WEEN @ Les Schwab Amphitheater [Photoset/Download/Set List]
July 20, 2011 in Music
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Amazing GENE WEEN New Orleans Prints by TODD SLATER
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.
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Watch the Footage from WEEN’s Vancouver Show “meltdown” & Get Over it.
January 31, 2011 in Music, Reviews, The Web, With Video
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. Read the rest of this entry →
EXCLUSIVE WEEN PHOTOS: The Sasquatch Music Festival [May 31, 2010]
Last weekend marked the 9th annual Sasquatch Music Festival at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wa. The lineup was pretty impressive this year and included MGMT, The XX, LCD Soundsystem, Nurses and even Pavement. Closing out the festivities was a performance by one of our favorite bands of all-time, WEEN. I was there all weekend so that I could report on everything that went down and regurgitate it back for you assholes, but I am still putting everything together, going through photos, and simply recovering. You may have noticed that we don’t typically just post updates here and there. It’s much more important for us to process everything and provide something that is more adequately thought out. Hopefully it’s something that will actually provide the reader with new information and, if we’re really lucky, something that can even moderately stand the test of time. With a situation like this year’s Sasquatch, however, there’s a lot to deal with, so I’m going to do things a little differently. I’m covering the entire 3-Day event all by myself, including photography, reviews, editing, etc, and so there’s a lot for me to organize. The reviews will be posted soon but, seeing as I have a ton of images and only a handful of them will be used in those reviews, I wanted to drop some photos from the WEEN set right here and right now. These aren’t all of the photos even obtained at the WEEN show, but it’s a lot of them (24 to be exact). This is a little update for everyone, while I process everything else, because I’m assuming that a lot of you probably still don’t know about our Flickr account. More images will be popping up on that account as we process them, so keep your eye on there if you want to see more. For now, please enjoy the images of Gene and Dean provided below.
What Gener was Talking About: Gene Ween Band hits Brooklyn
February 16, 2009 in Movies / Television, Music, PSA, Reviews
Heath Ledger killed the Joker (ha-ha). Everyone is concerned with originality and ownership. But c’mon folks, “Why so serious?”. If the ending results of an idea are more crisp and refreshed under new and loving inspiration, then I welcome them. Is this the case for The Gene Ween Band? What?
“The Gene Ween Band is a side project of Aaron Freeman of Ween” says their official MySpace.
Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman, Dave Dreiwitz, Scott Metzger, and Joe Russo is the official band roster. A dream team of some of indie/jam rock’s finest are the meat in this gumbo, branded with the Boognish seal of “WEEN”. Does this overshadow the “Gene” & “Band” aspects? Many will expect the universe. Many will naysay. Read the rest of this entry →
