Crash Course, No. 16: Ween, Triumph, Breakdown, and a Tenuous Aftermath

Weird, sure, but so much more. Goddamn heroes.

“I can only speak for myself, but as far as I’m concerned, as long as Aaron and I are both alive on this planet, Ween is still together. We’ve never broken up. The idea of quitting is just laughable. This isn’t something you can quit. This is a life sentence.”
- Dean Ween, aka, Mickey Melchiondo

“The Caesar demo release was the straw that broke the camels back. Nobody asked Gener before releasing...Deaner broke the golden rule. the Boognish wept that day.”
- Gene Ween, aka, Aaron Freeman

Whatever meaningful conscious knowledge I’ve ever had of Ween started when I looked into FREEMAN, Aaron Freeman’s post-Ween, post-sobriety solo project for an earlier, now-deleted site, so that’s where I started. (And, for the record, “the Caesar demo” was a collection of unreleased demos recorded while they were working on Quebec, circa 2001-2003.) While I’d had Chocolate & Cheese and Paintin’ the Town Brown for a decade or so, I knew only the tiniest part of dick about Ween – which, also for the record, was inspired by a combination of the words “wuss” and “penis.” [Ed. – per new editorial policy, all sources for this post will be linked to at the end. Just…feels better that way.]

Ween’s 2012 break was both rough and a long-time coming, according to Freeman, and both he and Melchiondo processed it differently – the former as a matter of survival, the latter as a blow. Melchiondo kept going and in a similar vein: he revived his existing side project, Moistboyz, and keeps plugging away with the Dean Ween Group. The latter (and maybe the former) still played regularly at the same venue that hosted Ween’s earliest shows – John & Peter’s in their hometown, New Hope, PA (right on the Jersey border!) – as of 2018. Melchiondo does not appear to be sober, and he still plays with a lot of guys from the Ween days: e.g., Claude Colman, Jr. (drummer, third member of Ween), Dave Dreiwitz (bass) and Glenn McClellan (keys, both from Ween’s second iteration). He built his own studio and he still makes himself available to all kinds of media (including one interview with Noisey’s Guitar Moves series that I decided to drag out of the Sources because, on it, Melchiondo talked about Ween’s (and his) signature sound and/or hooks).

Freeman put out one solo album to date in 2014 (eh), but he’s otherwise fairly invisible. If you google “Gene Ween interview,” or even “Aaron Freeman interview,” you generally get Dean Ween interviews; even the interviews after Ween’s 2016 reunion – which, nice touch, started in Denver, the same city where Ween played its last show in 2012 – reliably feature Dean, not Gene. It also appears that new material isn’t coming: their last release, a collection called Bananas and Blow (after a song on 2000’s White Pepper), came from Warner Brothers and without Freeman or Melchiondo’s input (Melchiondo dubbed the song selection “random”). I just confirmed the band is still touring (yes, there are 2020 dates), so the whole thing isn’t dead yet. At the same time, it’s hard to believe things are the same…and, honestly, who would want them to be? One listen to FREEMAN’S “Covert Discretion” – which elegantly/eloquently recounts the tale of Gene Ween’s infamous 2011 breakdown on-stage in Vancouver – should be enough for anyone to hope that all concerned are healthy, whole and sober as they need to be.

That said, having reviewed the band’s history, I’ve finally registered the magnitude of the break. Guys, Ween started in 198-fucking-4. That's eighth grade for them.

For 10 years, live Ween shows were just Dean and Gene with a Digital Audio Tape for backing tracks. They opened for major indie acts on that set-up – e.g., GWAR, Butthole Surfers, They Might Be Giants and Henry Rollins (Wikipedia relates a great story where Rollins ordered an audience to “’start liking them now,’ for one day, ‘you will get down on your filthy knees and crawl to the altar that is Ween.’”). Their first break came when they opened for Skunk in a friend of the band kind of arrangement. A Minneapolis-based label called Twin/Tone sent Dave Ayers to check out Skunk, but he signed Ween the same night and Ayers signed on as Ween's manager (and Skunk's Colman joined Ween in ’94). GodWeenSatan: The Oneness dropped in 1990 (still haven’t listened to it) and, just two years later, Ween was on MTV and their biggest hit to date “Push th’ Little Daisies” was getting picked apart on Beavis & Butthead.

At this point, I feel obliged to make it abundantly clear that, “Roses Are Free” aside, I missed literally everything between “Push th’ Little Daisies” through Gene’s Vancouver meltdown, and all the way up until “Covert Discretion” in 2016; I never saw a Ween concert because I avoid venues over a certain size, etc. Moving away from the personal, your standard Wikipedia entry – i.e., my historical/chronological frame for all this – generally boils down to a chronology of album releases, appearances, notable videos (e.g., “Freedom of ’76" is pretty damn good (Spike Jonze), or “I Can’t Put My Finger on It” (filmed at a Middle Eastern food joint, with staff)), festivals, and, for the better ones (e.g., Ween’s) some solid anecdotes (e.g., Freeman on Phish regularly covering “Roses Are Free”: "I like Trey Anastasio as a person, but as far as the music goes, all that jam band shit makes me want to puke."). Wish I had more to add, but…

Having listened to their albums over the past couple weeks, however, I will say this: as much as they’re refracted through their mythology and the distilled weirdness of their sound, they’re a highly expressive band – by which I mean, their phases come through on their albums. For instance, I listened to Quebec just once because something about it scared me off. It turns out, Gene was going through divorce, etc. while writing for that album and, while he almost never listens to any Ween album, he made it clear (on at least one occasion) that he will never listen to that one. Freeman also dumped heavily on Ween’s last studio album, 2007’s La Cucaracha, declaring it “a big piece of shit.” (More: "I think the songs on it were good, or a bunch of songs, but overall that was a big clue Mickey and I were finito.”)

