WEEN 

Les Schwab Amphitheater

Bend, Oregon

July 2, 2011

TRACK LIST

01. Transdermal Celebration
02. Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)
03. Take Me Away
04. Even If You Don’t
05. My Own Bare Hands
06. Bananas and Blow
07. Ice Castles
08. Final Alarm
09. Did You See Me
10. Your Party
11. Poop Ship Destroyer
12. Learnin To Love
13. Gabrielle
14. Stroker Ace
15. Monique The Freak
16. Lets Dance (David Bowie)
17. Slow Down Boy
18. “i got this guitar as a gift”
19. The Mollusk
20. Mutilated Lips
21. You Were The Fool
22. I’ll Be Your Jonny On The Spot
23. The Goin’ Gets Tough From The Getgo
24. Hey There Fancypants
25. You Fucked Up
26. Wayne’s Pet Youngin
27. Fiesta
28. Baby Bitch
29. Birthday Boy
30. Buckingham Green
31. Crowd Noise

Encore
32. HIV Song
33. Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)
34. Roses Are Free

MP3 DOWNLOAD LINK

If you poke around on Monster Fresh long enough you should be able to discover a couple of things fairly easily.  One is that we like art.  Another is that we really like the band WEEN.  Whether it comes from the guys being incredibly discriminate or just simply being incredibly fortunate, WEEN has -and continues to have-  some of the most consistent artwork from any band around.  Gig posters have proven themselves to be increasingly collectible over the years and the prints created to support and commemorate shows by the boys from New Hope have found themselves within the top tier of this phenomenon.  The true secret seems to be that the band often pulls from a very elite group of regular artists, all of which seem to be legitimate fans of the group.  Artists like Justin Hampton, Emek, Jermaine Rogers, and Gregg “Gigart” Gordon are not only loyal contributors to the WEEN poster art dynasty, but they are also some of the most respected poster artists in the game, altogether.  Another such artist is TODD SLATER, whose latest work involves a pair of posters for the back to back GENE WEEN New Orleans shows during Jazz Fest, which are guaranteed to become instant classics.

Through commissioning artists that are genuine admirers of the band, some of the most effective artwork has come from the designers having the benefit of enough knowledge to incorporate lyrical elements and specific WEEN-centric references directly into the imagery.  EMEK‘s Halloween print from last year and Gigart‘s two-part So Cal set that we posted about in Sept. 2009 are prime examples of when that integration is successful.  Other times, as with the artwork of WEEN coloring book creator THEA WOLFE, the best interpretations can come from an uncanny ability to capture both the incredible likenesses of Gene and Dean, as well as the unique feeling that their music and live performances can generate.  TODD SLATER has proven that neither of these angles would be difficult for him to take on.  In 2008 he manufactured a highly recognizable set of prints containing the boys’ images.  You may also recall SLATER‘s involvement in such pop-culture based group exhibits that we’ve covered as, IsThisThingOn? (stand-up comedian-themed), BAD DADS (Wes Anderson-inspired), and “Quentin vs. Coen (“An art show tribute to the films of Tarantino and the Brothers”).  It’s true that SLATER has proven his abilities in those areas, but he has also made a name for himself by tossing all of the typical principals aside and thinking outside of the box to create something that is truly innovative to the craft.  Not everyone can successfully abandon the direct connections to the artist from the poster for their gig, but he’s one of the few that can get away with it without coming across as lazy.  In fact, when TODD decides to venture into uncharted territories, he’s generally stepping up his game by trying to offer something truly unique for the artists, as opposed to printing out some corny random sketch from his notebook just to get it over with.  Where other artists often get called out for the randomness of their flier imagery, SLATER can construct a Wu Tang poster with images of DR J and LARRY BIRD choking each other out, that is so awesome that no one would dare t0 question it.

The set of prints below have been created for two GENE WEEN solo shows, which will be taking place tonight, Friday May 6th, and tomorrow, Saturday May 7th.  GENER will be performing at two different New Orleans locations in correlation with Jazz Fest and will be accompanied by WEEN bassist, Dave Dreiwitz.  Tonight’s show will be held at the Blue Nile and has a poster featuring a Frankenstein-style composite creature that’s comprised of features from various LOONY TUNES cartoon characters.  Tomorrow’s event, held at Tipitina’s French Quarter, features SLATER providing the same treatment to cartoon characters from the world of Hannah-Barbera.  Maybe it’s WEEN‘s own patented mutant pastiche of familiar elements rotated through their own murky brown filter to miraculously create something completely original and inspired or just the sheer twisted nature of the illustration that makes it work.  Honestly, I don’t know what it is, but something about the otherwise disconnected imagery just feels like it makes sense.

Based on previous experience, I would advise keeping tabs on ToddSlater.net, for anyone that is unable to get their hands on one or both of the prints, but wants to own them.  He often releases remaining copies through his site..

And… for anyone that’s in the New Orleans area and might actually be able to make it to either of these shows, we highly recommend doing so.  As usual, the shows should be amazing.

Here’s the ticket info:

The Backbeat Jazzfest Series presents Gene Ween, w/Dave Dreiwitz

Fri, May 6 at the Blue Nile (TIX)

and

Sat, May 7 at Tipitina’s French Quarter (TIX)

If you consider yourself an avid fan of the New Hope, Pennsylvania 5-piece known as WEEN, then chances are that you have already heard something about their recent, and now infamous, performance at Vancouver, BC’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Monday Jan. 24th.  The moment the show let out, tales of Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman being “too fucked up” and/or losing his shit began to weigh down the WEEN forum and flood their official Facebook page.  It’s been described with such terms as “meltdown” and “collapse“.  There are mixed feelings about what occurred that night.  Some people were pissed off, while others have stated that they had a great time, but very few would disagree that some sort of spectacle took place.  Claims came in about how the frontman had problems with tuning, or rather constantly re-tuning, his guitar throughout the evening.  Random audience footage taken from the back of the crowd appeared to display Freeman laying on his back, at some point, and kicking his legs in the air.  I read a lot of comments regarding the show taking a downhill plunge around the song “ReggaeJunkieJew“.  One of the first things to be consistently confirmed was that, for the last half hour or so, Gener was on stage performing solo, after his frustrated cohorts eventually had enough and left him out there to fend for himself.  The screwy part is that, if all of this was true, the band had still performed a full 20 songs before they began to walk off the stage and “ReggaeJunkieJew” was already the 17th track on the setlist.  From then on, Gene took on 5 songs all by, or mostly all by, himself.  I don’t hear of too many bands knocking out that much material, even on their best nights.  So what the fuck is the problem, really?  Are the WEEN “fans” that attended the Vancouver show too whiny?  The band did leave him out there all alone; was it really that big of a irreparable disaster?  Has this group grown so large over the past decade that too many of the folks that go to their shows these days don’t really even “get it”?  It was just a fucking concert, so does it really even matter?  One thing’s for sure, those of us who weren’t in attendance can’t very well rely on the opinions of those staining the internet with their opinions.  Fortunately for us, someone had enough sense to record some up-close footage of the entire evening and afford us the ability to make our own assessments.  Hopefully, after this, everyone can move on and finally leave all of the excessive complaints, reiterations, and drama behind them.

We had already heard warnings about the possibility for this tour to encounter some shaky moments.  Two years ago, there was a lot of concerns about Gene putting on too much weight, but, since their Halloween show in Denver, all that I’ve heard about was how he has lost way too much of it in way too little time.  Is he puffing a ton of rock or shooting up smack?  Who knows, but, whether or not Freeman is actually suffering from a severe addiction right now doesn’t seem to compare to the addictions that people have for speculating about it.

The following grab from his Twitter account didn’t do much to help stifle any rumors, either…

That last tweet about being in rm “911” provides the number for the Paramount Hotel in Seattle and was posted just one day prior to the Vancouver performance.  As of yesterday, Freeman‘s Twitter account has been disabled, along with his Facebook page.  My guess would be that this is most likely due to getting an influx of messages and comments from people who feel like they have the right to contact him directly and go off about their personal feelings regarding his show in Vancouver.  If that’s true, I don’t blame him in the slightest for closing down those accounts.  After that Vancouver kick off date, WEEN went on to complete the rest of their West Coast tour with one impressive performance after the other, proving that any assumptions that the BC show may have marked “the end of WEEN” were made ridiculously premature.  So why are some people still using the WEEN Facebook page and other forums to rant about a show that happened a week ago?  Even after demonstrating, show after show, that they had pulled it together and that Vancouver was a one-off mishap, at worst, people continued to warn and beg Gener to get his “shit together” and not “fuck up” the shows each night in their respective city.  There were a handful of comments embracing the group and showing genuine concern for Freeman‘s well-being, but the overwhelming, lop-sided majority seemed to come from tactless concert goers publicly casting stones and demanding refunds.  Obviously, the best way to get an actual refund isn’t through foul complaints on a Facebook wall, but… social networking is really more about chiming in, forcing others to read your opinions, and instigating conflict anyway.

One of the most ridiculously misguided comments that I read came from a posting on the WEEN forum with the heading  “i walked out of a ween show“.

“i fell to a puddle of tears on the stairs in the lobby of the queen e theatre. i still cant believe it. how could they do this to me. i always stuck up for this band, gene just was totally loaded. im so heart broken. how could they do this to me?…“

The Facebook wall contained a handful of other statements, regarding people being disappointed after taking their young teenage children to their first show, only to have them witness what they considered to be a musical trainwreck.  Personally, I don’t fucking get it.  It’s not like these people were attending a Backstreet Boys performance; it’s a WEEN show goddammit!  For anyone that believes that I am only being so cavalier about my views, because I wasn’t one of the people who “lost” money on the show, I think we should really breakdown what these people are really saying and what they are really complaining about.

“I took my 14 year old daughter to see a show by MY favorite band, hoping that they’d play classic tunes like ‘Let Me Lick Your Pussy,’  ‘Flies on My Dick,’ ‘She Fucks Me‘, The H.I.V. Song,’ and ‘Touch My Tooter‘ but they were so unprofessional!  Now I’m gonna have to take my kids to see a band that they actually wanted to see to make up for this!“

Or maybe…

“Im not some fly-by-night fan!  I’ve loved WEEN ever since they created that lo-fi 4-track album where they huffed a rape-load of scotch guard and recorded fabricated reennactments of themselves ordering food at a taqueria.  I can’t believe that Gener got so fucking high and ruined everything!  And the worst part is, they didn’t even play ‘Zoloft,’ or ‘Put the Coke on My Dick‘!“

Yeah, it’s all a bit ridiculous, but, like I said, you can make your own determinations.  Some sketchy footage from the show was uploaded to the web immediately, but it wasn’t until the last couple of days that some higher quality and more revealing video began rolling in.  Someone going by the user name “lickingthepalm4guava” (a song title from the album GodWeenSatan: The Oneness) has uploaded the entire performance and seems to have created the Youtube account strictly for that purpose.  In fact, the backdrop image of their personal Youtube channel is a copy of the Vancouver concert poster by Jermaine Rogers.

