Ween is a band that everyone has heard of but relatively few people know. “That’s the ‘joke rock’ group, right?” is the median take among the general populace. Slightly more educated individuals might remember them from Beavis & Butthead. Slightly less educated people will confuse them with They Might Be Giants. Both groups will label them a jam band. And that more or less is the sum total of general knowledge about Ween.
Let’s change that. Earlier this month, Ween released a 30th anniversary edition of Chocolate And Cheese, one of the finest alt-rock albums of the ’90s. It’s a great entry point for this band’s consistently excellent (if also somewhat intimidating) discography. But what if you want to go deeper? You should want to go deeper. And I would love to take you deeper.
Typically, my approach with this sort of column is to educate, and with Ween the No. 1 task is to dispel any misconceptions and replace them with takes that are informed and enlightened. That’s my plan. I adore this band. And I want to take you away. To some other land. The land of bananas and blow and mutilated lips and pork roll egg and cheese’s.
Here are my 40 favorite Ween songs.
PRE-LIST ENTERTAINMENT: TWO BIG CANNONS THAT SPRAY … WELL, YOU’LL SEE
To learn about Ween you must prove that you are mentally and physically prepared to follow the Boognish. Therefore, I am going to start with the brownest music of their career. In the process, I will clear the room of all but the diehards and the disciples.
The performance above was recorded on January 31, 1995 in Columbia, Missouri. “Poop Ship Destroyer” is described by Dean Ween in the liner notes of Paintin’ The Town Brown: Ween Live – 1990-’98 as “our anthem.” And he calls this particular rendition “the definitive version of the song.” He’s right. It is Ween’s anthem, and this truly is the definitive version. The Dead had “Dark Star,” and this is “Darker Star.” Zeppelin had “Dazed And Confused,” and this is “Extremely Dazed And Confused.” Phish has “You Enjoy Myself,” and this is “You Don’t Enjoy Myself.”
“If we get the money someday,” Dean writes, “we want to get two big cannons that spray diarrhea on the crowd when we play this.”
Are you still with me?
Ween never did get the sufficient amount of funds to pay for those cannons, and for better or worse, the reason is their insistence on pursuing self-indulgent gambits like a 26-minute version of “Poop Ship Destroyer.” Bands that play a song like “Poop Ship Destroyer” for 26 minutes do not normally graduate to “two big cannons” money. It’s just not a commercial or audience-pleasing move. If you don’t believe me, press play on the video and see how long you last before closing this tab and chucking your phone or computer into the nearest lake. If you can make it to at least the 10-minute mark, congratulations — you’re a complete and utter pervert.
Also, you are a Ween fan.
40. “You Fucked Up” (1990)
Ween is not a joke band. Ween is not even a particularly funny band. At least not “ha ha” funny. Ween is funny like a kid who burns ants with a magnifying glass is funny. It’s “funny as an abstract concept but creepy as an IRL entity” funny.
So, what is Ween? Ween is a duo composed of Gene Ween (generally the singer and sometimes a guitar player) and Dean Ween (generally the guitar player and sometimes a singer). On stage, they expand to a five-piece. In that environment, they almost resemble a normal rock band. But they are not normal. They are Ween.
Ween is irreverent. The definition of “irreverent” is “showing a lack of respect for people or things that are generally taken seriously.” “Irreverent” is used synonymously with “funny,” because the words frequently intersect. But they don’t always intersect and Ween mostly resides in that non-intersection zone. They lack respect for people or things in ways that are more disturbing than silly.
At their best, Ween is so off-putting that their music achieves a special kind of catharsis that’s only possible when you completely disregard matters of decorum and good taste. I’ll give you an example: Three days after 9/11, Ween played a show in their hometown of New Hope, Pennsylvania celebrating the reissue of their 1990 debut studio album, GodWeenSatan: The Oneness. In recognition of the recent national disaster, Gene Ween naturally began with a moving a cappella performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” followed by a spontaneous audience sing-along of “God Bless America.”
Just kidding. Ween did the opposite of what I just described. They opened with the first song from GodWeenSatan, “You Fucked Up.” For those who are unfamiliar: “You Fucked Up” is a sludgy punk-metal number in which Gene berates a woman as “a fucking Nazi whore” and “a slimy little shit.” (He also calls her a “bitch,” which seems relatively tasteful in this context.) There is no excuse for “You Fucked Up.” It’s the sort of song only kids who burn ants laugh at. I can’t justify it all, except that it totally rocks and it works perfectly as the kickstart to a record that also includes songs about weasels, zits, ticks, fat guys, smelly hippies, mushroom festivals in hell, and begging to perform cunnilingus. And it must have been doubly perfect to hear those songs performed so close to the cataclysmic disaster that many pundits at the time believed would kill our national irreverent impulses forever and ever.
You fucked up, pundits.
39. “Don’t Laugh (I Love You)” (1990)
Gene (aka Aaron Freeman) and Dean (Mickey Melchiondo) met in 1984, when they were in the eighth grade. They named their band after a made-up word combining “wuss” and “penis,” which is among the smartest things ever done by any pair of eighth grade boys ever. (That bar is low, but still.)
I know this will sound like hyperbole but I mean it: Their meeting can only be described as an accident of divine providence. In most American small towns, there might be one kid who loves punk rock and weird avant garde art music so much that he starts making primitive tapes in his bedroom. That might happen, but it probably won’t. And yet, in New Hope in the mid-’80s, there were somehow two of those kids. And they met, and then they started writing songs. So many songs. “You Fucked Up” was the first one with a verse and a chorus. Ween was on their way.
The reductive (but still fairly accurate) breakdown of their partnership follows the old Lennon/McCartney model. One is brash, sarcastic and loves to rock (Dean) and the other is more sensitive and romantic and prone to writing beautiful pop songs (Gene). Ween doesn’t always conform to these stereotypes, but they hew close enough that it’s a helpful way of thinking about the band. (This dichotomy also apparently applies to each man’s father — Dean has characterized Gene’s dad as a hippie who went to Woodstock, and his own dad as “the guy who would throw rocks at hippies.”)
“Don’t Laugh” feels like a Gene song. Romantic love is perhaps the one thing that Ween is not irreverent about, and their earliest ballads have an innocence that’s only possible coming from very young people. If Paul McCartney had skipped joining The Beatles and instead started making records like McCartney II in his early 20s, it would sound like this track.
38. “Stay Forever” (2003)
In the pre-list entertainment section, I referenced the “brown” sound. Before we proceed, we need to elaborate on the properties of Ween’s brownness. The brown sound was originally associated with Eddie Van Halen, whose ideal guitar tone — a mix of significant bottoms, creamy middles, and screaming high ends — was described with that lightly dark shade. For Ween, however, brown doesn’t much resemble the supersonic plastic of Eddie’s guitar licks. It’s the antithesis of that — filthy, scuzzy, disgusting, evil, transgressive, blackout intoxicated, “bad” but in a good way, “ugly” but in the sexy sense. That’s Ween’s brand of brown.
“Stay Forever,” meanwhile, is the straightest (i.e. least brown) love song of Ween’s career, from their least brown album, 1999’s White Pepper. Some fans don’t like it for that reason, though I would argue that Ween’s ability to toggle between brown and non-brown music is a testament to their ability of songwriters and musicians. “Stay Forever” shows they could have been a regular ’90s radio rock band if they wanted to be. In a different universe, Ween is like the Gin Blossoms with a much deeper catalog of genius guitar pop tunes. (This is not a better universe, but it is conceivable.)
Also: It helps to have at least one “normal” record when you’re trying to bring new people into the fold. You can’t hit them with “L.M.L.Y.P.” right from the jump.
37. “Reggaejunkiejew” (1992)
This, on the other hand, is not what you would play for the Ween neophyte. This sounds like Captain Beefheart if he had made a record inspired by Licensed To Ill.
36. “Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)” (1992)
Ween’s first three albums put them on the periphery of the era’s “lo-fi” scene that also included bands like Pavement, Silver Jews, and Guided By Voices. Incredibly, Ween was the one that ended up on a major corporate record label, Elektra, starting with the release of Pure Guava. Of all the decade’s “only in the ’90s” alt-rock success stories, Ween seems the least plausible, with the possible exception of Butthole Surfers. (Ween’s moniker, at least, is somewhat less obvious as a scatological reference.) Their early trilogy actually moved in a less commercial direction — for all its juvenile, gross-out humor, GodWeenSatan was recorded on 16-track with live drums, whereas 1991’s The Pod and Pure Guava showcases the unconventional “two guys plus drum machine” lineup that Ween performed as on stage in those days.