Going the other way, 2005’s Shinola (Vol. 1) sounds like what it is – e.g., a backlog of “songs we regretted not putting on other records.” That comes through, too, with (all included on the sampler that’ll go up with this) like, “Boys Club,” “Monique the Freak,” “The Rift,” and even “Someday.” (Some instinct makes me want to put “Gabrielle” in a different class…but does it belong in one?).

Generally, Ween songs are peculiar things. Because they don’t fit a traditional pop structure, and due to the out-there grotesquerie of some of them (e.g., not in the sampler, but “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)” is perversely delightful), I was tempted to call their songs vignettes, until Dean Ween set me straight in that Noisey interview with this:

“And Andrew Weiss, our producer, was always trying to get us to write a third section. We never had had third sections. It was always just A & B.”

So, genre-wise, call Ween atraditional, but still pop, or at least indie-pop. They only sound bizarre if you don’t think about the fundamentals (the Noisey interview is really clarifying for this; as are most conversations with Melchiondo). With that in mind, I filled out my sampler with songs from four more Ween albums (Shinola (Vol. 1) was covered above), each of them from what strike me as distinct phases.

I pulled “The Stallion Pt. 3,” “The Goin’ Gets Tough from the GetGo,” and “Push…” tired of typing that one, but you know what I’m talking about from Pure Guava. I’d say “The Stallion Pt. 3” and “The Goin’ Gets Tough” gives the best impression of that album, but “Sarah” is gorgeous, and with Prince-esque guitar (and they’re both big fans of Prince).

From The Mollusk (Dean’s favorite album, I hear), I lifted two of Ween’s signature live songs – “The Blarney Stone” and “Waving My Dick in the Wind” – but also the highly-on-point “Mutilated Lips” and “I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight,” a song that sounds like drugged-up Tin Pan Alley material, which surely tries the patience of the average rock fan. The last song I chose – “It’s Gonna Be (Alright)” – gets at what makes when Ween enduringly listenable; they slip some deeply beautiful music into the stage-fronted weirdness.

That’s makes a perfect segue to what became my favorite Ween album, White Pepper. With allowances for Ween-being-Ween, it’s a polished and pretty album: you’ve got Laurel Canyon cut with Ween on “Flutes of Chi” and (personal favorite) “She’s Your Baby”, The Beatles(?)-inspired “Even If You Don’t” (directed by Trey Parker and Matt Stone) then a pair of 70s/90s hard rock gems in “Stroker Ace” and “The Grobe.” I rounded out the sampler with a pair of slow jams from Chocolate & Cheese, “A Tear for Eddie” and “Drifter in the Dark,” and mostly because I love what the atmospheric sensibility of both add to that lonely twanging guitar that’s all over the album.

Just to note it, some stray thing I read listed the set list for that first reunion show in Denver. What it showed was either, 1) I like a lot of the same songs that Dean and Gene like, or 2) I like a lot of the songs that Ween fans expect to hear live. I’m fine with either.

All in all, Ween sounded more or less like normal indie-rock depending on the album, only with some deftly-managed production and, in the realm of what works for mass culture, a ton of songs that no realistic person would expect to become mass culture. The more remarkable thing is how well it worked, if mostly on the musical/fan-love side, for almost 20 years (1984-2004-ish). A band this weird has no business becoming iconic, but yet they did. From a listening perspective, I feel like I can listen to Ween for another 10 years (and maybe the Dean Ween Group, or even FREEMAN’S newest song) because it’s crawling with good qualities: humor, art, (again) the grotesque, anger, sadness, earnestness, smart guitar hooks, a pop sensibility with a long attention span (so many genres); between the music, the lyrics, and…the message(?), there’s just a lot to first notice, then work through. Call Ween’s ouevre something between fun and mind-blowing.

Ween have the large, intense following they deserve, and they can perform at least 30 of their songs until they can’t walk, so they’re good for as long as they can stand one another. The sobriety thing – assuming it’s still in place – would strain any relationship. If nothing else, Melchiondo runs a fishing operation as a side-hustle. He was excited about The Mollusk for a reason, people….

I want to wrap up with a quote from Freeman, something hopeful that came from the darkest days of Ween's split (this would be 2014):

“So no, the Boognish was not just some little fanciful thing that I’m above now. The Boognish is very real, and it will haunt me, and control me for the rest of my life. I always have to beware of it, or I will pay the price.”

It's enough to make you think Dean was right about that life sentence...

 

(More) Sources

Wikipedia

Dean Ween interview (2018, axs.com)

Dean Ween interview (2018, Aquarium Drunkard)

Aaron Freeman interview (2014; American Songwriter)