Wither
By Wesley Joost
By Wesley Joost
One song from The Pod, "Pollo Asado" acts out beaten down Mexicans tiredly ordering food at a slum restaurant. "I'd like the Pollo Asado taco and guacamole on the side of the taco. I like Guacamole." The repetitiveness of their orders captures the essence of behind the counter labor. Another song, "Buenos Tardes Amigos," (from their latest release, Chocolate and Cheese) is reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores, (The Good, The Bad, The Ugly) . Gene Ween takes on the persona of a Mexican gunslinger swearing revenge on a man who has killed his brother. These two songs, and others, show a Mexican theme to their music which Dean Ween confirmed, saying, "We are bottomlessly inspired by Mexican culture. In all honesty we wish we'd grown up in that environment. I would love to be a Mexican."
Dean and Gene Ween who have been friends since seventh grade, have a chemistry and buddy relationship, similar to Lennon and McCartney. Dean writes most of the music and Gene writes most of the lyrics. And due to ditties like "The HIV Song," one might even draw the conclusion that they are the Jeff and Akbar of alternative rock. However, Dean flatly denies it: "We consider ourselves the Peaches and Herb of hard rock. We're the Simon and Garfunkle of rap. And we are the Crosby of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young."
Other songs from The Pod jump around in almost Dada style from white trash asking to "Pass the pork roll egg and cheese, if you please, with some gravy and rye," to "Monsters with daggers asleep at the Rhine, magnificently guarding secrets unkind." The vocals varied from distorted to refined, and the blend of original guitar riffs and synthesized loops kept the ideas spicy.
Yet Ween, despite their brilliant odes to surrealism, do not draw their music from any historical art movement. The two are simply New Jersey boys who like to sing songs about whatever life experience comes their way. This means that lyrics sounding perverse or profound are often just about their favorite munchies. The lyrics, "Is it alive, does it writhe/ can it survive under the sun?/ scathe with a lathe/ all the days in the past /I can't put my finger on it," is about Gene's confusion over a Gyro.
When asked about the dreamlike quality to their music, Dean answered, "I don't know anything about dada. I've had bad dreams, I know what that's about. I had a reoccurring dream every night for a week that my teeth were falling out." Later he went on to deny he had any influences at all: "We don't think about any of the stuff you're saying. Grunge, Dada, it's not about that at all. You have to be totally true to yourself. We're just entertaining ourselves and our friends and having fun, and that's about where it ends."
What makes Ween's lyrics classic is not the surrealism but the realism. They achieve what all rock songwriters should strive for: to tell the truth simply. With a few ironic exceptions they donŐt sing love songs, they sing about the truth of their surroundings. From "Smile on mighty Jesus/ Spinal Meningitis got me down," to "don't squeal on a pusher/ don't lie to your momma/ and it'll be OK." And best of all, what sage advice could be better than: "take a wrinkled raisin and do with it what you will/ push it into third if you know you're gonna climb a hill/ Eat plenty of lasagna 'til you know that you've had your fill/ resist all the urges that make you wannna go out and kill."
There is no limit to what Ween can do, because Ween love every kind of music and duplicate it with their own original twist. Often, their homage is superior to the original. Their styles vary from the country and Western song, "Drifter in the dark," complete with chorus and a mournful midwestern vocal, to the Prince styled "Candi," which features tinkle bell sounds and a plodding drum machine. Ween are mostly influenced by The Grateful Dead, The Beatles, Prince, Pink Floyd, and many others who have been making records for a long time. Yet they also lend their ear to modern contemporary groups (to name a few) like Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Nirvana, and The Meatmen.
Such a variety in music, in a modern market filled with mindless dance pop like Whitney Houston and colorless grunge like Pearl Jam, would seem the recipe for commercial failure. And it was until their third album, Pure Guava..
The album's single "Push th' little daisies" received airplay on an often re-run episode of MTV's Beavis and Butthead. In falsetto Gene Ween sings, "If you think I'm a loser/ then you suck/ 'cause you know I ain't nothing but a user/ of your love/ I can't get enough," While Dean plays a guitar riff cutsey enough to have been in a Monkee's song. Beavis and Butthead hated the video, but the MTV heads started buying Ween's albums.
Gene was enthusiastic about being played alongside monster-metal groups like Gwar. "It was an honor to be on Beavis and Butthead, and we're good friends with Gwar. We like to smoke crack with them in Antarctica."
Ween's live performances are a different story.
Originally, Ween would play their guitars on top of pre-recorded tape loops. Gene didn't use the voice distortions he had on his albums and showed a huge vocal range from falsetto to baritone. They took the songs in different directions, yet the tape loop kept the music grounded and focused. Dean Ween tends to be humble in person, but on stage he displays a guitar master presence. They kept the songs varied in pace and balanced light and dark phonic textures. They played to a small but dedicated audience that knew every song by heart.
These days with their some newly acquired commercial success, and their single, "Voodoo Lady," receiving semi-regular rotation on alternative radio, Ween have taken a different approach to live performances, namely hard stadium rock.
The tape loop has been replaced by a live drummer Claude Coleman, and bass player Andrew Weiss (producer of all of Ween's albums and former member of Rollins band). I was shocked to hear a return to the punk rock sound of their first album after their recent musical expansions. As Dean said, "In all honesty we wanted to achieve Zeppelin and we couldn't do that with a tape deck. Hard rock is bottomless, nothing is better than a band that rocks you."
And the new approach is effective. The twenty-something audience at their sold out San Francisco venue were completely "rocked out" at the end of their two-hour-plus performance. Gene displayed his gusto as never before and charismatically led the audience in Vallejo's hand clapping Arabian chant. While Dean displayed a proficiency on the guitar so intense (though he was often self-indulgent) that its safe to say he ranks among today's top guitar players.
At their recent San Francisco show, in an ultimate ode to anthem rock they closed their set with Prince's "Purple Rain." If this had been a cover on one of their albums it would have been backed up by glittery synthesized sounds and layered harmonies so perfect they would rival the original. This version failed in it's attempt to replace twinkle with gusto.
Ween are still better than the rest but it's a shame they're singing grunge style anthem rock.
When asked if Elektra is pressuring them to sound less quirky and be a more sell-able item, Dean responded, "It's all part of our corporate direction. In order to attain the ultimate bag of cocaine we need to sell out and make as much money as possible."
Gene explained they were in that awkward creative stage in-between being rich and poor: "We really wanted to get ten people on stage, and sound like Kool and the Gang, but we didn't have the money. If we could get a million dollars to go on tour with, we could get the sounds that you're talking about. But we don't have the use of horns, strings, synthesizers and all that. We've always been a straight forward Rock N' Roll when it comes to playing live. We would never want to duplicate what's on our record, we always want to bring something different to our live show. We respect stadium rock more then anything, live. We don't want to do Performance art. We want to do a rock show."
And a rock show they do. So despite my apprehensions about the new live approach I'll momentarily withhold judgment on another Rock N' Roll fantasy come true -- remaining faithful to their advice:
Don't get 2 to close to my fantasy
Don't be afraid to clutch the hand of your creator
Stare into the lions' eyes
And if you taste the candy
You'll get to the surprise.