95px|Rivers Cuomo, frontman of Weezer
Pinkerton is the second studio album by American alternative rock
band Weezer, released on September 24, 1996. After finishing tours in
promotion of their 1994 album Weezer, the band originally planned to
record a space-themed rock opera entitled Songs from the Black Hole.
However, this project was eventually abandoned, and the group used some
of the songs from the discarded album on Pinkerton. Much of the album
was written while frontman Rivers Cuomo (pictured) was studying at
Harvard University, which influenced the themes addressed on the
record. The album was seen as a departure from the band's original
power pop sound for a darker and more abrasive sound. On its release in
1996, the album was initially considered a critical and commercial
failure; Pinkerton has since risen in stature to become one of the most
highly regarded albums of the 1990s, receiving much critical acclaim,
and is now considered one of the most important albums of the decade.
The album was certified gold in the United States in 2001. As of August
2009, Pinkerton has amassed US sales of 852,000, and went gold in
Canada with sales of over 50,000. It was the last Weezer album to
feature bassist Matt Sharp. (more...)
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<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_%28album%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1645:
English Civil War: Royalists under the personal command of King
Charles I suffered a significant defeat in the Battle of Rowton Heath.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rowton_Heath>
1890:
Wilford Woodruff, President of the Mormon Church, wrote the first draft
of a manifesto which officially disavowed the continuing practice of
plural marriage.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890_Manifesto>
1946:
Clark Clifford and George Elsey, military advisers to U.S. President
Harry S. Truman, present him with a top-secret report on the Soviet
Union that would form the basis of the U.S. policy of containment.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/containment>
1957:
Barcelona's Camp Nou , currently the largest stadium in Europe with a
seating capacity of 99,354, opened.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Nou>
1996:
Representatives from 71 nations signed the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which has not yet come into force because not
enough signatories have ratified it.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban_Treaty>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
heretofore (adverb):
Prior to now, until now, up to the present time
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heretofore>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten
thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity
of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a
better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald>