Now Playing: 'Mutilated Lips' from The Mollusk by Ween

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When Ween signed on with Elektra and released Pure Guava in 1992, it was, very simply, a good move. The change of spaces and the resulting improvements in sound and style that Ween would make with the safety of the label's catch-net beneath them would prove to be revelatory for fans that had hung with the band through the catch-as-can indie years and cement the band's position as one of the premier, most enduring cult bands of all time and, not content to simply tread water, the band's major label years would give Ween the confidence they needed to keep pushing boundaries.

The only way to compare the early years of Ween with the late is to say that there is no comparison. While GodWeenSatan would end up being regarded as a milestone record and is often called "where the going got good," Pure Guava stepped up the game a bit more and thrilled audiences with a few glimmers of potential. In 1994 though, the band released Chocolate And Cheese—an album so important in the band's career that it ensured that nothing would ever be the same again for the band.

Chocolate And Cheese - Buy It
(Elektra, 1994)

Aristotle may have called wit educated insolence, Winston Churchill might have intimated that a joke was a very serious thing—George Orwell may have explained that a dirty joke is a pervasive form of mental rebellion—but it took two guys that met in a typing class to play out the definitive link between all of those schools of thought AND illustrate that none of it could account for the heights to which Ween would achieve and began ascending to with Chocolate And Cheese. Spin contributor Ann Tyson called Chocolate And Cheese “the Weenest of Ween albums” the year it was released and, to that point in the band's career, it really is true; in these sixteen short, stylistically divergent songs, Ween successfully presents a portrait of themselves and their world that remains a defining moment for the group as well as one by which all future releases would be judged.

The band's shot for a new and “authoritative” (as only Ween can define the term) presence is clearly apparent from the opening subversive charge of “Take Me Away,” a track that remains one of the most anthemic compositions to be performed with a cheap drum machine in popular song. From note one, Ween sets the unflinching tone for the record as they shoot for arena-sized ambitions but, with an attractive twist all their own, they micro-size it in such a way that makes the puniest sounds ever produced force listeners to punch the air and beg for more (they'd prove it years later on Live In Chicago). The inclusion of a full band (at least some of the time—what would be regarded as classic Ween collaborators including Claude “yes he's just that good” Coleman, Andrew Weiss and Chriss “Mean Ween” Williams all contribute here) proves to be the greatest boon here as, with the added personnel, songs like “Take Me Away,” “Spinal Meningitis,” “Roses Are Free,” “Baby Bitch” and “Voodoo Lady ” all rock with a force and presence that, as good as the band might have been getting, no one could have guessed the band was capable of. In each of those aforementioned songs, Geen and Dean attach their now well-honed subversive bent to big-huge rock band sensibilities to make them sound both universal and attractively perverse, but also make that sense function in tandem with their strongest hooks. The effect, in this case, is like a candy coating on the perverted medicine which allows all those hooks to slip-slide smoothly down the collective throat of listeners. Each of the bigger-songs—whether it's the eerie psychodrama of “Spinal Meningitis,” the Santana/Hendrix jam “Voodoo Lady,” or “Roses Are Free” (which sounds like it could have easily been done by Fleetwood Mac in another universe)—plays through a sort of “we're dead serious dammit!” chortle that Ween uses handily and with confidence that will jar those attempting to follow along because there are no missteps or ill-advised delusions of grandeur; every ounce of grandeur presented here just plain works.

Those aforementioned songs are a monument to the powers that Ween was beginning to wield in every performance setting the band would place itself in (live, in the studio) but the real surprises come on Chocolate And Cheese from the less visible tracks. When they scale back the bombast and play more to their earlier conventions (obviously synthetic drums, stiffer performances and more spare arrangements) is where it's easier to better document Ween's growth. Songs like “I Can't Put My Finger On It,” “The H.I.V. Song” and “Don't Shit Where You Eat” could easily fit in with the sonic palette presented on GodWeenSatan but, while Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman's vocal faculties hadn't been in question anymore for years by this point, by Chocolate And Cheese, he was getting confident and comfortable enough to throw a little weight around. On Chocolate And Cheese, Freeman's vocal styling runs the gamut from Phillie International-inspired soul (“Freedom Of '76”) to swishy, testosterone-free pop (“Roses Are Free”) and even a little cock rock-ish crotch-grabbing (“I Can't Put My Finger On It”). Every step of the way, the singer's pipes never fail or give listeners the impression that those tracks where the vocal timbres shift might be Freeman's first vocal performance of the sound but, taken as a whole, the versatility and talent that the singer expresses is nothing short of incredible.

That same expanded sonic palette and performance is true for guitarist Mickey “Dean Ween” Melchiondo. As fans already knew, Melchiondo must have totally absorbed the rock n' roll songbook in its entirety to stylistically shift with such ease, but the guitarist really shows listeners what he's made of for the first time on Chocolate And Cheese. Between “Voodoo Lady” (which the guitarist would go on to push even further live), “Spinal Meningitis” and “Drifter In The Dark” alone, Melchiondo morphs from classic rock God styling to post-punk menace and country cowpoke effortlessly and makes a believer out of anyone that might have (falsely) thought that Ween song structures might have been limited to mishandled punk. Here, Melchiondo removes all doubt that all things are possible.

All of that said, and the leap forward in chops and styling that Ween presents on Chocolate And Cheese is still staggering. By this point, it's apparent that Ween is beginning to get a lot more direction and a better idea of where they want to go with the self-assured knowledge that they can actually pull it off. Because of that, new fans would be well-advised to start here, get a feel for the band and branch out afterward; it's the ideal litmus test for the uninitiated to make their introduction with Ween.

12 Golden Country Greats - Buy It
(Elektra, 1996)

It's funny but, when one boils it right down, in the existence of 12 Golden Country Greats rests the single largest concession that Ween ever made to standardized operating procedures among the musical community (though not necessarily in the eyes of the music business' governing bodies). Melchiondo and Freeman may have thought the idea was funny and the design of the album may have seemed a little obtuse (Ween does an all-country album? Roll the idea around in your mind for a minute and see if it doesn't recoil) but, in the strictest of terms, the intent and execution of it fits the alt-nation's anti-commercial stance to a tee. The methodology could be viewed like this:

In the Nineties, it was common for bands surprised and confused by the sudden wave of acceptance they were experiencing to recoil and make a “totally different sort of album that will scare fair-weather fans away.” Such cases are exemplified by Nirvana's In Utero and Vs. by Pearl Jam among a number of others. In doing so, the reasoning was that the band in question would get back to a level on which they were more comfortable AND be left with the personal and creative freedom to do whatever they chose.

Such reasoning was commonplace and accepted (if not wholly understood) at the time but, it's not likely that it was the angle Ween was aiming for. First, historically speaking, such anti-corporate sentiments aren't in keeping with Ween's perceived value set; like the Butthole Surfers, Ween has always seemed intent upon touching and twisting as many minds are within their reach and it's totally reasonable to believe that the band figured a country record would seem pretty outrageous coming from them. Even more outrageous would be to get a bunch of seasoned C&W veterans to accompany them (for those that don't know, 12 Golden Country Greats—the title—refers to the Nashville session players Ween hired to play with them on the record—not an obviously incorrect reference to the number of songs) and so get some historical presence in songs with titles like “Piss Up A Rope” and “Mister Richard Smoker.”

That sort of thinking seems totally plausible to believe in Ween.

There's little doubt that the bemused looks flew regularly around the recording studio during the sessions too, because Ween really pulls out all of the lyrical stops to instill fury in both rock purists and country oldsters. In this context, the lyric sheets for songs like “Piss Up A Rope” and “Help Me Scrape The Mucus Off My Brain” seem totally vulgar—in a Kinky Friedman sort of way—and would be very jarring were it not for the fact that Aaron Freeman sings them straight to the heart of vintage country & western orthodoxy with Melchiondo largely following suit on guitar (exception being on “You Were The Fool” where the clouds of psychedelic rock begin to shade the skies as the song comes to a close). In fact, more than on any of Ween's other records, 12 Golden Country Greats simultaneously plays both straighter and more crooked than any other record in the band's catalogue; depending upon which side of the songs you listen to (lyrics or music), the album can either amount to the most terrifying offering imaginable or the sweetest listen on Earth. It takes a second, but the contrasts between the two only make themselves apparent AFTER one gets past the solid melodies in songs like “You Were The Fool,” “Powder Blue,” “Pretty Girl” and “Japanese Cowboy” (where was that song on the soundtrack to Shanghai Noon incidentally?) and realizes that there JUST MIGHT BE something a little off in the proceedings. It's a great dichotomy that Ween balances perfectly.

It sounds like heresy to say it (or write it) but, because it is so incredibly well-orchestrated (some would say faked), it becomes easy to see how 12 Golden Country Greats might be the dark horse winner in the contest for 'Most Influential Album' in Ween's catalogue. Think about it—in the alt-rock community in the Nineties, there was nothing less cool than country music but conspicuously, after the album's release alt-country and No Depression bands like Wilco, Son Volt, Skydiggers and others suddenly began getting noticed on a far larger scale than they had previously. Is it possible that Ween is responsible for making it safe for Johnny Cash to step on stage and cover Depeche Mode's “Personal Jesus” for an audience of country purists? Maybe—the conjecture could rage forever—but one thing is for sure: if Ween's brown-colored sound references the band's ability to cross generic lines with impunity and still make a remarkable sound that even not-fans can appreciate, 12 Golden Country Greats is unquestionably the brownest record in Ween's catalogue.

The Mollusk - Buy It
(Elektra, 1997)

After Ween's convincing country & western turn just one year prior, all bets were rendered off regarding what fans could expect next from the band. They'd illustrated on 12 Golden Country Greats that they were capable of co-opting and masterfully pirating their way through most anything they chose, so that quickly increasing number of eyes and ears focussed on the band were waiting expectantly for something truly special and impressive to come next.

In spite of sporting a rather unflattering and maudlin name like The Mollusk, they weren't disappointed. The difference in style and approach (again) manifests itself in the tight arrangements and even tighter song structures that The Mollusk throws into each of each of its fourteen tracks.

In some ways, (to be fair) The Mollusk does represent a return to the deliberately manic disposition of Chocolate And Cheese but to an even larger extent than on that album, the songs are more tightly focused, with greater attention paid to a thematic consistency as well as boasting ever-more accomplished instrumental performances.

By the time Ween released The Mollusk, the band had long since crossed that magic line where punks become musicians of course, but even that doesn't explain this album. After some pseudo-cutesy (is anything ever perfectly straightforward on a Wen album? Let's hope it never reaches that point), kiddie imitation in “Dancing In The Show Tonight” that gets a whole lot less ironic when you realize kids actually dig it (I checked), a sort of concept album about all things seaside begins to gel as Ween runs some chanteys (“The Blarney Stone,” “Buckingham Green”), island pop (“Ocean Man”), wistful and watery folk (the title track) and more watery effects and trappings than you can shake a stick at through the blender and comes up with a chum bucket full of some cartoonish and silly but plainly arresting aquatic anthems that are incomparable in the band's songbook.

That isn't to say that, after the pristine palomino enactments of 12 Golden Country Greats, Ween suddenly and spontaneously decided to start taking themselves seriously. It merely proves that while once there was no question whether or not Ween was goofing off, now the band is capable of presenting themselves with a comic edge on fine rock tunes that could stand against those of any band that takes itself too seriously and win. Songs like “Mutilated Lips,” “Buckingham Green” and “Ocean Man” all remove any doubt that, if Ween fucks around and gets a few laughs now, it's because they want to instead of needing to; they have the chops, the platform and the talent so anything they do from here on out is a product of meticulous design—not necessity. If Chocolate And Cheese is regarded as the “Weenest of Ween albums,” The Mollusk is a classic album on any and all terms.

Paintin' The Town Brown—Ween Live '90—'98 (2CD) - Buy It
(Elektra, 1999)

By the time the live compilation Paintin' The Town Brown came along in 1999 (more on the circumstances behind the release later), Ween had done the work, paid the dues and built a pretty substantial live following but, to that point, a live album wasn't readily available (the last one was Live Brain Wedgie!) to assuage fans that weren't able to secure tickets or promote them as the thoroughly bizarre but wildly captivating and entertaining live act they were. Paintin' The Town Brown seeks to both remedy that hole in Ween's output as well as function as a sort of retrospective to illustrate the band's growth from lean, two-men-and-a-tape-recorder performances to full-band mayhem as well as including some oddities that the band looked into along the way like the tour with The Shit Creek Boys (the band that backed Ween for the 12 Golden Country Greats tour) and other thoroughly cool weirdness.

The set really does aim to be as comprehensive as possible as it ventures back all the way to Ween's first tour of Holland in 1991 through the aforementioned performances with Shit Creek Boys and the great, big, spectacular and prog-propelled permutation of the band circa 1997. Paintin' The Town Brown presents a dramatic progression (a little ironic too, given that the first of two discs opens with a deranged take on “Mushroom Festival In Hell” and includes an East Indian, curry-flavoured impression of “I Can't Put My Finger On It”) and really does cover some impressive ground in spite of ignoring most of the big “hits” already in the band's songbook (no tracks from The Mollusk appear and the only single presented is “Voodoo Lady”—which does get an impressive showing from a performance in 1997) and focusses more on the extremes that Ween is capable of in performance rather than a readymade and easy-to-swallow effort.

...And the second disc of Paintin' The Town Brown is about as extreme as Ween can get. Featuring just three tracks, disc two takes listeners to the furthest fringes of Ween's scope as a jam band capable of riding its own twisted anomalous muses into remarkable, unusual and remarkably unusual spaces. Clocking in at twenty-five minutes in duration, “Poop Ship Destroyer” (which was originally a teensy, two-minute trifle tacked onto the tail end of Pure Guava) is inflated to terrifying and megalithic proportions here as the nautical nonsense of the song collides with some kaleidoscopic space rock, the effect of which launches the heavy-handed barge straight to the depths of the unknown, brimming with hyperbolic hyperbole. It's just one of those things you have to hear to believe.

Even more unusual and elongated is the thirty-minute version of “Vallejo” (previously only available on the Voodoo Lady EP); it sort of starts out like a surf-punk-by-way-of-Sweden work-out that, while it never really goes anywhere (both it and the version of “Poop Ship Destroyer” bear all the marks of an 'end of the set' meltdown), does offer a glimpse into just how much textural brown paint Ween has in reserve on any given night and it is interesting to take a look, if only once, and see just how deep the black hole can go.

At that, it goes without saying that Paintin' The Town Brown has a place in Ween's catalogue and it is interesting but it's also apparent that the set is a dry first run at a live album for the band; it brings the uninitiated up to date on the story so far but also leaves a lot to be desired—even if the band's label at the time thought it might be a pot of gold (Elektra took the project away from Ween—who wanted it to be their first online release—and put it out themselves). Paintin' The Town Brown opened the rift that would only get larger and ultimately destroy relations between Elektra and Ween and, while they would remain with the label for another studio album, Paintin' The Town Brown is where communication began to break down.

Craters Of The Sac
(MP3 release only, 1999)

According to the surprisingly in-depth synopsis of Craters Of The Sac's existence on Wikipedia, “Craters Of The Sac is a semi-official, mp3-only album by Ween. Because Elektra records released Paintin' The Town Brown, which was to be Ween's first online, independent release, Dean Ween leaked the “album” to the internet in 1999 to succor their fans and show them how much Ween appreciated them. Consisting entirely of almost colossally bizarre studio cuts that may never have even been intended for album release, it's less an actual album and almost more along the lines of a bootleg compilation. [...] However, it has been rumored by the band that one day fans may see the appearance of Craters II: Back To The Sac.”

...All of which sounds fantastic and marvellous in theory, but it may be a case of history being re-written with a slightly more positive spin. It's possible and even likely that Elektra's impropriety and mishandling of Paintin' The Town Brown caused some hard feelings with the band but, in listening to Craters Of The Sac, it's difficult to believe that these nine songs were even possibly contenders for inclusion on a proper Ween album. At best, these songs might have ended up becoming extras on a major label EP release but, even then, the likelihood is pretty far removed.

The shades of early (think Erica Peterson's Flaming Crib Death) and embryonic Ween efforts permeate Craters Of The Sac which ensures that even the faithful would regard it as a step backward for the band; it is of interest from a historical standpoint because it did get the ball rolling for a series of über-fan independent Ween releases. It also foreshadowed the foundation of Ween's cottage label Chocodog, which would later prove to be on invaluable use to the band and a joy to fans.

Even so, Craters Of The Sac really isn't that good. The downside for Ween to the advances made in recording technology has been that even demos and aborted ideas can get more attention than they deserve, and the lion's share of Craters fairly smacks of that notion. While “Monique The Freak” gets back to Ween's professed love affairs with both Frank Zappa and Prince and “The Stallion” gets still another instalment of attention here (part five, in this case) that's a little less tedious than its predecessors, a bad case of pitifully fuzzy and muted production detracts significantly from the modest impact these songs might have borne even if they were perfectly detailed. Worse, most of the songs here SOUND unfinished as lyric sheets rely on repetition and cheap (in a bad way) effects to mask or obscure their weakness (“Big Fat Fuck” anyone?). Such complaints have been registered against Ween before, but not since The Pod or earlier had it been so apparent that no amount of kid gloves could hide a Ween dud, and it's just unfortunate that so many happened to land in one place.

On the other hand, the track leakage story could hold water as, since that event, several of these songs have been re-touched in one way or another and re-presented later on Chocodog releases like Live On Request and Shinola; “Monique The Freak,” “The Stallion pt. 5,” “How High Can You Fly?” and “Big Fat Fuck” would all appear in cleaner, re-touched and re-mastered forms of Chocodog fare. Because of that, the purpose of putting out Craters Of The Sac may indeed have been to beat everyone else to the punch but the downfall of the idea lies in the poor quality of the songs; none could be mistaken for their advance release being a stroke of genius or any sort of coup.

White Pepper - Buy It
(Elektra, 2000)

While the rift between Ween and their label may have been continuing to grow even as it came out, that White Pepper's quality is as high as it is speaks volumes to the band's senses of ethics and dedication to their fans—even while they were running their contract out. In fact, White Pepper is still another of Ween's long-established series of evolutions that finds them reaching further and perfecting their take on alien (to them) sounds to surprise and elate fans and also to leave the uninitiated gob-smacked that such a weird band could rock so hard and so easily weasel in and win fans, even in the strangest of arenas. This time, a greater world music (not so much otherworldly) influence creeps into songs like “Flutes Of Chi” and “Bananas And Blow” as more exotic instrumentation filters in for Ween's customary twisting. In this case, surprisingly able flamenco guitar styling invades the island jam “Bananas And Blow” while The Beatles (at their most acid-saturated) accidentally wander on stage with Peter Frampton in “Back To Basom” and, for reasons no one can fathom, Ween walks through a Japanese tea room carrying a tiki torch in “Flute Of Chi.” Of course, as is de rigeur in the Ween-iverse, all of these opposed images should work together begrudgingly but, more than they have previously, they actually attract here as opposed to the comical results the band has generated before. In that way, White Pepper is something of a world music summit as ideas get exchanged here and new combinations produce new, interesting sounds.

Because the dense styles attempted here require significant effort to expound, White Pepper is very much keyboardist Glenn McClelland and Mickey Melchiondo's showcase, but the blueprint drawn out here begs curiosity; in songs like “Even If You Don't,” “The Grobe” and “Ice Castles,” McClelland clears absolutely enormous landscapes upon which Melchiondo and fellow principle players Claude Coleman and Dave Dreiwitz erect their strange but sound and dense sound structures. The results are some of the most adventurous of Ween's career; in “Pandy Fackler,” for example, a hybrid of country and ragtime comes together effortlessly and is delicately turned inside out with images of hookers dancing the bossa nova tirelessly while strippers entertain the crowd all night. Elsewhere, Melchiondo, Freeman and McClelland vacuum-seal an epic composition into the tiniest space imaginable with “The Grobe” and talk a beloved down from a ledge in “Even If You Don't” before taking her out to a biker party on “Stroker Ace.” In each case, the songs wear their derangements in plain view but, perhaps because they've done it so often, the band's only-half-straight-faced attack ends up functioning as the hook that drags listeners happily along and reassures them that, as strange as everything might look, like Porky in Wackyland there is no concrete concern.

