The Prank That Started It All
All Things Weezer was originally started in April 2007 when the domain albumsix.com was purchased in anticipation of Weezer someday releasing their sixth studio album. At this point, there were NO known plans that the band would release another album after reports that the band was calling it quits or going on an extended hiatus. When an acoustic demo of the song “Pig” leaked online that summer with an apparent album title of Deliverance at Hand, the two owners of the albumsix.com domain put their brains together.
In May 2007, they decided to make the domain albumsix.com redirect to weezer.com. That’s all. Then they posted about it on another Weezer forum. Shortly thereafter, actual news media were reporting on this domain.
Now that everyone was paying attention to the site, they decided to go one step further. Several months later, reports surfaced that the band actually was working on their sixth album and that it would include songs from other members of the band. After a brief brainstorm session, the two conspired to come up with a fake album title: Tout Ensemble. In French, it means “an assemblage of parts or details (as in a work of art) considered as forming a whole.”
Then this was posted at albumsix.com:
That’s right, an album title and a release date (The real album six would actually be released just several weeks after this fake release date. Not too bad).
Finally, after Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Pitchfork reported on the supposed new album, Rivers Cuomo had to debunk the fake album himself.
“Weezer and Geffen Records have no affiliation with www.albumsix.com. The new Weezer record is not called ”Tout Ensemble” and there is no official release date yet for the album.” – Rivers Cuomo
Instead of just getting rid of the site, we noticed this great excitement and buzz about the new album as a great opportunity to start a new Weezer fan community.
So with that, AlbumSix.com (and now AllThingsWeezer.com) was born.
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