I’ve watched the footage and, although there are plenty of moments where Gener‘s “condition” is affecting the performance, I feel that the story that everyone was able to take away from the show, had to have been worth the admission price.  Hell, I’m watching it without being “forced” to sit through anything and I’m sure that it will be getting plenty of views.  If you do feel that you are entitled to a refund, however, that is also understandable, but you should probably be directing those requests to the venue and/or management, instead of trying to convince those who aren’t super pissed off about the show that they should be.  For everyone who still wants to see what really went down, we’ve posted video and a breakdown from some of the key moments below.  To watch the footage in it’s entirety, visit lickingthepalm4guava‘s Youtube channel HERE.

THE VIDEO

The first clip is from the very beginning of the show, during the lead off track “Fiesta“.  Before they begin you will hear Freeman address the audience by letting them know that it will be a “very special show tonight.“  Besides the cryptic foreshadowing, this clip is also important because it addresses the contradictory statements about WEEN making it through 2 solid hours before any problems arose, versus the claims that the whole entire show was trash.  Most people still seem to believe that the rest of the band was on point throughout, but this footage does clearly show that Gene was having a bit of difficulty playing the tambourine at the jump off.  Furthermore, if Freeman‘s abilities were primarily impaired by some form of hard drug like cocaine or heroin, it doesn’t seem to coincide with the idea that his full-on descension didn’t really kick in until about 2 hrs deep into the set.  As you will soon see, the culprit looks as if it could possibly be something hallucinogenic, from the beginning, and a lot more like something hallucinogenic, as the show continues.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This track was followed up with a 7 plus minute version of “Take Me Away“, with jams that seemed so trippy that they were beginning to suck the singer in with them.  During that song the vocals are often inaudible and you can hear someone next to the camera screaming, “Gener!  I can’t hear you!“  They run through “Mr. Richard Smoker” and “Transdermal Celebration“, with Gene showing some signs of disorientation.  However, as they follow it up with “Mister Will You Please Help My Pony?” and especially, “Gabrielle“, he seems to really be finding his footing.  Plus, as usual, Dean is tearing the shit out of his solos.  Gene doesn’t pick up a guitar until the next song, “Piss Up A Rope“, where he’s still tuning it after the song’s already begun.  He mostly just holds it, while singing, and only employs very minimal and occasional strumming.  When it ends, he immediately begins playing “Tender Situation” and it actually turns out really great, with Gene pulling off some solid guitar work of his own.  When they do “Learning to Live” next, problems start to become a little more obvious.  Once the song ends and the music starts, Freeman continues to slur out one more final verse, unaccompanied by any music.  For “Bananas and Blow” he squeaks in late with a couple of off guitar notes, eventually returning the majority of focus towards the vocals.  Again Deaner pulls the song together with more tricky guitar work.  “Buckingham Green” goes over really nicely and sounds beautiful.  Glenn‘s electronics and keyboard work are right on and Claude continues to beat the shit out of his kit, as he has been doing throughout.

So… up until this point, some songs have worked better than others, which is to be expected.  The difference from any other show is that if it’s a song that really sucks Gener in, he appears to give it everything he’s got and, if not, they seem a little more difficult than usual for him to line himself up with.  All in all, I still would have went to this show happily and, even if Freeman wasn’t consistently at the top of his game, there are still some great moments.  But, the real reason for this post is to damper the speculation and to show the footage relating to what all of the commotion has been about.

Gener‘s facial expressions and vocal delivery are always a little exaggerated, but I’ve never seen him sit down on the stage like he does in the following video of “Mutilated Lips“.  Here’s when things really seem to take a turn for the weird.

Click here to view the embedded video.

While Gene retunes his guitar, yet again, Mickey (Dean Ween) quickly organizes the rest of the group into performing his track “My Own Bare Hands“.  Although Gene didn’t really play his guitar during the song, he starts the next one off by tuning it all over again.  He walks around the stage a bit and doesn’t start singing the lyrics for “Spinal Meningitis” until almost 2 minutes into the set up.  It’s hard to argue that there weren’t issues with this one falling apart.  Cues are missed, Claude drops a stick, etc.  In all honesty, I’m not completely convinced that they aren’t all a little wasted.  The main questions are about to what degree and how well they can still perform, individually, while fucked up.  After all, being in the backdrop makes things a little more forgiving than standing center stage with a spotlight in your face.

“Your Party” goes well enough.  “Let’s Dance” is quite a bit more rough.  As many have stated, the real shit starts going down when they try to play “ReggaeJunkieJew“.  Gener really begins to trip himself out during this one and, at about the 5:25 mark, you’ll notice that he begins holding the megaphone on the top of his head and letting its siren squeal like a goddam banshee.  At approx. the 7:20 mark, you’ll see that he’s wandered over to Glenn and mesmerized himself with the keyboard setup.  At about 9:05, someone from the audience jumps up and does a synchronized stretch with Gener on stage, before being removed so some wack chick can hop up there and work her rainbow gathering bullshit dance moves in his place.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ok, so a couple of comments here.  The first is that this is only the first half of the “ReggaeJunkieJew” video, because it’s just that long.  The other thing to acknowledge is that this is not only the spot in the show where things officially start to take a turn, but also the part where I believe that interpretations of the events actually begin to split, depending on who you talk to.  I know that for a lot of people this clip signifies disaster and a collapse of the whole performance, but for someone like me, it’s actually some of the greatest shit ever.  You can tell that the the band members are really engaged in what they are doing and the song sounds funky as all get out.  Regardless of how “wasted,” “lit up,” or “faded” Freeman may or may not be in this clip, he is definitely investing all of him self into the performance and, that alone, would have made this show for me.  Those who are furious about it, might need to take a step back and acknowledge  that this is actually a pretty amazing and genuine moment.

The second half of this video does start to signify that a certain amount of control has been lost, however, as Gener walks off and some audience jerkoff manages to dance on stage for a full minute and a half before being removed by anybody.  Even so, the jam continues to veer out into funked-out Stevie Wonder-style squawks and psychedelic whirlpools.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This next video, which immediately follows the last song in the set, features the portion of the show where Gener is laying on his back.  I’m pretty sure that the Carpenters never expected their classic “Superstar” to be given this sort of treatment.  Instead of singing the lyrics, it’s clear that Aaron is still stuck in the previous song, as he screams out “You fucking jew!” more than once throughout it.  The song ends at around the 5 minute mark, after which you can distinctly hear Freeman say, “Sorry if your panties are in a bunch.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

After a version of “Freedom of 76“, where Gene can’t quite manage to hit his usual range, the band decides to temporarily hand the vocal duties over to bassist, Dave Dreiwitz for a cover of Motorhead‘s “Ace of Spades“.  You’ll see Freeman messing around with his tuner again and then, at the 2:18 mark he yells “Hey!” into the mic, trying to get his bandmates’ attention.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When the music stops, Gene starts playing “Birthday Boy” by himself on the guitar.  The band hasn’t quite left at this point, and you will see Dean wandering around in the wings.  Glenn and Claude also switch positions with each other on the keys and drum kit set up, respectively.  They might have been burnt by then, and I don’t doubt that the show may have been a bit of a struggle for everyone, but, in my opinion, Gener‘s “Birthday Boy” actually sounds pretty good.  Anyone that thinks that the song sounds like a complete disaster should probably go back and listen to the album to hear what the original sounded like, in the first place.  What may have thrown a few people off, the band included, is that the song is usually performed acoustic and Gener went right at it with a distorted guitar and no hesitation, creating something much closer to the sound on GodWeenSatan.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The band was entirely offstage, while he played “I Don’t Want It” and “Sarah“.  This is the point where it seems like the idea of something can actually hold more power than the reality of it, if you allow that to be the case.  I think that both of the songs sounded really good and, regardless of any other possible circumstances, Freeman is clearly pouring his heart out in these performances.  The general consensus is that the band is supposed to be pissed at him.  Maybe they are, or maybe they are just burnt out and needed to get off the stage.  The story also goes that the majority of the audience was shocked and appalled by his behavior.  Maybe that’s true too, but they don’t sound that way on the video.  One thing is for sure, though; at the end of “Sarah“, Gene looks behind him and asks the question, “Where’s the band?” and then says, “The band just left.“  He has a smile on his face.

Click here to view the embedded video.

He plays a quick minute and a half version of the Roger Miller classic “Kansas City Star” and then finishes the show off with what is probably the most aptly titled track of the evening, “Don’t Sweat it“.  Before the closer he says, “Alright, I’m gonna hope that the band returns for this song.“  They don’t.  Then he confesses, “So, I think I wrote this song after 2 weeks on mushrooms.“  He seems totally cognitive and aware during the song.  Then he puts his guitar down gently, and says, “Thanks Vancouver“, before leaving the stage.  There is no encore.

WEEN has always been a group that isn’t afraid to take chances and who knows if Aaron got intentionally spun for the show or if he just pushed it a little overboard?  Personally, I would have been more than happy to experience this shit live.  If he is in some sort of actual spiral, we wish him the best, but I hardly think that he is deserving of the type of bullshit that people have been spewing at him and about him, pertaining to this Queen Elizabeth set.  The performance wobbles at some points, but the risk definitely pays off at others.  There are some truly wonderful and even intimate moments in there.  It just goes to show how different people can witness the exact same circumstances and have completely different reactions towards it.  I love Gener‘s solo section at the end, while others site that as the most pathetic and disasterous portion of the night.  If you truly want your money back, I think that you should go ahead and try to get it, but I  also think that you should reassess your expectations out of concerts and, after that, you’re gonna have to put the brakes on all of the goddamn complaining.  People regularly pay a lot more to see shows that are a lot less real and a hell of a lot worse.  Overall, this one appears to be definitely worth the ticket price.  As for the far more important issues/questions surrounding Aaron‘s health, that remains to be seen.  If the performances from the rest of the tour are any indication, things for him are hopefully heading in the right direction.