At the time Ween wasn’t a “real” band in the traditional sense, they were two guys emphasizing all the ways in which they weren’t a real band and trying to make larger-than-life rock songs anyway. It was like putting wheels on a cardboard box and attempting to drive at 180 mph at the Daytona 500. Which seems like a fool’s errand until you listen to “Don’t Get 2 Close 2 My Fantasy” and realize that they somehow won the race.
35. “Frank” (1991)
Chocolate And Cheese is the best Ween record, Live In Chicago is the Ween album I listen to the most, and The Pod is my personal favorite Ween LP. It was the soundtrack to the worst summer of my life, which occurred exactly 20 years ago, when I was convinced that my life had fallen irrevocably apart. (Fortunately, this breakdown was not irrevocable, because these sorts of breakdowns rarely are.) I don’t know if listening to this dense, druggy and (yes) deeply brown record at the height of my depression was a good idea or the worst idea I’ve ever had in my life. All I know is that The Pod was not a record I especially liked or understood before I was thrust into a temporary hell, and then it became the only music that made sense to me.
The solo at the end of “Frank” — where it sounds like there’s five guitars melting together while being sucked into a black hole — is the sonic representation of what depression feels like to me.
34. “Sketches Of Winkle” (1991)
GodWeenSatan was like a greatest hits album composed of the best songs that Gene and Dean worked on throughout their teens for the previous six years. That explains the vulgarity of the record, but it also points to its sneaky sweetness as well. The Pod has some sweet moments as well, but the overall vibes are far more sinister. The infamous lore about the guys huffing Scotchgard as they recorded The Pod provides some of that disquieting air, but it’s really the music — which toggles between fuzzily incoherent and a hard-edged metallic mania — that cuts deep. “Sketches Of Winkle” is on the latter side of that equation, and it stands out as the most propulsive of their Ween 1.0 prog-rock homages. Though even here, they trojan-horse a love song between flashy guitar riffs: “I think I love her but she don’t love me.” Tell me about it, guys, 2004 me moaned.
33. “Pandy Fackler” (1999)
Ween is irreverent, but they insist they don’t do parodies. They have stated their case on this repeatedly. “We’re not trying to parody music. We’re not trying to destroy music. We’re just trying to make good music,” Dean pleaded to Spin in 1995. Added Gene, “We’d probably like to hang out with those people and work with them. We would never make fun of any of those people.”
Taking Gene and Dean at their word, I wish Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had heard “Pandy Fackler,” called up the Ween guys, realized they were all kindred spirits in the smart-ass arts, and collaborated on an album that only exists in my imagination, Four Against Nature.
32. “Japanese Cowboy” (1996)
When Ween went to Nashville and recorded with some of the city’s most celebrated session musicians for 12 Golden Country Greats, the reaction ranged from confused to disappointed to “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” The album represented the height of the public assuming that these guys were perfecting their genre exercises in order to make fun of the people who genuinely liked that particular music. That 12 Golden Country Greats has only 10 tracks was like a period at the end of the insult.
Now, it really wasn’t an insult, and 12 Golden Country Greats actually was a sincere and well-executed record. But at the time, it was probably the strangest and most commercially self-defeating album released by a rock band on a major label. Which, again, only seems strange in retrospect given how downright genial a lot of this music is. (“Piss Up A Rope” notwithstanding.) If country radio had more creative programmers, “Japanese Cowboy” would have been a hit.
31. “Fluffy” (1996)
I’m including the studio version here, but I prefer any live performance of “Fluffy” where Dean rips an eight-minute guitar solo, especially from the excellent tour they did in 1996 with the Shit Creek Boys aka the best Ween tour of all time. (I look forward to defending this take on a Reddit page in the near future.)
30. “She Fucks Me” (Paintin’ The Town Brown version, recorded in 1996)
Another performance from the Shit Creek Boys tour. It’s a testament to the miraculous power of the pedal steel that it makes this song sound five times more tender. Also: It’s the first part of the “Pork Roll Egg And Cheese” trilogy, preceding “Frank” and (of course) “Pork Roll Egg And Cheese.”
29. “Push Th’ Little Daisies” (1992)
This song is to Ween what “Creep” is to Radiohead. It’s technically their “hit,” and it’s the track that defines Ween for people who know nothing else about them. Ween plays “Push Th’ Little Daisies” more than Radiohead plays “Creep,” but it’s not the song that’s top of mind for anyone who loves this band. It feels very early ’90s — this was a time when music that deliberately set out to annoy listeners was considered commercially viable, similar to how people couldn’t get enough of British guys self-identifying as losers. The closest equivalent to “Push Th’ Little Daisies” is 100 Gecs putting out something like “Cheetos And Fritos,” though that song is more stupid than confrontational. When Ween acted like buffoons, it was in the service of punk rock.
28. “Ocean Man” (1997)
The car commercial song. Taken from The Mollusk, the aquatic-themed prog-rock concept record commonly regarded along with Chocolate And Cheese as top-shelf Ween. It’s the album that most successfully balances Ween’s “kinda normal rock band” and “weirdo experimental bedroom pop” sides. The one-stop shop for all of your Ween needs. The same can be said about this tune.
27. “It’s Gonna Be A Long Night” (2003)
The first time I interviewed Dean Ween, it was 2007 and he was promoting what may or may not be the final Ween studio album, La Cucaracha. Almost nobody loves La Cucaracha. If there is a consensus choice for worst Ween album, that’s probably the one. It’s still good, because it’s Ween, but relative to the other records it’s weak. Let me put it this way: The one Ween song that JD Vance put on his Spotify playlist came from La Cucaracha.
You know who does love La Cucaracha (along with JD)? Deaner. He did in 2007, anyway. He called it a “party” record in comparison to the previous Ween LP, Quebec. “With Quebec, I like it as a record, but it’s very negative. It’s one of our darker records, I think. I don’t listen to any of our records, but I have never listened to that one. Basically, I was all fucked-up, and Aaron was all fucked-up,” he told me. “We had to un-fuck ourselves to make a new record and sustain this thing, Ween.”
Now, it’s obvious in retrospect that they did not un-fuck themselves after La Cucaracha. But we’ll address that in a moment. For now, I just want to point out that the first song on Quebec, the Motörhead-inspired “It’s Gonna Be A Long Night,” is one of the hardest partying songs in the entire catalog.
26. “Captain” (2003)
Nevertheless, Dean is right about Quebec having bad vibes. That’s one of the things I love about it. But those vibes carried over from the live show. I started going to Ween gigs around that time, and early-to-mid-aughts Ween remains the single most evil concert environment I have ever experienced firsthand. It wasn’t the sort of party vibe you get at a jam-band show, where people dance and have a good time. Nobody was dancing at these Ween shows. This was about getting as fucked up as possible, and then venturing inward on a fraught psychic journey akin to Martin Sheen going up the river in order to murder Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. The band also seemed worse for wear, especially Gene, who looked underweight at one show and then overweight at the next show. He was constantly ping-ponging between those extremes.
All things considered I had fun.
This song evokes that era the strongest for me. It’s just Gene bellowing “Captain, turn around and take me home” over and over as the band descends slowly into madness. It killed live, too. In the audience, we all felt like we were dead.
25. “Little Birdy” (1992)
Oliver Stone allegedly played this song on a loop while filming Natural Born Killers. The point was either to put Woody Harrelson into a psychotic frame of mind, or to literally drive him crazy. It’s possible he was pursuing both goals simultaneously. Whatever the case is, it represents Stone’s finest work as a director next to the time he inspired John Candy in JFK to deliver the word “daddy-o” better than anyone ever.
24. “Even If You Don’t” (1999)
Back to Ween’s failed “un-fuck ourselves” project post-Quebec. On January 24, 2011, Ween performed in Vancouver. As the show unfolded, Gene got progressively more wasted. By the encore, he was on stage by himself and singing on his back. Soon after, he checked into rehab. One year later, I interviewed Gene as he was promoting his first solo album, Marvelous Clouds. When I asked about the future of Ween, Gene was noncommittal. “I’m really leaving things open-ended right now,” he said. Later that month, he announced that he was leaving the band. Ween didn’t play live for another four years.
