Classic or Dud: "Ladies and Gentlemen..WEEN!"

"You Were The Fool" and "It's Gonna Be Alright" are without a doubt the 2 best "serious" Ween songs. Definitley both are in my top 5 ween songs, and they're both fucking gorgeous.

You mean the Prince cover?

1 Madonna "What the Fuck Do You Think You're Doing?"
2 Millie Jackson "The Fuck You Symphony (Live)"
3 The Coup "Lazymuthafucka"
4 Beck "Fuckin' With My Head"
5 Sleater-Kinney "Write Me Back, Fucker"
6 Liz Phair "Fuck and Run"
7 Missy Elliott "They Don't Wanna Fuck Wit' Me"
8 Fischerspooner "Fucker"
9 Tupac Shakur "Fuck 'Em All"
10 Ol' Dirty Bastard "You Don't Want to Fuck With Me"
11 50 Cent "Fuck You"
12 Jay Z "Fuck That"
13 Three 6 Mafia "Get the Fuck Out My Face"
14 Ween "Where th' Motherfucking Cheese At?"
15 Jon and Al Kaplan "Put the Fucking Lotion in the Basket"
16 Trey Stone and Matt Parker "Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker"
17 Peaches "I Don't Give a Fuck"
18 Rage Against the Machine "Fuck Tha Police (Live)"
19 Dub Narc "Fuck Shit Up"
20 Eamon vs. Sinead O'Connor "Fucking Compares 2 U (DJ Fancy Dan MiX)"
21 D'Angelo "Shit Damn Motherfucker (Live)"
22 Magnetic Fields "How Fucking Romantic"
23 Belle and Sebastian "Fuck This Shit"
24 Bernie Mac "Motherfucker"
25 Black Sheep "For Doz That Slept"

If I may suggest:
26. Eminem - "Just Don't Give a Fuck".

Classico amigo.

Of those bands, how many name said demon god "Boognish?"

They were classic the first time I heard "You Fucked Up" and the were classic the last time I heard the 6+ minute long version of "Where'd the Cheese Go?" on their fan-request live album. Which was this afternoon.

I do have to disagree vehemently that they've anything in common with They Might Be Giants other than being a band with a core of two guys both of whom have severely under-noticed musicianship and songwriting ability. I completely get why some folks don't "get" either or both of these bands, but I still maintain that it's really easy to overlook facts like the fact that Dean just fucking shreds.

Fact.

On a related note: Moistboyz... C or D? Cause I had reservations (though I probably still wouldn't have said Dud right off), but now I have heard Moistboyz III on vinyl, and I'm gonna have to say Classic.

It's late.

Moistboyz -- I enjoy them, my sister, the ultra-Ween fan mentioned above, LURVS them.

It goes like this (scale from 1-10):

GodWeenSatan - 7
The Pod - 8
Pure Guava - 7
The Mollusk - 6
White Pepper - 5

Yes I would say that, I would say that.

Ha ha. Thanks Ned!

I have it on VERY good authority that the haze on The Pod has less to do with Scotchguard than it has to do with the fact that both Dean and Gene had mono during the recording of it.

There is a toss up for my favorite Ween song. It's like a battle... Captain Fantasy vs. Doctor Rock.

FITE!

Do it before you get Chocolate and Cheese, too. Cause when you get Chocolate and Cheese it'll be the only thing in your CD player for quite a while.

"AIDS"

On the other hand the new in-studio live one does feature a couple moments like this in spite of the recording quality being terrific.

Get it? GET IT???? Everybody thought the other guy killed his brother, but it was actually the narrator of the song!! And now he'll never tell anybody the real truth, because now he's gonna kill him too!!

What a classic song. Best Ween song ever (and therefore one of the greatest songs ever written)!

"Piss Up a Rope" alone trounces everything on Quebec!

Bah!

I also don't get the preoccupation so many folks have with "Buenas Tardes." To me it's one of the few Ween songs where the joke just isn't funny after repeated listens. That, and it's too fucking long for what is a seriously weak punchline/twist after you already know the story.

"Mister Would You Please Help My Pony" on the other hand rocks, is bittersweet and funny as fuck.

He coughed up snot in the driveway, and I think his lung's fucked up.

Man I changed my mind. Three way battle for best song.

No wait, four way battle: "Sketches of Winkle".

She was a meditative hooker all strung out on Sinatra.

o.nate otm.

I remember buying Pure Guava in high school (b/c of “Daisies”) on tape, listening to on the bus, walking around the neighborhood, in my room, everywhere. Twas in love. Thinking about it now, it was the first of many sprawling, sloppy records I would become enamoured of as the years unfurled. I could sing every word, without messing up, of any song from that record...and that’s not true of many others I was into in ‘92/‘93/’94. (somehow I never got around to buying the earlier stuff)

So then Chocolate & Cheese came out and I flat out HATED it. It was too competent and not funny enough and there were other musicians involved that were pros. Owned this for perhaps a month before hocking it. (I did love Freedom of ’76 and a few others) Then I sorta gave up on ‘em.

When White Pepper came out I decided to give it a chance...only to discover that it was more boring than C&C had been (“Even If You Don’t” was the only song I liked). Heard C&C in a store recently and it sounded a lot better than it did when I was 17. Eventually I’ll give ‘em another go....

That's the criticism I don't get unless you just mean the engineering/production was too competent. The musicianship has improved, yeah, but they were always competent musicians. Part of what I find so brilliant about them is how they've managed somehow to hide that from people so much. I mean the guitarwork on "Sketches of Winkle" is very competent. (To be honest the early Ween stuff is also amazingly well-recorded for something done on a four track too. Pure Guava especially.)

Absolutely -- the 1991 Trouser Press entry for them summed it up perfectly: "poorly disguised musical skills"

GodWeenSatan The Oneness 8.8
The Pod 9.8
Pure Guava 10.0
Chocolate And Cheese 9.0
12 Golden Country Greats 9.7
The Mollusk 10.0
Painting The Town Brown 8.1
White Pepper 8.3
Quebec 8.6

And I suppose if they ever release a 4-CD boxed set with all the best b-sides and rare tracks, that would obviously be a 10.0.

Oh shit, also..

Moistboyz III 8.3
Z-Rock Hawaii 8.8

Haven't heard the first 2 Moistboyz records yet.

But it's NOT a joke!! It's an honest-to-God straight-up murder ballad! Ween are honestly trying to emulate certain styles of music that they happen to enjoy! Hell, with a couple exceptions, I bet you will not laugh out loud ONCE during the entirety of Chocolate and Cheese and all the albums afterward. You want to laugh, go listen to "The Stallion Part 1" or "Nan" or "Common Bitch" or "Up on the Hill."

competent? dean is a great, really expressive, blues-rock guitarist, and gene is a spectacularly elastic singer, and if they tried to hide it on their records it was always plainly evident from their live shows. i haven't paid close attention in several years, but i used to love 'em partly BECAUSE of those skills.

a ween tribute album done by serious singer-songwriter types playing the songs straight with modern digital folk-rock production would be cool. to me.

Ween are one of those bands where the live recordings almost always shred the studio albums. Archive.org has a zillion live shows you can download for free, some of which have stellar sound quality. You could spend months and months going through those.

it's funny that two burnout kids who met in typing class ended up like living a rock and roll fantasy... they really turned into an amazing live band

yea especially since they weren't exactly talented chaps to begin with. I doubt anyone who heard their early recordings was thinking "it's rough, but damn they've got potential!"

i did! kinda. i mean i thought god/ween/satan and the pod were really ambitious but i guess that's not that early. they obviously had song-writing ability.

i kinda think of them as an oingo boingo i would listen to. and later a jam band i would listen to. even though i only listen occasionally on youtube. i can even imagine seeing ween on acid would be fun.

i do see weird (science) parallels. O.B. even had acoustic interludes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYfjDyGPt4g

i have never actually listened to an oingo boingo album. did ween ever have horn sections on their later albums?

scott you should check out the white pepper some time. it is a stone-cold kinks are the village green preservation society / who sell out-level classic

i did! kinda. i mean i thought god/ween/satan and the pod were really ambitious but i guess that's not that early. they obviously had song-writing ability.

oh no, I'm talking about the stuff they did before that - GodWeenSatan was the culmination of like six years of writing and recording

does the Cake cult intersect with the Ween cult at all? seems like it might.

was not aware there was a cake cult

there really is.

Trust me on this: all of Ween's pre-GodWeenSatan albums are TERRIBLE. But they do make you appreciate what an astonishing leap in songwriting chops they made in such a short time.

which reminds me, the recently released front-to-back live recording of that album from 2001 is GREAT. don't think I'll ever listen to the studio album again.

just stumbled upon my copy of All Request Live, I forgot how good it was. still think it's hilarious that they let the fans vote on the tracklist, who responded by filling it with a bunch of bizarre non-songs like "Pollo Asado". it's actually quite nice because practically nothing on here is part of their regular live set, other than maybe "Cover it With Gas and Set it On Fire". and the Pizza Hut jingle rules. can't believe they passed on it.