As the record progresses, Ween steps out to revisit the plains of 12 Golden Country Greats through “Stay Forever,” “Falling Out” and “She's Your Baby” which, while it certainly shouldn't, adds still another voice to the summit (with an authority that implies Ween could have made 12 Golden Country Greats without any Nashville assistance after all—it was simply of the band's indulgence) that carries equal weight and is equally welcome in the festivities—even if it only plays as the denouement. In the end, what listeners realize is that Ween has just run through every generic form they've toyed with to this point on White Pepper, thrown in a little more for good measure and presented the amalgam seamlessly and without a single sore thumb sticking out. When listeners come to that revelation, they end up getting floored because at no point does Ween stop to point out how clever they are, they just present it and let listeners come into the discovery of what's at work here on their own.

Quebec - Buy It
(Sanctuary Records Group, 2003)

Following an extended break, Ween reappeared in 2003 supported by a new record label (Sanctuary Records, who got the band around the same time they were releasing material from everyone including Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Neil Young) and a refreshed energy reserve. In order to put all of the changes and new confidence placed in them to the best possible use, Ween did the one thing no fan could have expected (although that doesn't mean there wasn't hope): they revisited the songwriting style of Chocolate And Cheese BUT the band also piled as much muscle, anthemia, crunch and power into the recording session as they could find within themselves. No one could possibly have imagined they had it in them but, with a rogue label in their corner, a little bit of time and a whole lot of belief, Ween arrived.

The results of all the hard work and time yielded the single most arena-ready album in Ween's catalogue, Quebec, and the album asserts itself right from the Melchiondo-sung, Mötorhead-inspired tantrum “It's Gonna Be A Long Night.” With grinding guitars, a driving, percussive assault and absolutely no looking back, the band serves notice that, even thirteen years on, they're still punks at heart and, if anything, they've actually gotten better at playing every turgid note and change in the form. For the first time, a full band (not just a resourceful duo) chips in to cram the single greatest punk song Ween has ever written down the collective throat of everyone within earshot—it's just beautiful.

But then, just as listeners are strapping themselves in for that 'long night,' Ween shifts gears with the no-less-sinister-intoned, but certainly more subdued and ambiance-centered “Zoloft”—a hilarious take on drug-rock as sung by a character that might be a couple of years too old to glorify the joys of illicit drug use. In that shift, Ween says without saying so that they're not going to make it so easy to fall in step with Quebec and just let listeners shift their minds into neutral. It would be easy enough for the band—and certainly a tempting option—to simply rest on laurels and get comfortable in their new digs, but that's not the plan for Quebec; rather, in this fifteen-song enactment, Ween plays every arena and every form of music one would expect to hear at such an establishment as hard as they can—as they interpret it.

After the raucous introductions are made and the turn and purpose of the album become clear through “It's Gonna Be A Long Night” and “Zoloft,”the band unloads the most anthemic and bombastic song they've ever written in the genuinely Hendrix-ian “Transdermal Celebration” and arching back toward Paul Simon-esque delicacy with “Among His Tribe” before stealing Depeche Mode's synthesizers to pound out “In The Neighbourhood” and thoroughly expand the minds of every listener in their base. Such is the clear direction for which Ween is aiming with Quebec, but while the band has made attempts at such wild sonic deviation before with just-okay results, this album marks the first occasion when it has all clicked together and worked in a definitive way; Ween has always gone to great pains to be everything to everyone but, here, the transitions from punk to stoner rock to electro to kid's music have managed to come out fluidly—without a couple of throwaway tracks to make the stylistic changes easier. Here it all comes across naturally and with an almost disconcerting facility.

As the record progresses, Quebec eases into a series of confident, mid-tempo ballads (“Captain,” “Chocolate Town,” “I Don't Want It”) before literally going all to pieces in true Butthole Surfers fashion (“The Fucked Jam”), thus leaving no doubt that, as far as they've come in twenty years (Yeah! Really!) Ween is still pre-disposed to juxtaposing faithful reproductions of genre song-craft against wilfully bizarre and meandering “So I've got this idea—what if we...” exercises in idea exorcism without actually connecting with fans on an intellectual level. Quebec—like every other album in the band's catalogue really—is simply an enactment of two characters; the difference is that, on Quebec, Ween prove that they've reached the point where they can model any idea they have after different sparks of brilliance in the popular music canon and pull off a flawless replication of that idea—albeit with their own agenda at the forefront—which is brilliant in its own way. Whether they believe in it of not is irrelevant; Ween proves on Quebec that they can make good music out of anything and play it any which way they choose without losing their own unique persona. They don't so much bow to convention as twist the conventions to suit their own ends.

All Request Live - Buy It
(Chocodog, 2003)

Perhaps sensing that MTV would not be banging down their doors to do an installment in their series of celebrated-by-the-over-forty crowd specials where large artists play house band before a trucked in audience any time soon, Ween have taken matters into their own hands and done a All Request Live set via their web site. It’s a good idea really—Ween has always had a very unique bond with their fans and has gone to great lengths to do special things for them over the years (like when Dean “leaked” the songs from Craters Of The Sac to the internet in 1999), and this live-ish performance is geared to warm the hearts of fans in that same vein. Such a statement does also imply (without trying) a double-edged sword; true, it’s a live show in closer to vintage character for the band (Dean and Gene are playing, but much of the additional instrumentation sounds synthetic in spite of being credited to a band) and Ween has always been gifted with a great live presence, but the set list basically being dictated by super-fans guarantees a show so brown it hurts.

At complete odds with the Live In Chicago set that would be released less than a year afterward, All Request Live is designed and laid out to be a hardcore fan’s wet dream. The dead giveaway that “hardcore” fans (also known as those individuals that tend to gauge their personal worth by their knowledge of archaic facts about their favourite band) picked the songs for this record is its steadfast reliance on material from what is widely regarded as Ween’s weakest album: The Pod. Granted, that album did have it’s charms (“Pork Roll Egg And Cheese," for example, is an essential track) but, pound-for-pound, it was the work of a band that, if only for an instant, struggled to reconcile who they were in relation to the popular taste of the moment and, because of that, those songs from The Pod don’t fare much better when given the live treatment here and come off as sounding like Butthole Surfers throwaways (exception being “Demon Sweat” which sparkles) with unnecessary distortion and generally flaccid tempos. Neither Gene nor Dean could have had anything to do with the track-list suggestions (even making fun of themselves as they lumber through all five parts of “The Stallion”) given that most of these tunes seldom get dusted off for the band’s regular live shows and so is really a monument to Ween’s dedication to their fans—even if there‘s little to no danger of attracting new ones here.

While the songs are consistently lesser known (also indicative of a fan’s comp.) All Request Live does begin to pick up as the boys throw themselves into the more recent material from Quebec (“Happy Colored Marbles” and “Tried And True”) and exercise their brownish muscles on “Cover It With Gas And Set It On Fire” and “Reggaejunkiejew”; thus proving that what they do in the studio they can absolutely pull off in a live-ish setting too. How does one critique a performance like that? Realistically, the performances of the songs are pretty good if occasionally awkward (probably because the band doesn’t have a proper audience to feed off of), the standing problem with the set lies in the fact that much of the material is very obscure and the set simply isn’t the presentation it could be; it’s not bad, but in this case the fans themselves are the ones that stopped All Request Live from being a spectacular opportunity for the band.

Live In Chicago - Buy It
(Sanctuary, 2004)

By the time Live In Chicago came along, diehard fans were well-acquainted with Ween as a live band even if they'd never been able to afford a concert ticket but were willing to hunt for the rarer releases issued by the band through Chocodog (after Paintin' The Town Brown, there was Live In Toronto Canada in 2001 and a show at Stubb's captured in 2000 and released in 2003 in addition to the fan-appreciative document Live On Request) but one listen to the shows captured on November 8^th and 9^th in 2003 at the Vic Theatre in Chicago makes all the others pale in comparison.

There are definitive documents and presentations of a particular moment in a musical group's career, but few document a band so completely or capture a group from so many angles as Ween's CD/DVD set that combines the best moments and performances from their two-night stand at the Vic.

Performing a set of what would be regarded as greatest hits were the band saddled with a status that was more 'pop' than 'cult,' Ween doesn't leave out a single essential or 'classic' song from their repertoire. The performances of those songs found here are classic too—how else could Ween work in a cover of Led Zeppelin's “All Of My Love” and have it bolster—not overshadow—the likes of “Voodoo Lady,” “The H.I.V. Song,” “Mutilated Lips,” “Pork Roll Egg And Cheese” and “Take Me Away” if they weren't strong enough to keep up? Through each of these songs, Ween pushes the hardest they ever have to present the kind of show that every fan's dreams are made of and has the added benefit of being able to attract new interest as well (I have personally won fans for the band in a totally third-person way by having this album on in the background at parties—some beg me to burn them a copy before they leave) from the previously unfamiliar.

The footage on the DVD included with the set proves to be revelatory too. Shot from multiple angles with multiple cameras (one of the bonus features allows viewers to change cameras to get a different perspective on some songs), viewers are able to actually able to see the drops of sweat run off of Mickey Melchiondo as he stretches the bridge of “Voodoo Lady” into a rapturous jam and Claude Coleman's intricate and effortless brutality on his kit (just watch the difference in styles between “Roses Are Free” and “Mutilated Lips”) that removes any question of why he is one of the foremost drummers in rock. Even with that said though, the players don't steal the show from singer Aaron Freeman. Because Live In Chicago stretches to include material dating back as far as The Crucial Squeegie Lip and all the way up through Quebec, it requires a metric ton of different vocal tones and stylistic shifts from Freeman (a comparative minimum of Melchiondo's vocal turns appear here), but he gladly accepts the challenge and delivers every note using every character voice required and, if such transitions are laborious, it doesn't show at all; those elastic vocal chords (the way his voice dips in “Spinal Meningitis” is profound) never falter and, even when the original recordings of the songs may have had some effects treatment (“Spinal Meningitis,” “Ocean Man”) the singer augments his parts so that they're not necessary and it's no less satisfying.

While the release of a live album (or a series of them, in cases like Pearl Jam's) isn't uncommon, seldom if ever has such a comprehensive examination of a band's biggest and best repertoire been distilled into one set. With Live In Chicago, Ween illustrates that they are indeed capable of performing their biggest songs marathon-style without an army of backing musicians or additional, pre-taped accompaniment; all they need is three very gifted sidemen confident enough to try anything—and it all works here.

Shinola Vol. 1 - Buy It
(Chocodog, 2005)

Okay, it sounds silly to say it, but the motivations behind the release of Shinola have never really been clearly defined. Given the quality of the material that Ween has collected for Shinola Vol. 1, a case could certainly be made for the criminality of the fact that the album has never been—and, outside of the odd new and used shop where someone fell short of cash— never will be made available in stores. Here and there, brief sparks of brown brilliance flash through along the way but, at the same time, truly god awful mood-killers and half-formed goo dog the proceedings too. The one guiding principle here is that Shinola takes the brownest after-birth from Ween’s catalogue and amplifies it all as only a group of outtakes can but with a difference; the great songs really seem to clash against the lousy ones. The lousy songs that appear in Shinola's runtime are easy to pick out and, in some cases, remain superfluous (“Big Fat Fuck” and “How High Can You Fly” don't fare any better here than they did on Craters Of The Sac) but happily they are in the minority as tunes like “Israel” and “Gabrielle” rank among the defining lost gems of the band’s career and, with a slightly larger spectrum to work with, “Monique The Freak” has the chance to ride a groove unencumbered from its previous release as an MP3-only offering. The problem Shinola runs into (because there is certainly some material here worth investigation) is two-fold: first is the lack of wide availability of the album (so it really never had the chance to get legs under it) and, second, while there are indeed some great songs here, the construct of the album in general is pretty flimsy; while the good songs are REALLY GOOD, the tedium that the poor ones succumb to is all-consuming and throws a damper on any progress the album makes. Approach at your peril; more than any other title in Ween's catalogue, Shinola Vol. 1 is an album you'll either love dearly or hate with a passion normally reserved for cancer or the concept of mass genocide.

The Friends EP - Buy It
(Chocodog, 2007)

As any long-time fan or critic can (and will) tell you, Ween's EPs tend to be very touch-and-go, mixed-bag affairs. As allmusic.com critic Jason Ankeny said in is review of the Voodoo Lady EP, “Ween's EPs are a crapshoot—given the staggering number of songs the duo's produced across the years, there's bound to be as many rare gems as clunkers.” With that admission in hand, it would be easy to dismiss The Friends EP as being acutely fluffy even by Ween standards but, after the longest absence from regular studio work in the band's history (beating out the stretch between White Pepper and Quebec by about a year—but they also changed labels again in that time), they had to start somewhere—so they keep it light for these five songs.

...Well, they keep it lighter than most would expect to be possible when approaching a subject as touchy as the “homo rainbow,” and they approach it with good humour intact.

From the opening, totally synthetic, take on the title track (which would also appear on La Cucaracha—albeit with a different mix, released the same year), Ween ups their plastic quotient for The Friends EP and puts an unflinchingly ecstatic spin on songs like the bossa nova-ed “Light Me Up,” reggae-ed “King Billy” and shmaltzy ballad “Slow Down Boy.” In each case and at every turn, the cartoonish melodrama takes the piss out of any and all things romantic (“Slow Down Boy” could easily play on karaoke night at any bar in Japan) but the hook buried slightly below the surface is that each song is sung to a member of the same sex. While such fare has always been on the periphery of Ween's albums, The Friends EP marks the first time such sentiments have taken center stage and, given the mostly-realtime-instrument-free arrangements of the songs (there is a guitar in “I Got To Put The Hammer Down,” but it's fairly static), such sentiments aren't left with anything to hide behind. Such an obvious mozza ball left hanging out there seems purposefully done to make some listeners uncomfortable (which could be the “We're coming back...” notice long-time fans would expect after their absence), confuse others accustomed to Ween's often off-colour come-ons and equally regular hypermasculine deliveries, and delight still more because Ween has proven yet again that they can still find a way to mess with people. Of course, immediately following The Friends EP's release, conjecture began to arise on whether Aaron Freeman might be coming out (the questions prompted a still-functioning page on Facebook) but, really, who cares? Gay or straight, The Friends EP proves that Ween has yet to lose their ability to throw their fans off-balance AND keep them coming back for more.

La Cucaracha - Buy It
(Rounder/Chocodog, 2007)

Perhaps because they’d heard somewhere that The Butthole Surfers were once called subversive because they’d signed to a major label twelve years ago and had since signed on to another smaller label that still had major-sized distribution (Surfdog and Universal respectively), in the last five years Ween has hopped between three of the big four record companies. Now allied with Universal, Ween’s newest offering is only really a walnut color; fans will notice that tracks including “Friends,” “Learnin’ To Love” and “The Fruit Man” are all vintage Ween insofar as none of the conventional rules apply and the band has twisted and contorted the sounds on this album masterfully into something uniquely Ween, but the difference here is that half the tracks on La Cucaracha also betray a heavy Zappa and Magic Band influence. Songs like “My Own Bare Hands” and “Object” bear the marks of Frank Zappa’s black humour and the acrobatic opening instrumental (“Fiesta”) betrays a newfound gift for arrangement not previously heard on the older, more home grown-sounding Ween albums. Likewise, “Sweetheart In The Summer” indulges Zappa’s perennial love affair with cock-eyed love songs.

