weezer and Pixies, with Sleigh Bells: 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Mattress Firm Amphitheatre. 2050 Entertainment Circle, Chula Vista. $20-$108, plus service charges. (800) 745-3000. ticketmaster.com

george.varga@sduniontribune.com

Twitter @georgevarga

Music

George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”