One thing that stands out from the interview is our conversation about Terry Jacks’ ’70s bubblegum classic “Seasons In The Sun,” one of Gene’s favorite songs. It sounds like a proto-Ween tune, with shiny and child-like pop commingling with macabre subject matter. “In order to set dark music to dark lyrics, that takes its own special talent,” Gene argued. “I mean, I could sit down and work on making gothic, dark rock and putting gothic, dark music to it. But I love pop music, and I always have.”
A bouncy pop song about a man trapped in a terrible relationship, “Even If You Don’t” has that “Seasons In The Sun” feel. “I was happy this morning / You finally got yourself dressed / Eating raw bacon / It’s okay I was still impressed.”
23. “Zoloft” (2003)
Quebec and The Pod are sister albums in Ween’s discography. They are the “drugs are frightening and will loosen your grip on sanity” records. It’s the yin to the yang of Chocolate And Cheese and The Mollusk, which are the “drugs can strengthen your friendship and provide life-affirming experiences” albums. I love them all, though I find myself relating more to the yin side these days. “Zoloft” is a good example of this.
22. “Gabrielle” (2005)
You can make the case for Chocolate And Cheese being the best Ween album based on the number of classics on the tracklist. (We will be discussing this record more and more as we reach the top of this list.) You can also make a case for Chocolate And Cheese based on the classics that didn’t make the album, starting with “Gabrielle,” a brilliant Thin Lizzy rip-off revived for the 2005 outtakes compilation Shinola, Vol. 1. Would I take anything off Chocolate And Cheese and replace it with “Gabrielle”? No, I would not. I would just make Chocolate And Cheese longer.
21. “The Golden Eel” (1997)
Chocolate And Cheese is 1a and The Mollusk is 1b in the Ween album hierachy. Everybody knows this. (The Pod is my personal 1c.) While Chocolate And Cheese showcases the breadth of Ween’s talent, The Mollusk is their most cohesive statement. And what is that statement? It’s a statement about hanging out with your best bud, renting a house on the ocean, doing a ton of psychedelics, and making songs about the glory and terror of aquatic life. “The Golden Eel” epitomizes this.
INTERMISSION
Top Five Songs I Regret Not Putting On This List
5. “Sarah” (1990)
See the earlier note about Paul McCartney.
4. “Object” (2007)
Justice for La Cucaracha.
3. “Right To The Ways And The Rules Of The World” (1991)
I have also listened to Syd Barrett while stoned.
2. “Booze Me Up And Get Me High” (Live In Chicago version, 2004)
Self-explanatory.
1. “She Wanted To Leave” (1997)
Fake Richard Thompson never hit so hard.
Now … back to the list.
20. “Piss Up A Rope” (1996)
The most quotable Ween song. Which is a problem because it’s also one of the filthiest. But it’s memorably filthy. Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been Good” is the only song I know where every single lyric could be a bumper sticker. But “Piss Up A Rope” is the only song where each line could be emblazoned on a trucker hat. “Now you’re up shit’s creek with a turd for a paddle” is something I would wear proudly.
19. “You Were The Fool” (1996)
The best non-filthy song from 12 Golden Country Greats. Alan Jackson should have recorded this and had a huge hit in the late ’90s.
18. “Captain Fantasy” (1991)
I have only ever experienced the “band” version of Ween in person. The “two guys plus drum machine” configuration exists for me only via bootlegs and live albums. Overall, I prefer the “band” incarnation. But there are certain songs that sound better when Ween was a more pared-down operation. “Captain Fantasy” is one of them. With the band, it sounds exactly like a lost FM rock classic that reimagines the spare parts of every cool song by Yes, Genesis and King Crimson. It smokes. But it’s a little too perfect. It doesn’t have that “cardboard box that’s trying to be a racecar” aspect of early Ween that’s so essential to those early records.