Obviously, those songs that tempt these generic fates are derailed by the band’s DIY ethos so they sound off-center, but on La Cucaracha the arrangements and instrumentation support them in a straight rather than rubber-faced way. It’s actually really, really exhilarating to hear Ween put their money where their collective mouth is and illustrate their capabilities without sounding like they’re just fucking around. Fans may balk, but La Cucaracha is a pretty incredible album because it plays both sides of the fence: again, like Zappa and Captain Beefheart, it’s both goofy and accomplished—that makes it a landmark for the band in some strange way.

At Cat's Cradle, 1992 - Buy It
(Chocodog, 2008)

If all you’ve seen of Ween from a live performance standpoint is the fantastic DVD released in 2004 that presents an inspired set by the current line-up of Mickey Melchiondo (aka Dean Ween) on guitar, Aaron Freeman (aka Gene Ween) on vocals and guitar, drummer Claude Coleman (also known as very possibly the most gifted percussionist on Earth today), bassist Dave Dreiwitz and keyboardist Glenn McClelland, you’ve seen a pretty incredible show, but you don’t know the whole story. Without going into a spectacular amount of detail, Ween did not come out readymade as the dynamic outfit that took the stage in Chicago early in the millennium—it took a lot of work to get to that point. In the embryonic years (from their first show in 1987 until the release of Chocolate And Cheese in 1994), Ween had a line-up of just Gene and Dean who, along with a Yamaha tape deck stocked with pre-recorded drums and bass parts that they’d play to fill out the mixes on stage, were determined to win converts to the band’s banner by presenting a performance piece of playful and infectious perversion. In a word, particularly in the early years, Ween was weird; in 1992, when Ween took the stage at Cat’s Cradle, they’d already been together long enough to be incredibly tight on stage (a state also necessitated by a virtue of a rhythm section supplied by playback) but that doesn’t mean that the audience in attendance wasn’t trying to figure out what they were looking at (a fact evidenced by tentative applause and bemused crowd noise between tracks) for the duration of this performance.

Listening to this show sixteen years after the fact reveals that there was far more at work in the set than anyone could have realized at the time. Playing songs that, in some cases, wouldn’t be recorded or released for another five years (“Buckingham Green” would eventually appear on The Mollusk in 1997) what will make fans get all gooey in the pants here is the promise of hearing early, rough versions of classic Ween songs performed incredibly raw and unadorned, but still shining with a surprisingly well-produced and polished presentation.

As good natured as it is though, it’s easy to understand why audiences might have been a little worried if they walked into the venue just as the band was getting started with “Big Jilm.” There’s something sinister lurking in the undercurrents of Freeman and Melchiondo’s elasticized harmonies and walking-pace tempo that isn’t quite scary or ominous so much as plainly disconcerting . Even so, listeners familiar with Ween’s brand of mania still find themselves drawn to the lean arrangements; long-time fans might even say that it sounds a bit like a rehearsal.

As soon as that vibe takes hold and the swaggering “Never Squeal” kicks over, the hooks are in and anyone listening is up for the ride. There are no dramatic pauses or drawn-out stretches of audience interaction anywhere in the set (according to Melchiondo’s memoirs in the liner notes, Ween sets circa ‘92 were an hour long at most—presumably because that’s how much playtime their backing cassette held) and absolutely no jamming which makes for a decidedly clean and straightforward set, and whether that works for listeners depends entirely upon where they feel the magic lies in the band’s music: is it in the spry and cartoony machinations that Ween fabricates in the studio or in the epic presentations they’d give live later with a full band? No matter what a listener’s answer to that question might be, it’s difficult for a long-time fan (there’s little chance that the uninitiated in the crowd that night didn’t have an eyebrow cocked and this isn’t where those that have never listened to the band before should start either) to find fault with the versions of “Pork Roll, Egg And Cheese,” “The Goin’ Gets Tough From The Getgo,” “Buckingham Green, “Don’t Get 2 Close 2 My Fantasy” and “Reggaejunkiejew” that appear here. While Freeman hadn’t yet developed the prime vocal chops that he’d later make jaws drop with on stage, he was obviously well on his way and there are honest-to-god epiphanies to be had in arresting moments like “Nan” that catch even seasoned fans off-guard.

In a lot of ways, the DVD portion of this set functions in the same way as the CD, With just the duo on stage, the proceedings have a consistent (because these songs are culled from three shows on two continents, so it stands to reason that it was a recurring theme) sort of Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney “Let’s put on a show!” indie performance that’s impossibly silly on one hand, but mythical on the other as, with obvious obstacles and limitations in front of them, Ween still pulls off some pretty incredible (and incredibly bizarre) and captivating performances here.

As of present day, it’s difficult to find anyone that hears them who won’t admit that Ween is a great live band, but the verdict might be out regarding whether or not they’ve always been a good stage show for folks that know how they started but didn’t see or hear it back when. Cat’s Cradle solves that problem handily; the set illustrates that Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo didn’t need all the help they have now to put on a mind-blowing/fucking show, it was already present and the roster of personnel has only grown in direct proportion to the size of the venues they play and the level of acclaim they’ve received in the years since.

This is part 2 of the Ween discography review. Part 1 can be viewed here .

Artist:
www.ween.com
myspace.com/ween

Download:
"Big Fat Fuck" from Shinola