What's Up With Ween?

Welcome to the Weenaissance. Ween’s back, in a way. The band played a few shows and quickly canceled all future appearances, as they’re wont to do, but the important thing here is that they’re back in the zeitgeist. I’ve wanted to talk about Ween in this blog for years. Before this blog was even a blog, I wanted to write about Ween. 

Ween is, for my money, the most fascinating rock band of the 21st century. Their discography is a pile of greatest hits and misses. Each great song has an unlistenable counterpart. Their fans are diehards and jam band-adjacent, but the band actively rejects being labeled as a jam band. Maybe that bond is chemical: you are the drugs you take, and both parties have partied hard. The band is skilled, tight as a drum, and can make a beautiful tune in every genre, yet they’ve also mastered the art of making their music sound like shit. 

The theme of “Brown” is in every nook and cranny of Ween’s music. “Brown” is more than just bad, it’s tasteless. Where some take their god-given right to be tasteless as license to be gauche and gaudy, Ween find their lane in making music that fights a war against aesthetics. There are jokes that go on too long, lyrics that make no sense to anyone not in the room when they were written (if they even make sense to the writers), and tones that are, plainly, impolite. They’re obnoxious and they’re good at making music that sounds like other people, but they’re still individuals and so singularly Ween that they couldn’t be anything else. 

I once had a playlist of “Acceptable Ween Songs” but it’s grown to include Ween songs that might be Unacceptable to new listeners, so in lieu of sharing that, I’m sharing a few of my favorite Ween songs in the hope that you might enjoy Ween enough to dig into Ween further and see what I find so fascinating. 

Exactly Where I’m At

White Pepper is the most consistent Ween record, if you’re looking to start in a safe place. “Exactly Where I’m At” is the kind of self-doubt-imposed ripper that only they could write. The band’s ability to channel that anxiety into music that has become some of the best of their catalog by being “Ween if they took themselves seriously” is beautiful. So if you’re looking for a place to start without any preconceived notions of what Ween is or isn’t, this is the place to start. 

Mister Would You Please Help My Pony?

I feel like my first exposure to Ween was seeing the album art for Chocolate & Cheese, and saying “Woah.” because I couldn’t have been more than 8 yrs old when I saw it. But seeing it made me think Ween was some weird, sleazy band. Which, I guess isn’t out of the realm of possibility if they were aping sleazeball rock on a song, but that’s a different story. Anyway, I think people will rightly focus on Gene’s odd vocals and the non sequitur lyrics about a pony in the middle of a record that includes an ode to Philadelphia and a western drama, but I’ve really gotten into the weird chords going on during the choruses here that sound like they’re both in and out of tune. “Uncanny” is a pretty good way to describe that and that’s another Ween strength. I have a theory of multiple Weens existing on every record, recurring throughout the discography, and I feel like this one is the same one who writes “Tried And True” on Quebec.

Help Me Scrape The Mucus Off My Brain

The best song about alcoholism ever written, if you’re asking me (You’re not, but still). In an ultimate form of self-sabotage, Ween made a full-length country album right after Chocolate & Cheese. It’s the kind of thing that only Ween would do, including making a 10 song album called 12 Golden Country Greats. When I was in college, I set out to find the two missing tracks only to learn that the 12 titular greats were likely the studio musicians that Ween hired. That’s a good gag. I said earlier that Ween’s most consistent album is White Pepper, but I think this is their most sincere. Ween is a funny band, but sometimes they’re not telling jokes. The “Joke” here is that they’ve released a country record, but what’s on the record lets the Ween mask slip just low enough to get the real thing. It’s not that there’s not some piss-taking like “Mister Richard Smoker” or “Fluffy,” but tracks like “Mucus” cut to the heart of what’s really going on in Ween’s lives. If you want to slowly trick yourself into loving Ween, you can listen to this record a million times like I did and end up knee deep in the muck.

Your Party

This is going to be the goofiest track you get for a Ween Starter Kit. This song is infectious and stupid, but there’s something deeper here. I love the Ween trope of food songs and even if it’s not intended, the world they’ve built out of mentioning food in this song gives such insight to the narrator’s mind. The Paste interview about food in Ween songs touches on it, but the idea of this suburban party with seemingly-fancy food and coveting the neighbor’s life is so rich. The character in the song has made this normal party into something much bigger and he and his wife have a good time. Like a Really Good time. Like a good time in a way that makes them fall in love again, even for one night. That’s the stuff. That’s why I’m here for Ween.

If You Could Save Yourself (You’d Save Us All)

Admittedly, Quebec is a downer of a record. It’s also the first exposure I ever had to Ween’s music because “It’s Gonna Be A Long Night” was in Tony Hawk’s Underground 2. That song is a great Motorhead ripoff but when you listen to the whole record and realize that it’s centered around divorce, it gets a new life as a bummer jam about cutting loose after the whole thing crumbles. I spent a good week in 2021 walking around Brooklyn and listening to Ween near the end of a relationship listening to a mix of their breakup songs, and “If You Could Save Yourself” was damn near at the top of the list by the end of the week. If they’re aping anyone here, it’s Pulp on “Like A Friend,” and maybe they’re referencing Jawbreaker in the chorus. It’s a direct line to my heart, and it’s a classic in my mind.

BONUS:

What Deaner Was Talking About

Allegedly about an anxiety attack that Dean related to Gene, this is Ween’s best song. It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve heard and it’s the best songwriting they’ve done by virtue of making it short, sweet, and infinitely repeatable. I would put it in my top 10 favorite songs of all time, no doubt about it. I’ve included it as a bonus because I’m probably overselling it to you, but I do think there’s something about this song that’s better than any other Ween song. It’s short, it has a sick solo, there’s friendship, there’s fantasy, and it’s gone before you’d even realize it started. I love Ween, dude. I love this band.

Freedom of ‘76

I have mixed feelings about the city of Philadelphia but I do think it’s the most American city I’ve visited. Here’s the video, directed by Spike Jonze, which made me sorta love Philadelphia in ways I never loved it before.