17. “What Deaner Was Talking About” (1994)
An ongoing concern for Ween fans post-hiatus is the relationship status of Gene and Dean. After the breakup, words were exchanged online that suggested that their friendship had devolved into a business-only partnership. Given the trajectory of most long-running bands, this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But given that Ween is composed of only two people — and the sort of creative and even romantic synchronicity the guys seemed to have early on — the thought of them not being bros is upsetting. “The best I can say about that is, there are things in my life that no one can understand except Aaron. We kind of have a parallel life. We went through everything together: junior high school, high school, being broke, getting evicted, meeting our wives and ex-wives, having kids,” Dean told me in 2007. “But there are other things where I can talk to anyone but Aaron.”
That quote makes me think about “What Deaner Was Talking About,” a perfect two-minute late-period Beatles nod about Gene waking up, feeling terrible, and knowing that only Dean understands what he’s going through.
16. “The Mollusk” (1997)
Dean’s personal favorite Ween song. It’s also a title track, which makes it unique in their discography. But above all it represents the point where Ween went from emulating classic rock to making classic rock. The album even has a trippy Storm Thorgerson cover. Like any Pink Floyd LP, it was made for rolling joints.
15. “Dr. Rock” (1991)
It takes chutzpah to call a song “Dr. Rock” when you’re not AC/DC. On The Pod, Ween pretty much pulls it off. Live, they absolutely pull it off.
14. “Take Me Away” (1994)
A good example of Ween spotlighting the ridiculousness of a particular style of music while also demonstrating how awesome it is. (I am trying very hard to not use the “p-word” here.) Gene slips into his sleaziest “Elvis in the 1970s” voice, thanking the crowd between pleas about how this woman is driving him crazy. It’s a send-up of show business at its cheesiest, and yet Ween in lounge-band phase manages to swing with maximum force.
13. “Freedom Of ’76” (1994)
Robin Zander of Cheap Trick is known as “The Man Of A Thousand Voices.” And he totally deserves that nickname. But Gene Ween is The Man Of Ten Thousand Voices. And the voice he uses on “Freedom Of ’76” is his sweetest and most velvety. (He even nailed it live on The Jane Pratt Show.) This also has to be considered one of the finest songs ever written about Philadelphia. Boyz II Men, Mannequin, South Street — all the essential bases are covered.
12. “Pork Roll Egg And Cheese” (1991)
Named after a breakfast fixture of New Jersey. The one Ween song that the guys in Ween could conceivably have a conversation with Bruce Springsteen about.
11. “Demon Sweat” (1991)
Prince is the musical North Star for Ween. Perhaps because Prince basically was Ween, only he had a much bigger budget and he contained Gene and Dean in the same body. But, like Ween, he was a master of every genre and he wrote filthy lyrics and he was funnier than the world gave him credit for. “As young kids in Ween, it was attainable to imitate Prince,” Dean told Rolling Stone in the wake of Prince’s death. “When we got better, we could actually make ourselves sound like Prince a little bit.”
On “Demon Sweat,” they weren’t quite at the level where they could pass for Prince. (Like they do here.) It’s just two Prince fanatics trying to emulate Purple Rain. But in failing to replicate Prince, Ween achieves the peak sex music of their own carer.
10. “Tear For Eddie” (1994)
“Eddie” is a reference to Eddie Hazel, the visionary guitarist from Funkadelic who managed to out-Hendrix Hendrix via his historic solo on “Maggot Brain.” “Tear For Eddie” has a similar mournful stateliness, which makes it an outlier in Ween’s catalog. Rarely do they sound this melancholic, even on the love songs. (The unreleased “Love Comes Down” has a similar feel.). Dean really blows the doors of “Tear For Eddie” on stage, but the relative restraint of the Chocolate And Cheese has plenty of power of its own.
9. “Bananas And Blow” (1999)
It just makes me happy. Being stuck in a cabana with narcotics and fruit sounds like a dream. And I say that as a person who typically gets grumpy when steel drums pop up in a song. The alleged backstory is that Gene and Dean wanted to troll Jimmy Buffett for trying to block other musicians from covering “Margaritaville,” so they conceived of an entire album of songs that sounded like “Margaritaville.” Only “Bananas And Blow” made it to the light of day, but I hope against hope that this faux-Buffett record actually exists, especially since Jimmy himself is no longer with us.
