Rivers Cuomo

Rivers Cuomo's brainy eccentricities are evident well beyond his leadership of one of the '90s' most influential pop bands, Weezer. For starters, Cuomo put the band on ice at their popular peak to continue studies at Harvard (from where he graduated as a Phi Beta Kappa); he also made a public vow of celibacy in 2003 and shed many of his material possessions after exploring Vipassana, an Indian meditation technique. Born into a musical family (his dad, Frank, mans the skins on Wayne Shorter's Odyssey of Iska), Cuomo formed Weezer in 1992 and has made records with the band for the better part of the past two decades. But aside from Weezer, Cuomo has written and recorded hundreds of songs in home demos and with numerous band projects, many of which he has posted on the Internet himself. The first of his home recordings to receive a more formal issue was Alone -- The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, which was issued in 2007.