First off, thanks to everyone who entered. We’re terrible people and wish that everyone could lose, but that’s not going to be possible, so let’s move forward. After a group deliberation, narrowing down the selection, WE’VE PICKED A WINNER!

The winning entry was left by…

DIARA MELENDEZ

who said,

“If I could cover anything with gas and set it on fire, it would have to be my dad’s nutsack to make sure he stops reproducing and enjoying life actually I would just set his whole body on fire, and watch him burn after I diarrhea in his mouth”

She will be enjoying a pair of passes to the sold-out Crystal Ballroom performance on Wed. January, 26th!

To us the song “Cover it with Gas and Set it on Fire” has always managed to evoke feelings of unbridled youthful passion and anarchy through destruction. We, ourselves, started out listening to WEEN as punk teens through albums like Pure Guava and The Pod. I was never completely aware of WEEN’s remarkable precision and technical skills, until I finally saw them live years later. For my money, that freeing “fuck all” element, that they’ve managed to miraculously maintain in their sound, is still their strongest resource. The essence that was instilled in albums like “The Oneness” has palpably remained to this day. They never seem to try, they just do. There is a genuine quality to what they create. That is their true greatness.

That being said, I don’t feel that there is any way that we could, in good conscience, choose anything but the one that was in the worst conscience. There are no “wrong” answers, but, what we were hoping for is for entrants to come unhinged. Some entries were restrained and/or about doing “positive” things and bringing people together. Others were on the other end of the spectrum and focused on eliminating groups of people that they didn’t identify with. A few spoke of attacking us and/or the contest itself. But, as the saying goes, “don’t talk about it, be about it” and DIARA’s entry was like leaving a huge piss-stain on the entry page.

So.. congratulations.

Think of this as an opportunity to turn any frowns upside down and work out your aggression on the dance floor. Feel free to view this as a validation for your feelings, but not as an endorsement for burning your pops (it’s probably a bad idea). As for the “diarrhea in his mouth”, we’re not really versed on the legalities involved in that.

THANKS FOR ENTERING!
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

CONTEST

I took the photos above during the WEEN performance at the 2010 Sasquatch Music Festival.  It was hands down one of the best shows that we saw all last year.  Believe it or not, there is no photoshop work done to the images at all, the performance was actually just that crazy.  For those who have seen the boys live before, you already know what they are capable of.  For those who haven’t, you need to.  Besides a solo show by Gene Ween, The Gorge Amphitheater in Eastern Washington is the closest that WEEN has come to Seattle since 2007.  This month, on Tuesday the 25th, they will return to take on the Paramount Theater once again.  This show will be preceded by a show in Vancouver, Canada (24th) and followed up by Portland (26th), Oakland (28th), and Los Angeles (29th) dates.  We’ve been in contact with the management since the dates were first announced and have been sitting on the following promotion ever since.  Now that the dates are rapidly approaching, we are happy to announce a giveaway for a pair of tickets to any one of these West Coast tour dates.  That’s right, ANY one.  That includes the sold out shows, like the one at the Crystal Ballroom that got swiped up during the pre-sale and have been selling for hundreds on ebay.  Fuck the drama and fuck the scalpers.  If you win, we’ll give you a pair for free.

HOW TO ENTER:

We are aware that this giveaway has the potential to yield a sizable response so, in anticipation of this and to keep things manageable, we have made efforts to monitor/regulate the entries and avoid double entries, by hosting the entry page through FACEBOOK.  You can add Monster Fresh on facebook now, by clicking through HERE.

(1)

Link to the entry page HERE.

(2)

Finish the following statement:
“If I could cover anything with gas and set it on fire ___ “

(3)

Leave your entry in the comment section below.  Only one entry per person, please.
(If you’re having trouble commenting, make sure to add – aka: “LIKE” – Monster Fresh on Facebook)

That’s pretty much it!

Be as elaborate and/or creative as you want.  It will serve you well.

If your real name (the name you would need placed on the list) differs from your Facebook page, please provide that name with your entry, as well as the show date that you are trying to win the tickets for.

………………………………….

ADDITIONAL DETAILS:

Depending on the number of entries provided, we will choose our favorite and throw your name up on the guest list for the show of your choice. If the volume gets out of hand, we will use a number randomizer to select 10 – 20 entries, to keep it manageable, and then simply select our favorite from that reduced number.

Contest begins now and will run until…

11:59pm on Thursday January, 20th.

All entries must be received by the end time to be valid.

If we are unable to contact the winning entrant within a reasonable amount of time, a substitute will be chosen.

GET TO IT!

Melchiondo is well known for his side-work with the group Moistboyz and, bassist, Dave Dreiwitz is involved with multiple other projects.  Freeman, on the other hand, has often seemed less eager to venture out beyond his work with the band.  Toward the end of last year, however, Gener began to do just that, by playing various shows with his recently formed Gene Ween Band {You may have read the review by our writer A.Misalatti, who we sent to cover the new 4-piece‘s performance in Brooklyn back in February}.  Since the group didn’t come out West for any of the dates, and since I haven’t been to a WEEN show since their last Seattle show in 2007, I was pretty psyched when the West Coast dates were announced.

After I had already set up the passes, I went to the official Gene Ween Band site and noticed that The Crocodile Cafe show was one of the few that had the word “SOLO” posted next to it.  I sent an email out to WEEN‘s management to verify that it wasn’t a band performance and received the following message, “Yes, this is a Gene Ween solo show, just Gene Ween. He will play about 2 hours of Ween songs.“  I had been interested to hear Freeman play the new tracks that he has working on with GWB but, in all honesty, I was really excited to find out that I was going to be present for something completely different.  In many ways, by Gene performing all by himself, it is is much more of a venture beyond his comfort zone than even presenting all new material.  Over the years, WEEN shows have gained notoriety as smoke-filled, sonically intense spectacles, and Deaner‘s guitar work has always played a vital and irreplaceable role in them.  Although Melchiondo and Freeman both write, sing, and play guitar, Dean is known as the primary guitarist, while Gene Ween is generally regarded as the main vocalist.  Even on last years At the Cat’s Cradle CD/DVD release, featuring early footage of the duo performing to sparse crowds and accompanied only by a DAT machine, Freeman never played guitar throughout an entire show.  This would definitely be an exciting and rare opportunity to watch and see if Gener could prove that he was able to hold his own all by himself.

Gene Ween (solo)

June 19, 2009

The Crocodile Cafe

Seattle

By the night of the show, it had already been sold out for quite a while.  Onsen didn’t have a ticket, but I tried to talk him into heading down there with me and my girlfriend anyway.  We met up at the Upper Playground a few hours before the show started.  There was a really cool exhibit by artist Stacey Rozich and it gave us an opportunity to get our free gallery drink on before heading downtown.  On the way to the bus, I got a phone call from my friend, and fellow WEEN enthusiaist, KB Smooth.  He happened to be in town and asked me what I was up to.  I let him know about the show and he said that he would meet us down there.  Now we had a crew.

We walked up to the venue at the same time as KB and ran into him immediately.  Within about 30 seconds of us standing out front, a man interrupted our conversation to ask us if we were going to the show.  He then handed us two free tickets and left saying, “Just buy me a beer inside.”  As far I know, we never saw him again and nobody bought him a beer.  Now that everyone was set for as admission, we headed the few blocks to KB‘s ride so that we could drop off some shit and get our fade rolling before the show.  On the way there, we saw Gene talking on his cell in an alley and, after we made it to the car, some nosy wingnut was poking his head in to find out what we were up to.  There was a very high probability that he had been puffing the hubba rock and, pointing to a restaurant a few buildings down, he “warned” us that, “Some cops are in there eating spaghetti!“  He then rambled on with some overly-complicated story that was solely constructed as a segue into, “I’m not gonna lie.  I’m just tryin’ ta git me some chicken and beer.”  We gave him a portion of the little change that we had, just so that he would beat it, and he went off to harass a young, white, and frightened upper middle-class couple.  I heard him yelling, “It’s because I’m black!” at them, right before we headed back to the show.

The Crocodile Cafe is a local staple that just reopened after the previous management let it go under.  I haven’t been there since I saw Doug Martsch on his solo tour, but I could still remember that the venue looked strikingly different.  The main floor was now much larger and the entrance was even located on a different side of the building.  I heard that the “new” door was found when they were renovating, but I’ve also heard that that is a common excuse used to avoid dealing with building permits.  I ran into my friend Amanda, who I first heard WEEN with when I was in high school, and then made my way up to the balcony over looking the stage.  The balcony is fairly small, but there was a little bar up there and we got some drinks.  I was already pretty fucked up when I got there, but I had a few beers and we stayed up there for the majority of the opening set.  The opener was WEEN drummer, Claude Coleman Jr., and he was working an solo-acoustic/singer-songwriter angle of his own.  I knew Claude had a band, but I’ve never heard them and, in my opinion, I don’t think that his material went over that great.  The songs that I heard were tinged with WEEN songs like “Freedom of ’76” and had elements of Elvis Costello swirled in.  There was a crowd of hungry WEEN fans listening to tracks that they’ve never heard before and that I’m not so sure were created to be played in that format.  The songs sounded like they were missing something to fill the sound and the set felt a little like someone was playing their acoustic guitar on a couch in an apartment during a small gathering.  It was one situation where the lack of familiarity really seemed to play a role in the effectiveness of a concert, especially when you have a crowd full of fiending drunks.

We were on the main floor when Gener came out wearing a pink button-up dress shirt and holding his acoustic guitar.  The show all ready felt incredibly surreal and I hadn’t been that close to the stage since I saw WEEN for the first time.  The venue was very intimate and people were resting their water bottles and jackets on the stage, which had absolutely no sort of fencing or security in front of it.  Freeman has gained some weight over the last couple of years and his hair is graying, but he still has that same baby face and enthusiastic energy in his eyes.  He looked genuinely happy to be there and, from the moment he struck the first chord, the entire environment changed.

The set started out with “What Deaner Was Talkin’ About” and it sounded amazing.  His voice was really on point and it was easy to feel the unanimous mixture of enthusiasm and fascination emanating from everyone in the crowd.  Plus, I’ve had that song randomly popping in my head for the last two weeks, so I felt like I was already getting exactly what I wanted.  It was a good choice for an opener and it is a song that transfers smoothly into the one-man format.  The next song, “Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)”, was a slightly more unorthodox move, but it was one that I’m glad he made.  It was one of the first WEEN songs that I ever really fell in love with and, by working it into his repertoire, it showed that Gene had no intention of sticking strictly to the expected ballads.  He employed his effect pedals heavily and I was surprised that, with the lack of the bass-line and drums, it still sounded complete.  As for the single vocals during the chant-like chorus, it wasn’t an issue.  The audience was more than happy to fill in as backup singers.

