Sunday, August 13

Ween: the World's Most Unpredictable Band

By Mark Woodlief

If there's one word most apt to describe Ween, New Hope, Pennsylvania's most notorious duo, it's unpredictable, and Mickey Melchiondo a.k.a. Dean Ween and band co-founder Aaron Freeman a.k.a. Gene Ween agree.

"The things that people like about us are also the things that other people don't like about us, like that our records play like compilations sometimes," Melchiondo says by phone from an Asheville, North Carolina tour stop.

Ween's records -- there are eight official releases, beginning with 1990's 4-track opus, God Ween Satan: The Oneness, counting last year's live effort, Paintin' The Town Brown, and including the new White Pepper -- could be categorized as metal-dada, spazzadelic, poptastic, ironi-core (or just plain rock and roll, if that makes it easier) are proof of their talent for re-invention.

Whether playing warm, quirky pop ("Push Th' Little Daisies," from 1992's Pure Guava), fuzzed-out rock ("I Can't Put My Finger On It," from 1994's Chocolate and Cheese) or earnest soul songs (Chocolate and Cheese's "Freedom of '76" featured a seldom-seen music video from Spike Jonze), Ween is a band unafraid to follow their whims. In 1996, the band employed some of the most venerable session musicians in Nashville to help record 12 Golden Country Greats. That ten-song album combined homage, humor and first-rate musicianship to create a twangy country album filtered through the subversive Ween prism. "We knew that record was gonna piss a lot of people off and it did," says Melchiondo. "Because if an 18-year-old kid is buying a Ween record, he's not interested in country music."

If it's been difficult for listeners to figure Ween out, it's not any easier for Melchiondo. "It's hard for me to analyze a Ween record," he laughs. "It's funny, 'cause now after eight albums I know what people come to expect from a Ween record -- sort of -- even if it's the unexpected."

White Pepper might not have as many twists and turns as past albums -- "it's more of a melodic record," says Melchiondo -- but the band's trademark wit and skill remain. Wide smirks (the Jimmy Buffett send-up, "Bananas and Blow," the subtly Zappa-esque "Pandy Fackler") and sincere songcraft ("Stay Forever," "She's Your Baby") co-exist seamlessly.

Still, Ween's being pigeonholed sometimes frustrates Melchiondo --you can call him Deaner. "A lot of people's impressions of Ween is unchanging, even with our records being different," he says, adding that a recent Rolling Stone review of White Pepper read like "the same review they've given every one of our records. It's like, 'Oh, those wacky guys.' I think they implied that we were making fun of the music, like we hate the music that we're making. With these love songs on the records, it's like 'Ween does a straight-faced, ironic love song.' I mean, we're not trying to make fun of a love song. It's a f*ckin' song, y'know?"

Ween's unique balance of sass and sincerity is just part of the package, and a loyal cult following seems to embrace that fact, as much as it does the group's wide array of musical styles. An ever-growing Internet presence helps keep the Ween cult flourishing, and Melchiondo -- self-described sports nut and avid golfer -- confesses, "The computer is like a drug to me."

Melchiondo first signed online in 1994. He had always been a compu-phile, but his father made it online first. "He told me about this Ween web site," Melchiondo says. "I didn't know sh*t about the Internet except for what I was hearing in the media."

Melchiondo got in touch with the site's creator and began sharing unreleased music, artwork and photos. "I was putting up our own web site [www.ween.com] like two days after I got online," Melchiondo says. "I just immersed myself in it. I started putting up all of our back catalog of unreleased stuff on line for people to hear, and they started downloading it and trading it and it just went from there. Now some of these people have better documentation and catalogs of what we've done than I do."

Ween resources are massive on the net, and include a 24-7 Ween radio station (www.weenradio.com), FTP sites that catalog Ween shows, pages of guitar tablature, lyrics and set lists, even a registry for a Ween street team (www.teamween.com). "Ween's whole thing is online," Melchiondo proudly notes. "Every one of our live shows, like two days after it happens, can be listened to online or traded."

From 4-track home recordings to Nashville studios to the World Wide Web, it seems like there are always new dimensions of Ween-ness to discover. Typically, Melchiondo isn't exactly sure what the next step for the band will be, although he hints that Ween might take a step backwards for the next record.

"I wanna set up a system at home that's more like how we were doing things six or seven years ago," he says. "I think Ween benefits more from the homegrown vibe. I'd rather go back to doing it where we get together at home, just have fun and put down a whole bunch of sh*t on tape then weed through it and make our records like that."Chuckling, Melchiondo adds, "Right now, that's what our plan is, but that could change at any given moment."

So Ween's unpredictability will continue? Melchiondo laughs even harder and replies, "Well, of course -- we don't know what we're doing! Unless we get some high-powered manager who comes in and forces us to do something, we're pretty much a completely half-assed operation like we've always been. We never know what the f*ck we're gonna do. We just kind of let our intuition guide us."