On stage, Sara Weaver could not be ignored. Decked out in a black choker and a leopard-print dress, her short blond hair flying in front of her eyes, she played her pink guitar with confidence and electricity. And she had a voice like an angry angel -- all fiery and cracking with passion, but also melodic and entrancing. Her songs had the sort of catchy, resounding choruses you could sing along to: “I want to tell you, I fee-eel some kind of way about yoo-wa-oo-wa-oo!” Even in a town this cynical and jaded, you couldn’t just sit at the bar when she was up there playing her heart out.

Part of what makes her death so hard to accept is the memory of her in concert. In front of her pop-punk band Swisher, she was vibrant, tough, powerful, fun. It’s a cliche, but it made sense in this instance: If anyone could kick leukemia’s ass, it would be Weaver.

Swisher’s self-titled first CD, released on Weaver’s Alienation Real Estate record label in 1999, was fierce and sarcastic, full of bitter anthems and energetic rock songs. The band followed this up in 2000 with Over Nothing, another self-released record that added musical depth and lyrical maturity to all that sharp wit and energy. The album was a major leap forward.

“She was just on the verge of being taken very, very seriously,” says her longtime friend and former roommate, producer Brian McTear, who recorded every Swisher song out there. “She was ready to go.”

As she told City Paper in October of that year, Weaver spent three months planning out a cross-country tour to support Over Nothing. A few weeks before hitting the road, Weaver biked over to a local drug company to participate in a half-hour cholesterol study and pick up a quick $200. The next morning she got a call saying her platelets and red and white blood cells were dangerously low. Two days later she was told she had acute myelogenous leukemia.

In the months and years that followed, Weaver was in and out of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for tests, complications, chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant (from her sister Sonya). She had no time to help out at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights anymore. She could no longer do rock shows in smoky clubs. She had to quit waitressing at McGlinchey’s and Sugar Mom’s.

Unable to idly sit by as Weaver suffered, friends responded with creativity and enthusiasm. Some helped put together “The Weave Report,” an updated series of pages on the goswisher.com website. There, concerned fans and loved ones could read news about Weaver’s condition and interviews with relatives, friends, doctors and Weaver herself, conducted mostly by her boyfriend and Swisher drummer Jon Vital, and friend and ex-Swisher drummer Tracy Bannett. The Weave Report is a touching, informative and wonderful documentation of a woman who fought for her life every step of the way, who figuratively and literally fell down and picked herself back up. She even planned a third Swisher album with songs inspired by her battle.Besides moral and emotional support, Weaver needed money, so a slew of benefits, including a couple of huge rock shows, were set up all over town. “It was the most awesome thing I’ve seen in Philadelphia,” said McTear. “A lot of people had a lot to give.” No official announcement was ever made, but $10,000 had been raised to help Vital and Weaver get a new apartment, away from the cats and construction that made her old place a health risk.

Friends would stop by the Bone Marrow Transplant ward, scrub up, and hang out with Weaver for a while. Judging from The Weave Report, she was almost never alone. McTear, who suffers from cystic fibrosis and, as a result, is always battling a lung infection, was barred from visiting his friend, since her immune system was in a weakened state. “It was very frustrating,” says McTear, but he says his little brother/Swisher guitarist Brendan McTear

His memories of Weaver are sharp: playing pool at the New Wave Café, he and Vital begrudgingly watching 90210 when the three shared an apartment in the Italian Market, the time they hung out with Cheap Trick at McGlinchey’s, the way she’d laugh during awkward silences. “She is one of the most fun people,” says McTear, who still has trouble thinking of her in the past tense. “She made me realize there were decent human beings in the world.”

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August 25, 2005
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