I worked my way a little closer and recognized the tattoos on the woman standing dead center at the front of the stage.  It was artist, Thea Wolfe, who created The WEEN Coloring Book and who I first met when I did an interview with her for the site.  She was swaying around and looked so happy that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that there was free morphine up front.  Her husband Lars Peterson, was right next her with his camera.  I had my Nikon and, since Thea isn’t very tall, I still had a great view standing right behind her.  The club wasn’t well lit and Onsen, who was standing by the light board, later told me that the girl running it would only twist one knob back and forth occasionally.  It was dark as fuck and I was trying to make at least one photo work with my sketchy lens that’s terrible in those conditions.  While I was focusing on my camera and listening to the show, a couple of girls, with more energy than I had, started talking to me.  They asked questions about me taking photos and asked me if I was “gonna dance“.  I was super faded and, when I get fucked up, I don’t get very hyper; I slow down.  “Great!  I’m in another conversation where enthusiastic strangers are trying analyze my body language and teach me to loosen up and how I should be enjoying myself.“  This is always the point where I think about how I know that I’m way crazier than the people approaching me and my mind starts devising crazy solutions as to how I could sedate the situation like a monkey tranq.  “Maybe if I set this cat next to me on fire or shit on the floor, I could make my point and go back to what I was doing.”  I wished that my lady would have decided to move closer to the stage, because girlfriends are like guard dogs.  I was also hoping that she wasn’t watching the conversation and misinterpreting my brief and distant engagements as me trying to lay my mack down.

The third song that Gener busted out was the sultry “Your Party“, about a high-class social gathering.  Next on the set list was “Stay Forever” and “She’s Your Baby“, both from the White Pepper album.  Everything sounded tranquil and whimsical like magical unicorns and methadone.  Then came another unexpected twist when the singer performed “Friends“.  There are all ready two recorded versions of this gay discotheque-style dance number, and this third, stripped-down version was equally solid.  Gene Ween stalled on the lyrics mid-way through and the crowd helped sing along and move the track forward.  The assistance and enthusiasm was appreciated.  He was smiling throughout the entire set and constantly thanked everyone for coming out.  The crowd continued to sing along when he maintained the White Pepper theme by playing “The Grobe” next.  The regular version is really grimy and heavy, but everything he played continued to work.  I think it was around this part of the show that I truly realized that any slight questioning that I may have had, before hand, was completely unnecessary.  He could have taken on just about any song from the WEEN catalog, by himself, and still make it gleam like shinola.  What wasn’t entirely working for me was the vocal arrangements of the audience.  Everyone was trashed and a lot of fools were stumbling over and spilling their beers on to everyone else.  In a way, the audience participation really helped make the show but, by the same note, I don’t need to listen to a bunch of assholes next to my ear who want to scream louder than the actually performer.  At one point, Thea‘s friend was ready to punch one wasted goon that kept plowing into her, so I agreed to operate as a human barricade between them.  The pros and cons balanced each other out and it was hard not to enjoy myself.  The show was amazing and, for the most part, it was a positive aggression being displayed by the majority.

We had all assumed that we would hear “Baby Bitch” and we were right.  It was thrown into the mix next, before going into “Chocolate Town“.  After that, one of the stumbling drunks next to me screamed out the song title, “Freedom of ’76“.  This is a track that Gener tends to only contribute vocals for live, but he obliged the fan by performing it A capella without hesitation.  Next was “Object“, complete with guitar solo, and then the swampy aquatic space track, “Mutilated Lips“, which always makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a Nyquil high.  The Roland keyboard, which was off to the side, finally got some use for the next 3 songs, “Even if You Don’t“, “Lullaby“, and “Happy Colored Marbles“.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As he casually transitioned back and strapped on his guitar, there was a huge uproar of screams and people chanting, “Gener!“.  He played the song “Laura” and this acoustic version easily calmed down the crowd again.  His ability to reign in the cattle was impressive.  Gener played the role of a puppeteer/clown, using audio balloon animals to focus the attention of a kids party riled up on too much pinata sugar.  With the command that he was able to wield over the mob, I have the feeling that he could have easily incited a riot or witch burning if he chose to.   The set continued to get mixed  up with a nice variety of songs like “Right to the Ways and the Rules of the World“, “I’ll Miss You“, and “The Mollusk“.  He left the stage with an enthusiastic smile and with his thin dress shirt completely drenched with sweat.

Encore

When Freeman came back, he still had a massive grin pulled across his mug.  I could feel that he was appreciative and authentically moved by the amount of love he was receiving.  The encore started with “The Argus” and I was really happy to hear hear him do it.  He brought out Claude Coleman Jr. on a second guitar to help out the with the final 3 songs of the show.  The two of them performed “Flutes of the Chi” and then “Polka Dot Tail“.  For the closer, “Big Jilm“,  they used a drum machine to knock out the beat.  It was a perfect way to close the night.  There was more crowd vocal accompaniment, but there was a strangely cohesive harmony and everybody seemed to know their parts, instead of just drunkenly mumbling over each other.  The show was over and the lights were kicked back on, but nobody wanted to leave.  It was more quiet than it had been all night.  People stared at the the stage and/or each other with blank looks of awe freezing their expressions.

A friend of mine once opened up for Claude Coleman‘s band.  He told me that Coleman mentioned to him that it was necessary to play outside shows to supplement his income, due to WEEN‘s random and infrequent touring schedules.  As of now, WEEN have a little more than a dozen tour dates coming up, including 2 festival stops.  Freeman has expressed his intention to record a Gene Ween Band album, at which point they will probably come up with a more creative name.  Otherwise, these side projects tend to be used to fill in time between the major WEEN projects and tours.  I love WEEN and wish that they had a stop closer to Seattle on this tour, but I can’t help but welcome these side projects as well.  Another friend was telling me about how he saw WEEN play at The Crocodile back in 1994.  These days, the demand is too high and they could never pull such a small show off, unless it was a “secret” or unnanounced performance.  In the liner notes for the At The Cat’s Cradle release, Dean goes into extensive detail about his feelings regarding the growth of the band, audience, and venue sizes.  The added members provided more flexibility to their shows but, over time, much of the intimacy was lost as the band evolved.  Seeing Gene alone was amazing and I hope that he finds time to do another tour like this again.  It was a great opportunity to witness that intimacy that has been lost.  I think that Gener felt that way too, and I can only hope that it was enough to encourage him to come back and do it again.

A week earlier, I had received a Google instant message from a friend and staff member at Cornish School of the Arts here in Seattle.  He informed me that there were some really great paintings of WEEN posted up at the institution and suggested that I come down and see them.  In all honesty, I was a bit leery about the validity of the work.  I knew that it was probably either going to be amazing or fucking terrible.  For me, it’s hard to find any gray area with that sort of subject matter.  I was sent a couple of iphone photo images and quickly realized that the artist was no joke; the paintings were, in fact, much more than I could have ever expected.

I wanted to help the student get their work to the source and I quickly had delusions of grandeur, in which I became like Maurice Starr when he discovered New Edition and NKOTB.  I’ve been in semi-regular contact with WEEN‘s management since the site began and I knew that, if I forwarded the images of the painter to them, the work of the artist that I was “discovering” would be undeniable.  “What’s her name and contact info?“  I asked my friend.  He went to check and typed back the name “Thea Wolfe“.  I recognized it immediately and knew that she didn’t need any help from me; I already owned a copy of the coloring book that she created for the group last year.  She wasn’t a current student at all, her paintings were posted up on the alumni wall.

After checking out her site, I headed down to see the paintings in person.  They were much more impressive than any still frame camera could represent.  Colorful and full of motion, many of the paintings had reflective iridescent shapes and pentagons within them that shifted depending on the view, lighting, and angle.  I had never seen a simulation of psychedelic experiences portrayed that way through paint, or any that more accurately conveyed them.  The artist statement explained that the series was based on what Wolfe refers to as “The Year of the Wrong“, a period of time in which she traveled thousands of miles to attend a number of performances on WEEN‘s “La Cucaracha” tour with a primary focus of doing what she felt inside, regardless of how unreasonable, ridiculous, or “wrong” it may seem to the outside world.  Based on her work and various statements and views that she’s expressed through interviews, her website, and elsewhere, I knew that there was the strong probability for a good conversation to come from meeting her in person.

When we reached her home, we were greeted by her husband, photographer/artist Lars Peterson.  The couple graciously welcomed us in and gave us a tour of their Northgate, Seattle home.  The upstairs walls were each painted with the type of colors found in a Crayola BOLD box.  The hallway doors were left open, exposing glimpses of the different colored rooms inside.  Staring down the length, it gave off the impression of a jacob’s ladder.  Lars explained to us that their bathroom, which was painted with multiple layers of metallic gold paint, shines like the suitcase from Pulp Fiction when the sun light hits it.  At the end of the hall was their Dance Dance Revolution room.  2 large dance pads laid on the floor and the back wall was tiled with the original framed images from the WEEN coloring book that Wolfe had created.  After showing us the large basement with a mural on the wall, we headed back up to the large upstairs room for the interview.  We sat amongst various paintings, one of which was placed horizontally next to me like a table with a smaller one laying on top of it.  I was drinking the black coffee that Thea offered me and was told that I could set it down anywhere.  I placed my mug on the floor.  She placed hers directly on top of the painting that I had purposely avoided.  Onsen turned on the camera and we got started.

Dead C: All right, I have questions for you now

Thea Wolfe: Cool

Are you ready for this?

Sure

So, I wanna ask you about… You went to Berklee (College of Music), right?

I did.  Briefly, I dropped out pretty early on

What were you studying there?  What brought you there?

I always wanted to be a musician as a kid.  That’s totally what I thought I was gonna be doing.  I’ve been playing guitar, pretty seriously since I was 13 and really started performing a lot as a teenager so, by the end of high school, I was totally sure that I was going to be a musician and totally felt positive that Berklee was the school that I wanted to go to.  I was really kind of off the mark  in what I was picturing that Berklee was going to be like .  And it definitely made it a lot more scientific and math-based than the intuitive sort of approach that I’d been taking so…  I dropped out and just focused on my band and started a tattooing apprenticeship

Well, you went to Cornish later

Yeah

So, how did that work for you?  ‘Cuz, when I play music… and I’ve kind of approached a lot of things myself  -and sometimes it backfires-  but with the whole rejection of music theory and art theory-

Yeah

You seemed to give it another chance, ‘cuz you went to art school.  Did you have different expectations again?

Um..it was like, with the music, the situation that I was in, I was working with other people that-

[a distracting and cheesy ringtone comes through on Lars' phone]

*sarcastically towards Lars* That’s a good ring.

*laughing* He loves the cheese.

I was kind of working  under people, in a way, and working with other people.  And the people that I was working with were really kind of encouraging me to be open to a more conventional route.  Like signing a record contract and going, sort of, that way with things.  And I really knew always that I didn’t want to do it but…  I don’t really know.  I think that art for me just-  It was something I could do more, completely on my own.  I don’t know why I had that image, I guess I probably could have done the music stuff on my own, but I just never figured out how to do that.  So, the art felt more private.  Like I could be more authentic, because I didn’t have to feel obligated to play these few songs that everyone wanted to hear when I played.  Y’ know,  everytime, even if I didn’t want to fucking play them ever again

Does the art also make it feel like you could finish a piece without having to rely on anybody?

Totally

You don’t have to try to figure out how to record anything or mess with the audio engineering?

Totally.  I mean a lot of the music stuff- that’s a really good point-  was just really out of my control, and I kind of realized about myself that I am somebody who does a lot better when I am just left alone to do my own thing.

As far as Cornish, and the few things that I have read that you’ve written on your site and elsewhere about your experience there, it seemed like you had a positive experience with the critiques.  Because I’ve  had experience (in my own schooling) where it didn’t seem like people weren’t critiquing my intention or pushing it forward; it seemed like they were critiquing what they would rather have you do

Hmm..

So, if you were trying to do a dark piece someone would say, “I like it lighter” but that’s not pushing you forward.  But you’ve made comments that your critiques and your professors were helpful.  Is there anything specifically that sticks with you?  Like something that somebody said?

Um.. yeah.  Actually- kind of what I just said.  One of the teachers that was amongst the most amazing teachers that I’ve ever had in my life, was my sculpture teacher for the beginning part of Cornish, Ron Lambert.  And, I remember one time (when) I did a piece and he gave me a lower grade on it than I really wanted to earn and I was like, “What’s that about!” and he was like, “C’mon, you didn’t give it your all.  Do it again and I’ll change your grade“.  It wasn’t about the grade, it was just about wanting to really “go there” with what I was trying to do.  It was summer time so the grades were in and everything and he didn’t give me an assignment.  He just said, “Give me something that’s really real for you“  And I made something and he came over and he just… he kind of smiled and said, “I think you do a lot better when nobody’s telling you what to do.”  And that really- that made me see myself in a different way.  It’s really true.  There’s something that shuts down in me when people are trying to guide me or tell me what to do

That actually makes me think of another question that I had for you as far as the whole WEEN coloring book thing that you made.  Because you did that on your own, correct?

Mmmhmm

So, if you were commissioned or, beforehand, didn’t give them a close to final product and you thought they wanted something (specifically), do you think it would have been a lot more difficult for you to create something, if you were asked to make it?

Yeah.  It really wouldn’t have been the same thing.  It would have been like WEEN asking me to write them a love letter, y’know.  I would have just been really corny and, maybe that would have been okay for some people, but what it turned out to be was so sincere from me, that I don’t think it would have been in any way the same.

I’ve been offered from various groups and people- I’ve been asked if I would be commissioned to do coloring books since the WEEN coloring book and I’ve said no.  ‘Cuz that’s really like something that’s actually extremely important to me and my work now, is just not doing anything that’s isn’t completely real and soulful.  Y’know, it sounds corny, but I feel religious almost about it.

Yeah, well as far as what you’re saying, it sounds like…. also along with that whole “Year of the Wrong” concept that you’re writing about- and I may be wrong- but it sounds like it kind of falls within the same realm of trying to work on things from a pure space

Mmmhmm

-and block out the idea of trying to appease anybody?

Totally

Is that a big thing for you?

That’s a huge thing.  That’s one of the biggest things, because I think that’s the only way that you can really be real with what you’re doing.  If you just don’t worry about anything but your internal compass.  Trust that you are perfect exactly the way you are from the universe, and meant to be here to do something.  And I just decided to follow that notion and really try to be as righteous as I can be to what I believe is good and what I believe is true and do that.  And I will do it until I *laughs* am beyond eating sandwiches off the sidewalk.  But I really think that if you do that and you are following your compass, things will work out… I think.  They have so far, we’ll see.

Do you have a problem seeing what’s wrong- with seeing what you meant to do?  Or have you gotten better with accepting praise on this and this, and….

I’m really good with detaching myself from the process and then the symbol that the piece is to other people.  And once I’m done with a piece and I feel like I’ve gone through a sincere process with it, I’m totally through with it.  I am happy to see them go, I don’t give a shit about them.  It’s over for me.  And I’m always equally interested in the negative feedback as I am with the positive.  I’m just always interested to see what my work means to other people.  And often I’m very surprised, but… whatever.

Anything specific that you’ve gotten that was completely not what you were even thinking?

Well, I’m always just surprised at how dark or scary people think some of my work is, when it’s really really not about that at all for me.  But, I mean, life is scary and dark and stuff sometimes, but it’s not meant to be like horror or anything stupid like that.  Yeah, what I’m often surprised by is how much people read into the work.  Sometimes it means a lot more to somebody else than it even does to me.

Well even the concept of “Year of the Wrong“, it kind of seems like the exact opposite (than how it sounds) at the same time.

Yeah.  I feel that way, definitely.  I’ll be a wrong rider for, probably, my whole life.  I’ve always been a wrong rider but, it was like “Year of my True Self“, in a way.  Just like… fully commit to the rodeo.  I’m still at the rodeo.

Duality.  Is that an important concept to you?  Does that play into anything?

Yeah, definitely.  Absolutely.  Although, that’s an extremely difficult concept to even disc-

It’s really general-

No, but that’s a very very dramatic them, I would say, in my life.

So let’s talk about WEEN for a minute.

All righty

‘Cuz, I like WEEN

Me too

I was wondering if you could mention when you first heard them or how long you’ve been listening to their music

I’ve been listening to them for like, 6 years.   I always tell this story because I’ve never had anything do this to me before, but the first time I heard God Ween Satan -it was “Fat Lenny”, the first song I heard- and it was like he came out and punched me in the throat.  And I just like… flew backwards onto my back in our apartment.  It was the most retarded thing ever, but I couldn’t even get up afterward.  It was like it knocked the wind out of my soul.  I just laid there and listened to the album and was like, *with a slow shaky emotional exhale* “Wow.”

And I am not exaggerating when I say that for the next, probably 2years, I listened to 99% WEEN.  Just all the WEEN.  I did so many art projects to WEEN and they felt like a huge cosmic key to me.

Well, it’s not that weird to me.  But it’s weird that so many people can say things like that.

Yeah

I mean, even the fact that they can play where they can play, is amazing to me.  ‘Cuz they always still seem like something that nobody else was listening to.

Yeah

The first time that I was listening to them… I think I was like, 16?  Everybody I know has this story-  I was doing a lot of mushrooms and I was in a Datsun.  I was listening to Pure Guava and I kept thinking, “Does this really sound like this, or am I creating this, because I am out of my head?“

That’s what that true essence is.  They are just doing something that is their own fucking visceral catharsis for all of this shit that comes through them as artists.  And it’s amazing and it’s beautiful and it’s totally unique, because they’re not trying to do anything other than play.  Yeah, it was not even in the realm of the kind of music I really listened to before, but it really, totally changed everything

One of the longest things that I’ve been doing, as far as this website is concerned, I’ll always write something about WEEN.  It’s been so easy to say, “Hey, we need Gene Ween tickets in Brooklyn” (they answer) “Okay“

Yeah

It’s been so easy that it’s always been sitting there; this concept of , “I guess I could always go do an interview with them“, but I’ve always been hesitant about it.  It’s always a little weird to me.  It’s almost like, uh… I don’t wanna “get to0 close to the fantasy“.  You made this thing and it was great, but were you hesitant about that idea that you were working with collapsing?

*laughing* I would say “hesitant” is much too weak of a word.

I was petrified, I was scared shitless.  I mean… yeah.  WEEN is definitely very significant in my symbolic reality and I didn’t ever imagine, “Oh, I wanna be best friends with them“.  I’m not somebody who feels I need to meet people.  I’m not that social, honestly.  I was honestly trying to find as many excuses not to meet them as I could and then there came a point where I had to.  You know, we had been working together and stuff and I was at a show.  But I had opportunities to meet them long before I did

LARS: Thea totally ran and hid in the bushes after shows

*laughs* Yeah it was, uh..

We would hear stories of other people that knew Thea and knew that WEEN was probably expecting or hoping to meet her.  And that she would be there, because they knew she was at the show.  That was not something that she wanted to be a part of; that scene.

At the end of the show that inspired the coloring book for me, I had sent a couple pieces to Mickey (Melchiondo aka: “Dean Ween”) and he’d always written back, “I love them, I’m hanging them up in the studio” or whatever.  And at the end of this show, he was leaving the stage and I just threw my hands in the air, and was screaming.   He turned around and walked back and grabbed my hands and said, “Are you the artist?” and I thought I said, “Yes” but, apparently, I just said *drops jaw in silent awe* ‘cuz he said it again “ARE YOU THE ARTIST?!” and made a painting gesture and I just nodded and he was like, “Good shit.”

And that was just so overwhelming to me.  I’m even shy standing in the front, although I like to because I really like to watch their faces.  But it is weird, and it is weird now that I know them a little bit.  I’ve never met Aaron (Freeman aka: Gene), um.. I’ve talked to him a bit, briefly back stage after shows. (I’ve) walked  by him and been like, “Great show” and he’ll just go *does her version of big Gene Ween smirk*

So, a lot of your paintings, or your work with markers and what not, has a lot of these light beams or these things that cross in kind of an abstract fashion, just because it changes within the beams.

Mmhmm

They’re almost like X-rays.  I was wondering (about) the story behind the Pipeline Cafe image.

Gener or Deaner at Pipeline?  Because there’s two.

The one with Mickey standing-

With the lions and stuff?

Yeah

That was uh…   Awwww…… I guess all I really can say about that is that was a version of “Don’t Get 2 Close 2 My Fantasy” that I will never forget

So you remember the minute-   these paintings are specific…..songs….?

All of my paintings are literal to me.  Literal symbols, but literal of something that has actually been real in my life

Do a lot of them capture a moment?  They’re not generally like “This show” or this-

No, no,  they’re moments.  Yeah.  I mean, they’re moments with narratives but, thick moments.

You’ve got a lot of centaurs and animal heads in your paintings.

*she laughs*

Is that just something you like to paint or is there something more to it?

Um, well… You’re talking about all my Danzig ponies?

Well, not just the Danzig ponies.  Just that you have a lot of them where they are like centaurs or unicorns-

Yeah, I guess that’s true

And then you have animal heads-

Oh yeah, that’s true…. I like unicorns.  But that’s getting really popular now, so I don’t like unicorns as much as I used to, but…  I have a thing with carousels and I have all these carousel beasts that I really wanna make.  I have a very strong vision of this unusual elevated carousel that feels like it’s in the sky.  And it will be the best party *laughing* I’m really excited to make that some day.

I’m always leery of asking too specifically, because some things are intentionally symbolic and some things are just “Maybe they are and  maybe they’re not” but you made them from some where.  But I’ve noticed a lot of people wearing bear’s heads

Yeah, that’s true.  I definitely relate to the spirit of animals -that sounds so corny, but that really does mean a lot to me; the animal spirits, and what not.  Maybe that’s- my mom’s half Native American and I grew up with a lot of that… sort of, those stories.  And just even fairy tales, there’s a lot of that animal spirit sort of thing.  And yeah, so I do use certain animals to symbolize  certain things.  Most specifically, wolves symbolize death in a lot of my paintings and lions symbolize destiny.  But, yeah… that’s all I can really…

It just seems to add some kind of strength in a lot of them or-  It seems like sometimes you have to try to find it.  You know how simplifying things sometimes can just kind of steal the soul out of them?

Totally

You kind of see it and then you have to break it down.  I’ll try to break it down to form a question and then I’m kind of like, “Y’know, I really didn’t want to ask that question?“

I understand

There’s a lot of death in the art

Yeah

A lot of grim reapers and things like that.  It seems like it is really cathartic to create some of this stuff. (If) it’s a moment, is it a moment for you when you’re creating it also?  Because, you’re capturing moments that happened-

Yeah

-and then you’re in the moment you’re creating it.  Are you putting these concepts out that are in your head like, “Death, let’s get this out here“?

No, I don’t think about- they’re like moments and feelings, actually.  My different bodies of work really symbolize different processes, honestly.  The more difficult work for me is the stuff when I’m trying to figure out my feelings with work.  Because I don’t have a very good emotional vocabulary but, it’s definitely almost a journey into myself with some of these paintings.  And as a result, I honestly -this is so true- I hate almost every single piece of work I have ever done.  I think it’s ugly and I definitely wouldn’t choose to hang it in my house *looking towards Lars* even though this butthole goes around and hangs it up all the time.  Yeah… it’s work….kind of.

Okay I read that you analyze- I don’t know where I saw this, where you said that you could tell a lot about people from the….. center of the face?

Oh yeah, definitely.  I think probably everybody can though.

Is there more to that?

Well, it’s something that I’ve been really paying a lot of attention to my whole life and I got really into, as I started really paying attention to portraiture.  And just kind of categorizing different shapes and different energy’s of peoples-  that sounds kind of weird and crazy but it is literally something that is almost full proof for me and I go by it really really strongly

Is it just kind of an abstract thing or do you have a system at this point?

I mean, it’s an intuitive system.  It’s not a system that I could probably teach or anything, although sometimes I’ll say to Lars, “Oh, y’know, see this?  It’s the shape that means this or that“

She’s gotten better and better at calling it out in advance before you find out, because she so often guesses accurately.  Whether it be specifics or astrological signs or something, but she’s definitely got a knack for it.

I want to ask you about astrology too, because I’m trying to keep it corny

Cool, because I’ve been studying astrology since I was a kid so, let’s keep it corny.  I’m way big into astrology, yeah.

Well you keep saying, “This is corny” but, I’m so used to that stuff.

It’s real to me

So, you put a lot of stock in that, then?

Yeah, definitely.  I’ve read as many books as I’ve been able to get my hands on about it since I was a kid.  And I think that’s the only real way to start to understanding it, because the real fuck-ups happen in the language; the way people deliver this energy that has been studied for thousands and thousands of years about the cosmos.  Y’know, one person’s delivery in a book can really fuck up the way people perceive the notion of that energy.  But, I make most, if not all, of my major decisions based on the stars.  Maybe it’s corny or whatever, but it works for me and I do feel the difference in my life when I ignore that stuff.

So, what is your Danzig thing?  I’m sure it’s beyond the “Killer Wolf” reference.

Um.. yeah, yeah. *with a somewhat devious look* Although, I feel like- No, the Danzig thing is just gonna make me seem crazy so, I don’t really know.  I have special love for Glenn ,that’s all.  And he is really shaped like a pony so I do like to draw him as a pony a lot because I just have this-

What, just like his stance?

His small muscular body and his dance moves.  Have you seen that video for “She Rides”?  The dance; he’s like, *simulating the Danzig jerky upper torso thrust*

Yeah, yeah.

He did that weird stallion pony move

I actually did see that about a week ago

Dude, that video is excellent.  It has the classic 80′s thong in your face… man.  But yeah, I love Danzig.  And I love Danzig in a funnier way than Danzig loves himself, but I do actually love Danzig and a lot of it is because, I’ve watched a lot of Danzig interviews.  I’ve watched the youtubes about Danzig talking about his book collection and talking about all of his martial arts and shit, and that guy does not give a FUCK what anybody thinks of him.  He’s not trying to make friends, he’s just doing his thing.  Danzig 1, Danzig 2, Danzig 3, Danzig 4, y’know?  I don’t know, I kind of appreciate that.  I really appreciate that. *giggling* He loves himself a lot.

You were a body builder?

*laughing* I WAS a body builder.

When was that?

I was really into lifting a few times a week-  I think it was like-

96, 97?

-when we first got sober.  And then I was like, “I’m gonna be a body builder“.  I just- I DO love muscles.  That’s part of why I like drawing horses and stuff, and watching rodeos-

And Danzig?

*laughs* And Danzig, exactly.  I wanted to sculpt my body.  Being a crazy machine and just see how far it could go

You said it was once you “got sober“.  Was it just a good place to channel your focus?

I was just… I needed to really regain some discipline in my life.  I’m not sober anymore, but I was for like, 4 years.  In that time, I really did a lot of work to build my personal will.  I was in a really dark place and I just really needed to…  to take a breather.

Did you get into the whole scene, or did you just work out?

I trained for a competitive fitness competition and I worked with some local champions.  And it was really a bummer because they were totally positive that I was in better shape than anybody else who would be competing, because I build muscle really naturally, which is really fortunate.  I did it totally supplement free.  But these dickheads canceled the competition two days before the competition.  And I had my ticket to San Francisco, Fitness America, and I had spent like-  You don’t even want to know how much I-  I had spent like my whole savings, at that point, on trying to do this.  They canceled it and then they didn’t give me my money back and then they- it was really fucked up.

Was that the end of it for the fitness?  Or, I mean, not the fitness but-

No, no.  That was the end of the…  I thought maybe I would do it again, but it was so much harder than I thought it was gonna be.  I mean it was fucking insane.  I ran for an hour every single day.  I lifted weights for an hour and 20 minutes every other day, non stop.  And I practiced my fitness routine, which was obscene.  I did it for 8 hours a day.  I have a lot of energy that I really need to manage.

*looking at my notes* Let’s see what else I got hurrr.  The “Matticorn” picture, the Trey (Parker) and Matt Stone-

Yeah?

Was that something that you created for them?

I did.  I was needing to take a break from-  I like writing love letters to people.  I like sending anonymous cookies or drawings or stupid things to people.  I can’t remember what it was, some show we were watching, and we watch a ton of South Park.  I had this idea of the Matticorn and I did it and I dropped it off at the William Morris Talent Agency, when we were in L.A.   I don’t know if it ever got to them.  I’m assuming it did.  I got a lot of hits on my website the next day from L.A.  I just walked in and I asked the girl, “Can I leave this here for Trey and Matt” and she was like, “Oh, yeah” and I was like, “Are you sure they’ll get it?” and she was like, “Oh, yeah.”  So, I’m guessing they got it.  I hope they laughed.  There was a Thomas Kincaid puzzle on the back.  I didn’t do that intentionally, it was just the frame we found at Goodwill.  It had a glued Thomas Kincaid puzzle on the back.

Your marker work looks a lot like the coloring book.  I was wondering if those things came from each other.  If, maybe, you outlined something and thought, “Yeah, this looks like a coloring book” or you were making the coloring books and you just colored them.  Or are they just completely separate?

They’re really separate.  I mean, I made the coloring book intending to make a coloring book so-

Was that the first one you’ve made?

Yeah, it was a totally random idea.  And the marker stuff, I started it around the same time.  I’d never done drawing, graphic shit.  I mean, I’ve done a little when I was tattooing and that was the extent of my graphic experience, and it was really a different sort of thing.  Yeah, the first marker drawing I ever did, I actually gave to WEEN.  And now that I look back at it, I’m like, “That was so crappy”.  But it was with tequila so it was okay *laughs*

So you painted the acrylics just thinking, “This needs to be in acrylic“?

I don’t even think about my images.  I just start with a canvas and I just start painting.  I don’t plan anything, but I do use acrylic exclusively because I’m too impatient for oil and I’m too messy for oil.  I mean, there’s paint on the outside of our fucking door.  I don’t have any idea how it got there.  There’s paint on leaves on plants.  It would be a disaster.

Do you think about that at all, as far as what medium you want to use?  Do you have something you are comfortable with, like the acrylics, or do you really think about if you’re gonna-  I mean, because some of the earlier stuff that I saw had like, paint chips on masonite and the one in there [the bathroom] has the ripped paper.

Yeah.

Was that like more, I don’t know, college oriented projects, things you were trying?  Do you really think much about, “Hey, I need to mess with another medium“?

I just like change a lot.  I don’t know.  I just kinda go where I’m feeling.  I mean, when I need to work more cerebrally in myself, I do drawing and, when I need to do work that’s really deeply emotional, I have to use paint.  But, I mean, I can see myself using a completely different medium in a year and not be doing any paintings at all, it just depends.  Honestly, a lot of the reason I choose the mediums that I’ve been choosing over the last year is just because, this is the space that we have and these are my financial constraints.

