Only the second song from Ween’s Quebec I’ll be writing about on here. I tell you, in another time, there’d be many more Ween songs covered on this blog in general. But when it comes to Quebec, there are about five others on that album that would have definitely had their own posts, had I been aware of the album’s existence before 2013. The band’s eighth album, released in August 2003, is my favourite of the band’s. For a while, it was firmly The Mollusk, which I think is a common feeling among the people. But as I’ve got older and had my moments of sadness and reflection, settling into the person I am, Quebec is at that point where it resonates with me a lot more than it initially did. The album deals with issues, so much so that the album was jokingly referred to as “Aaron Freeman’s Issues” during its making. One of those issues covered on the album is that of drugs, and that is all over its third track, ‘Transdermal Celebration’.

After the Motorhead-esque opener in ‘It’s Gonna Be a Long Night’ and elevator muzak take of ‘Zoloft’, ‘Transdermal…’ comes in as the big “alt-rock” number to push the album along further. I did think it was a rip on Foo Fighters in the first few months of knowing it. It probably isn’t. But I still think Gene Ween’s vocals sound like Dave Grohl’s in ‘Learn to Fly’. All that’s neither here nor there. Webster’s definition of ‘transdermal’ is as follows: “relating to, being, or supplying a medication in a form for absorption through the skin into the bloodstream”. A lot of other things, not so much ‘medication’, can be taken in the same way. But we’ll say it’s about medication just for this, with the verses depicting the various visions and metaphorical effects on the body the narrator experiences while on it. The storming verses then come down into the swaying, calmer choruses, which change the perspective, looking on at the narrator who lies comatose on their lawn while all these hallucinations are happening in their head. Not to reduce the song to “It’s just about drugs, man”, but knowing Ween… it’s very likely that it is.

I think people who know ‘Transdermal…’ all have an aligned understanding that it’s pretty much amazing. If it is about drug visions and out-of-this-world hallucinations that sound great on the surface, I also appreciate the depiction of the scary point-of-no-return moment in the final line of the last verse, “But where is the mutation that once told me it was safe? / I can’t find him” – which also sounds like “Fucking find him”, and I don’t think that’s unintentional. While on the front acting as a celebration, there’s a warning inside too, which goes hand-in-hand with the “Everything’s okay on the outside, but inside there’s insecurity” theme (or something better-worded but along those lines) that shows up throughout the album. There’s a great story about how the fantastic guitar solo was recorded. It involves Dean Ween and the gear and equipment of the legendary guitarist Carlos Santana. It’s better to read it from Dean Ween’s point of view. And here’s Santana playing live the morning after.