8. “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)” (1994)
The first 20 times you listen to Chocolate And Cheese, you skip this song. The next 20 times, you are annoyed and even slightly angry that Gene and Dean put such a morbid song on the record. The 20 times after that, you grudgingly listen to it, just to check to make sure you still hate it. Then, on the 61st spin, you realize you can sing along to every word. And every time after that, you forget you ever hated it at all.
In terms of the lyrics, this is as brown as Ween gets. Playing it in front of anyone who doesn’t know this band will lead to your immediate excommunication from that person’s life.
7. “The Stallion (Pt. 3)” (1990)
Not to be confused with “The Stallion” Parts 1-2 and 4-5. This is the most accessible installment of “The Stallion” saga. I took my friend to see Ween a few years ago and they subjected the crowd to several minutes of “The Stallion (Pt. 1)” right at the start of show. My friend bailed after 20 minutes. I am confident that if Ween had instead played “The Stallion (Pt. 3)” in that slot he would have stayed for at least 25.
6. “Voodoo Lady” (Live In Chicago version, 2004)
Honestly, I could specify the “Live In Chicago version” for all of these remaining songs. But I must do it for “Voodoo Lady,” which was transformed on stage as a showcase for Dean Ween’s A-plus shredding. I could have also gone with the Paintin’ The Town Brown version, particularly because Dean writes in the liner notes that he was trying to sound like the Santana live album Lotus on the guitar solo. (This was the thing that got me to buy Lotus, so I’m extra grateful for that.) But the Live In Chicago “Voodoo Lady” has the slight edge as the definitive version for me. It’s even browner than Paintin’ The Town Brown.
5. “Transdermal Celebration” (2003)
When Spin profiled Ween in 1995, the reporter skeptically quizzed the band on Dean’s penchant for solos. “Is it punk?” she wondered. This was, after all, the ’90s, and people asked “is it punk?” constantly. Henry Rollins doing spoken word — is it punk? The Flaming Lips going on 90210 — is it punk? Billie Joe Armstrong playing an acoustic guitar — is it punk? It was a tedious question for a tedious time.
Only Dean answered it with dignity. And he did it by invoking (who else?) Santana. “The original punk band,” he declared.
Anyway: “Transdermal Celebration” includes the finest solo of Dean’s life, played on (who else?) Carlos Santana’s guitar.
4. “Buckingham Green” (1997)
Deaner’s greatest riff. A true rock epic. It’s only three minutes and 18 seconds but it feels six times longer, in the best sense.
3. “Baby Bitch” (1994)
Ween does “Idiot Wind.” Or maybe “Idiot Wind” was Bob Dylan inventing Ween 10 years in advance. A song about murdering a guy and then running off with his wife is pretty damn brown. And a song about running into your ex while you’re with your current partner, and the takeaway is “You’re beautiful, I guess,” is pretty damn Dylanesque. If Bob hadn’t put out Time Out Of Mind three years later, “Baby Bitch” would have been the best Dylan song of the ’90s. (Yes, I’m also counting “One Headlight.”)
2. “Mutilated Lips” (1997)
Ween’s “Strawberry Fields Forever.” For all of the talk in this column about Ween’s dexterity with different genres, “Mutilated Lips” sounds like a song only they could have made. Ravishing and gross, profound and preposterous, “Mutilated Lips” is the brown sound at its absolute finest.
1. “Roses Are Free” (1994)
It was a toss up between the top four songs. I moved them around about a dozen times. Right now, I feel confident about this being the top choice. It’s where all the Ween elements come together — you have Prince, you have the psychedelia, you have the bedroom pop feel delivered by a capable rock band, you have music that is super fun and poppy and lyrics that are weird as hell. (After all these years, I’m still trying to wrap my head around “take a wrinkled raisin and do with it what you will.”) When the mighty Boognish appeared before Gene and Dean and instructed them to become Ween, this was the kind of song they were meant to write. “Roses Are Free” is a work of pure craft and demented inspiration and genius songwriting and idiot-savant musicianship. It’s a perfect pop song, and it would cause any Top 40 station that ever dared to play it to instantly implode. It makes me happy when it’s on, and it inspires me to do things that will make me feel sick tomorrow morning. But that’s okay. Because Ween always keeps me coming back for more.
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