I’ve noticed that it always seems difficult to photograph paintings.  Especially, the ones you have up at Cornish because they have that re-

Interference paint

What is that?  You have those little-

It’s interference paint.  The interference paint almost disappears from certain angles and pops up in different angles, so I always try to tell people, “Come down to the show because it will be really different in life“  But yeah, it is really hard to document, but that’s all we have, since I don’t really show THAT much.

How important do you think it is, your trip?  I mean, you did a road trip when you followed WEEN?

Mmmhmm.  Well, we did one road trip only.  And that was just one of the- We saw 9 shows in 9 months and the second to last show was a secret Myspace show that they didn’t announce until, like 2 days ahead of time.  And it was a 19hr drive, so we just got in the car and drove out there.  I was like, “Oh man, there’s no tickets.  What if we don’t get it in?“  Lars called Mickey and Mickey was like, “No problem, we’ll get you in.“  So, we were just so excited.  We were on cloud 9 the whole time, because I hate crowds.  It’s really hard for me to go to those shows because it’s so intense being in those crowds and this was a 300 person venue, it was tiny.  It was literally the best night of my life.

We didn’t start out planning to go on a tour.  We did the one show and we were like, “Oh, we’ve got to go to another show” and then after that it was, “They’re playing in this place too“

Fucking addiction.  And then we rolled through Europe

Well, Europe was planned, because we were like, “If we’re going to go to a show in Europe, then we’re going to hit all the shows in Europe.  So how are we gonna do this?“

Oh, that hurt sooo bad.

That was a lot of planning and preparation down to the minute.  We’re like, “Okay, shows over.  We’ve gotta run, grab our shit, get on the train, leave the country, passport time, get ready for the show, here we are again.  Hey!“

It was so intense

So that was kinda nuts, but other than that, all the shows have been like, “You wanna do another show?“

Yeah

You’ve got a lot of tattoos.  You don’t have a boognish or anything?

No.

Never gonna happen?  I didn’t think, so.

I respect everybody who wants the boognish but that is-  I would never get a boognish

Just too cliche?

It’s just like, my tattoos are my symbols, y’know.  Boognish is tattooed in my soul

A couple of people have Thea’s symbols tattooed on them now.

Yeah, that’s kind of weird

I just have 2 more questions I think.  Obviously, you approach art from a personal place, like you were saying, “Your own symbols“.

Yeah

Is there anybody that you have gone to just strictly for, maybe even technique?  Anybody’s art that you refer to?  Or maybe not even art, just something that you use as a reference.

*Thea pauses in thought*

I mean, I never really liked the questions about, “Who are you using for inspiration” because it always feels to me like you’re saying, “So who’s work are you trying to bite” but I just thought, maybe there was something

Yeah, for me there’s nothing that inspires me more than standing 4 feet in front of Dean Ween’s guitar, when he’s fucking going off live.  That’s like my number 1 artistic inspiration of all time.  I mean, I’ve never have found any artist, and I’m not really into art, honestly, for being an artist.  I think most art is really… I just am not into it.  I don’t know.  I’ve gone to all the art museums.  I went to New York and went and looked and spent the days in the art museums and it’s cool, but it doesn’t do it for me the way that that sonic awesomeness (does).  It changes my brain to see that stuff live.  It’s crazy.  I’m just inspired by seeing people in the world that are doing something wholeheartedly.   I think that that is so rare right now, that it doesn’t matter what form it comes in.  I’m inspired by… I’m inspired by cowboys, bull riders.  I’m inspired by people who do something that they believe is really righteous, y’know.

The whole WEEN connection makes sense to me, just because they’ve been doing it so long.  It’s gotta be more difficult to try to do something if you “TRIED“

Yeah

And I don’t think there’s anybody, except maybe The Talking Heads, that I’ve listened to consistently longer.  To me it’s just this thing where, “Okay, that exists and that’s what it is” and they don’t really know how to look at it any other way.

And there are so few bands that can be around that long and not get lame.  And when a band that’s awesome gets lame-  Literally, every time I see Metallica I feel a little sick to my stomach now.

Don’t do it.

Oh, I don’t see them live, but just on commercials-

Yeah, yeah

-or just see their fucking faces, I’m just like… Because I remember the long hair days.  They were fucking siiick.

Before the eyeliner and the velvet shirts?

Before, they just SUCKED.  And it’s so much worse to be awesome and then just suck.

I also think I read that you’re putting everything into a book

Yeah, we were actually gonna look at that today.  We have it all together on the computer.  We’re gonna order that, yeah.  “Year of the Wrong“

And is that writing with that?

There’s a little bit of writing in there.  I have a really good intro written by my, I guess, partner.  He was my partner in crime for much of “Year of the Wrong“.  Yeah, it’s gonna be “Year of the Wrong“.  I don’t know, it’s crunchy and weird.

There’s a really good intro and it’s mostly a picture book, with photos of art-

There are some captions though

-a lot of excerpts, and kind of some explanations to tie it all together.

But I leave it pretty vague

Awesome.  Thanks

Yeah

I think I’m done

Cool

Most interviews, whether they are conducted via email or just prior to a musical performance, don’t allow for much time afterwards.  The interraction ends when the camera or recorder is turned off.  This one was different.  A close friend of the couple showed up and the 5 of us continued to talk and hang out for a while.  The conversation went in directions such as beaches and sunsets and I did a miserable job of trying to explain that cheesy-ass sindicated TV show Dance 360 to a room of blank faces.  Thea stressed the immeasurable help that Dean Ween provided in making the coloring book a reality, as well as what a vital role Lars plays in her career, especially the technical aspects.  Onsen helped the other 2 men fix a mailbox, while we were there, and the post-interview conversation with Wolfe covered everything from becoming lounge singers to Jehovah’s Witnesses to creating new terms in slang.  I suggested that she become an artist who creates the paintings for the cover of Watchtower magazines and she assured me that she would try to start spreading my phrase “Terminal” (as in extremely ILL) around, before we left their house and headed back.

About a week later, I received an extensive and heartfelt email from Thea.  She explained that she will often “clam up” in interviews and that she wanted me to know that she, somewhat, avoided the “honest answer” in reference to the death theme, because it can be hard for her to talk about.  I don’t want to get too into it, but she explained that much of her art and imagery, especially the cloaked figures and wolves, are symbolic and have been used to help her grieve the passing of a someone incredibly close to her a few years back.  She credits this person, “Will“, as one of the “biggest reasons” she’s doing what she is doing.  From her message, his memory seems to provide a huge guiding force behind her work and she speaks of him more with inspiration than from a place of tragedy.  I feel the importance of adding this because, in her letter she stated, “i felt like i should expound on just because it is important to me and my artwork“.

A month from now (May 23rd)  Wolfe will be having a huge ONE NIGHT art show in Birmingham, Alabama, and it sounds amazing (show flyer in gallery below).  It will also be the debut of her new book “Year of the Wrong“.  She also states the following about the event:

“This party will not only feature art, but fireworks, cotton candy, meat, moonshine, whiskey, beer, music and a jousting castle. Oh yeah, and lawyers with bongo drums. Bueno?
“

If you are able to make it out, please do.  If you are from out of town, there will be “plenty of room for tents (two acres!)“

For more info on Thea and the event, peep out these links:

Theawolfe.com (her site/buy her work)
Larspeterson.com (Lars’ site)
Join her mailing list

(click images to enlarge)

The first time that I ever saw WEEN was in 2000 at the Showbox in Seattle.  I was tired of people flaking out at the last minute so I took a 4 hr bus ride from Olympia to get to the show by myself.  I was trying to “miracle” a free kick down ticket from someone outside but, at first, all that I got was a Big Gulp full of Bourbon and Pepsi and a “Good Luck” here and there.  I finally got a ticket and, as I watched the show, I had to avoid slipping on the Heineken bottles strewn across the venue floor.  The show was amazing and bizarre.  Some drunk broad hopped on stage and Gene waved security away to let her sing with them and, when they played Baby Bitch, sorority girls were singing along to lyrics like “Fuck you, you stinkin’ ass ho” while swaying their heads side to side with their eyes closed like it was one of Michael Bolton’s “greatest hits“.

Ween is currently touring for their latest release La Cucaracha (Rounder/Chocodog) and I was able to catch their most recent show in Seattle and to have a copy of the album sent to me to peep out for a review.  I have a quite a few opinions about each.

The Album (La Cucaracha)

Earlier this year, before the release of the full-length, WEEN released The Friends EP as a 5-song little snack treat to tide fans over.  The EP contained the electro punk I Got to Put the Hammer down, the dub inspired King Billy, and a Cubano lounge style cut called Light Me Up.  These tracks were sandwiched between the title track and Slow Down Boy.  The latter has the sound of an 80′s pop ballad in the same vein as the Spandau Ballet “classic” True except that the lyrics seem to imply that it’s about men giving eachother romantic blowjobs.  Actually, when I think about it, Spandau Ballet’s sound didn’t really imply any thing all too different.  The song Friends itself would fit right at home at any gay discotheque and could easily have been sung by a 90′s Cher, complete with a vocoder and mesh clad vogue enthusiasts on the dancefloor.  Knowing that Friends would appear on La Cucaracha, although remixed, was confusing.  I wondered if this was supposed to be a sample of what was to come and if so, I still didn’t have a clue of what that even meant.

La Cucaracha kicks of with an upbeat Mariachi instrumental called Fiesta which works as just another opportunity to show off WEEN’s abilitly to cross genre’s seamlessly.  The next song Blue Baloon has a slow groove that sounds like Phish’s mediocre slowjam Meatstick but with a little controlled synthetic horn, blowing wind, and/or echoes coming in here and there.  It even has a chorus that sounds a little bit like the Beatles.  Next is the Friends alternate mix and I have to say that I think I like this version better.  It would be almost impossible to get away from that discotheque flavor but they do pull back on that Happy Hardcore beat a tad, making it more “listenable”.  They also add an aquatic/electric washboard rythm under it that’s similar to that of one of their more recognizable and accessable singles Voodoo Lady.  This is only the first 3 out of 13 songs and already this album is all over the place.  It’s pretty clear that, if you plan to pin down where the rest of it is going, you would have better luck finding Carmen San Diego in a Waldo book with a decoder ring.

As the music styles fluctuate so does Aaron “Dene Ween” Freeman’s voice.  On the next song, Object, his voice often has a Roy Orbison tone to it and contains lyrics like “You’re just a piece of meat, and I am a butcher“.  This is La Cucaracha’s anti-ballad which WEEN is often known to throw on their albums.  It’s a good effort and a solid track but the album starts to feel a little bit like a sampler at this point because, although it varies a great deal from track to track, I’m starting to see their classic formulas shine through a bit too much and it begins to clash with the spontaneity.

Learning to Love is a return to the backwoods sound of the 12 Golden Country Greats album and My Own Bare Hands is one of their raw, balls out, profane rock songs with distortion and a banshee screeching guitar solo.  In the barista business its what we call “Not Cafe Apropriate“.  The Fruit Man has the fake brothers fucking around in the reggae field once again and is packed with dub echo effects while the new agey Spirit Walker sounds at times like it could close out the credits of The Last Unicorn.  The best part of Spirit Walker, as is true with much of the album, is it’s interlude.  It cuts into a dark spooky psychedelic segment dead in the middle and then pulls back out into the sound of chimes and whimsy.

The idea of the breakdowns and changes being the strongest parts of these songs also rings especially true on Shamemaker which is a blatant assault on the shitty, whiney ass pop-punk sound that people… I don’t know …enjoy?  Somebody likes these audio travesties because I’ve seen the type of shit that Travis Barker has been able to purchase with his Blink 182 money.  Ween has the ability to emulate shit and make it sound a lot better than the genres that they are taking shots at, but at times you have to wonder, “Am I mocking the shit I hate by listening to these songs or am I just hurting myself “.

Sweetheart in the Summer and Lullaby are come next and they are both pretty good tracks.  Sweetheart has a classic guitar sound with vocals that shift from Rubber Soul harmonies in the intro into doo-wop style backing vocals.  At times it’s a little 70′s rock with even glimpses of light disco and Steely Dan.  I like the next song, Lullaby, and feel that it works, although it is sappy as hell in a Barbara Streisand sort of way, but I think last two songs are brilliant.  Woman and Man starts off with scattered hand drums and tamborine and adds a gloomy Mexican guitar, much like Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang only more sparse.  The vocals speak of Creationism with the feel of a beatnik nightclub as chimes and flute enter in.  Everything else fades out as the congos go into a solid driving rythm just before a strong guitar riff blasts the song into a psychedelic early 70′s rock frenzy as if it was written by Atomic Rooster.  At the end of the epic 10 minutes and 48 seconds, the sound of waves come rushing in.  This is followed by the military assault of machine guns and a woman who could either be getting attacked or climaxing.  Then comes the chatter of a social gathering which melds smoothly into the last track Party.  This final cut is keybump sultry.  It is all about a high class dinner party with other couples and has the perfect David Sanborn saxaphone solo.  I don’t mean that it sounds like David Sanborn, I mean that it actually is David Sanborn on the fucking album.  Dean claims that the band had vowed to never use horns on any of their albums unless they “...could get David Sanborn to play some sexy saxophone“.

It’s hard to review an album like this for me.  I can try and disregard Ween’s previous efforts and review it for what it is without expectations or comparisons but I don’t think that I could really ever do that completely.  Truth be told, when I first heard it I was psyched but then I heard it again and wasn’t so much.  Overall, the only way to review something that varies to this degree is to break it apart but, believe it or not, it actually works better as a whole and flows more consistently than you would expect.  This means that the only way to enjoy it is to just listen to it straight through a few times and its no choppier than an album such as Abbey Road.  I was told that La Cucaracha is actually the result of a multitude of tracks which were recorded and then later scaled down.  If that’s true, they seem to have picked songs based on the fact that they  provided a variety but, to do that, you have to sacrifice some consistency.  I know that I was happy the first time I heard the album, through the 2 day live stream on the Ween myspace page, for one obvious reason: anything that Ween puts out is bound to be better than 80% of all other shit being produced right now.  I, of course, was hoping for that next Pure Guava or Chocolate and Cheese and this is not it, but I think that if you love Ween then you will probably enjoy this album.   When The Mollusk came out a friend of mine let me have her copy because she was dissapointed.  Now we both love it and appreciate the departure that they took at that time.  In a year from now you will probably be hoping to hear many of these tracks live when you attend a show and will be excited when you do hear them.  When the group reportedly huffed 5 cans of Scotchguard and made The Pod on a 4-track in a shack located in a field, it was a different time and was bound to have the consistency of inhalants and limited technology.  The more options that are made available to them now provide them with more opportunities to try new shit and find to methods to deliver and reinvent formats that they have used in the past.  Those are definitely things that they experiment with at this point  and, for better or worse, at least they are still trying new shit.

The Show
Nov. 13th 2007
The Paramount Theater, Seattle, Wa

While attempting to obtain a pair of passes to the show I had to first email the promoter, Monqui Presents.  It was like de ja vu.  I had tried to work this same angle about 4 years ago for a previous Ween performance but had hit a dead end.  For this one, I had already tried to email them twice and, being that the show was coming up in just a few days, I gave it one more try.  Eventually my email was forwarded and shot around until I recieved an email from Ween’s Manager Greg Frey, who had also done some engineering for the Friends Ep.  I was told by him that I would be put on the list for two tickets and a photo pass.

I arrived to the Paramount Theater with hopes of getting some of those sweet up close Rock Photo shots, but when I got to the Will-Call there was no photo pass.  I was informed that since anyone and everyone would be allowed to take photos for the event, I wouldn’t be needing one.  The fuck I didn’t.  It’s cool for everyone else but I’m only about 5’8″, ever since I fucked up my neck jumping from that moving car when I was 15, and It was difficult as hell to get a nice photo through the couple hundred some odd skulls on the main floor.

I believe that I missed the first two songs.  I walked in during Transdermal Celebration and the stage had a giant version of Ween’s Boognish logo as a backdrop.  The tickets said 8pm and, surprisingly enough, these fools actually started AT 8pm.  I started trying to rifle off some shots but I didn’t want to be that dick who works his way through the crowd with a camera bag knocking people in the head and they wouldn’t let me over the fence.  For the rest of the night I would be told that I couldn’t take photos, then I would be escorted to a higher up who would tell me that it was fine, until some dipshit would start the cycle all over again.

My main goal for this show was obviously to see how good it would be and if they could still rock like they’ve been hitting the loop sticks.  I’ve seen them quite a few times over the last few years and I had never seen a bad show.  I’ve seen good shows, better shows, and shows that I can’t remember, but one thing that you can count on is hearing a variety of songs from their extensive repertoire.

The first show I saw was in a much smaller venue but they had still gone all out like it was a stadium show.  Bassist Dave Dreiwitz came out looking like Larry Fine doing a solo with clouds of demonic smoke blowing all around him on the tiny stage.  In the much larger Paramount, the lighting and stage effects were still fierce and big enough to project the performance amicably across the the venue.

After Phish starting covering the song Roses Are Free during their live sets, Ween shows became noticibly more packed and they sell out a lot faster.  It was hard not to run into lot kids every where that I turned.  For you that are not in the know, specimans can often be identified by their oversized skate hoodies and crystal wraps.  In 2000 I was in the lot at Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View, Ca for the last 2 Phish shows before their hiatus.  There was one guy selling a shitty bootleg Roses Are Free shirt with  the Cat in the Hat on it.  My friend KB and I walked up to him and KB asked him, “Is this a Phish shirt or a Ween shirt“.  The guy responded, “It’s a Phish shirt, see?“.  He turned it over to show that it said “Summer Tour 2000“.  Obviously that ignorant bastard wasn’t aware that Ween had done a summer tour that year as well.  I heard that during their performance at the first Bonnaroo music festival Ween actually came out and said something to the effect of, “This is a Phish Song” before performing their own track.  So you get all types and I choose to believe that many of the newer fans did became aware of Ween due to the incredible musicianship they have to offer.  Plus, you can’t really fairly attack anyone simply based on an increase in popularity.  From what I’ve recently witnessed, Ween is still doing things the way they have always done them, and that is by going hard and without apologies.

Although, over the years, the crowd that Ween draws seems to increase exponentially, they still play for their die-hard fans. A few years ago they made sure to squeeze a free show into their tour at Neumos, a much smaller venue in Seattle.  Like the first time when I saw them and they performed Awesome Sound, Ween still busts out all of the old cuts you know and love.  You know, the ones that you hear on an album but would never expect to ever hear live?  Well, they still play those every single time.  This time they played Touch My Tooter, Mr. Richard Smoker, Waving my Dick in the Wind, and even some other great tracks that didn’t even  have to do with cock and/or ass.  They, not so secretly, have to get off on forcing catchy homoerotic lyrics from songs like Homo Rainbow out of the voiceboxes of the Monday night football type crowd members, as they do with the misogenystic ballads for their female fans.

Although much of their material contains subversive and comedic content, their musicianship and capability is mindblowing and rivals any rock band out there.  That’s right, ANY rock band out there.  Whether or not Gene is using his talent at times to mock the styles of other vocalists, he still has a great voice in his own right and it comes through live.  His slower songs, coupled with Dean’s guitar heavy power rock material, works to give a balanced and never boring performance.  Even though Gene didn’t crack out the nitrus hit on stage and start speaking in tongues, like when they played Bumbershoot, he’s still always hamming it up and playing towards the the audience.  Deaner (Micky Melchiondo) likes to throw down tough, as evident with his side project The MoistBoyz, in which he performs under the name “Mickey Moist“.  He tore up solos like speeding tickets with a pack of Marlboro Reds laying next to his barefeet on the stage.   They are still incredibly on point live and, much like their recent album, the highlights are always Deaner’s guitar work.  He can still rock it up like key of Columbian and break it down like an Ikea endtable.  They don’t highlight keyboardist Glenn McClelland like when they first added him a few years ago, but his work, along with Dreiwitz and Claude Coleman’s drumming, makes for much more than just a capable backing force to their sound.

Sure, if you get close it’s clear that Gene has put on weight and that he is getting quite haggard, but these guys are pushing 40, although, based on their energy levels, you would never know it.  I was a bit dissapointed that they didn’t play specific songs like Frank, that I wanted to hear, but they played a ton of other shit that I did, like Spinal Meningitis, and even material that I had forgotten that I wanted to hear, like the Mollusk.  I missed the beginning and they still played for 3 hrs with unwavering intensity throughout.  Sometimes you go see a show and think, “Alright, I loved these guys and I do still, but they are starting to fall off a bit“.  Ween is not that band and whatever you may think of them, the music is still, and hopefully always will be, their main focus.

-Dead C

(If you haven’t made it to a show, or even if you have, MonsterFresh recommends picking up The Live In Chicago DVD/CD combo today, jerk!)