Tag Archives: godweensatan: the oneness

#1373: Ween – Tick

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So, after being left gobsmacked in the wake of ‘You Fucked Up’ when I was listening to Ween’s debut GodWeenSatan album for the first time in September 2015 – Left such a mark I remember the exact month and year, you see. This was no Mollusk. – ‘Tick’ was the track that followed. “I feel a tick in my head and he’s sucking on my head / In the morning I’ll be dead if he doesn’t leave my head” are its opening lyrics. “Why can’t he go away / Why does he have to stay / Maybe he wants to play” it continues. There I was nodding along, but I was thinking, “Yeah, this is stupid. Ha-ha-ha.” They rhymed ‘head’ with itself three times. The simple, simple wordplay. I didn’t think it was going anywhere. But then it suddenly did. The intensity rose in the “Get you, burn you, crush you” pre-chorus, the wall-of-sound guitars came in for the chorus. I was sold there and then. I’m convinced the song’s start was written with the intention of tricking the listener to underestimate what they’re hearing. If that was the case, Ween succeeded when it came to me.

So, ‘Tick’. It’s about ticks, those external parasites that live by feeding on the blood of mammals, birds, and sometimes reptiles and amphibians, as said in Wikipedia. I always thought Gene Ween sung this on the album, he always does when the band do it live, but then I came across a demo tape of theirs where it was stated that Dean Ween sang it. So I don’t know. I’m more inclined to believe it’s Deaner nowadays. It could be both of them. Whether or not the track is based on a personal experience, I don’t think it’s ever be stated outright, but it’s a song about a narrator who one day feels the presence of a tick on their head. It annoys them. They swear to get their revenge on the thing. They unsuccessfully try to get rid of it and it grows back. The narrator stabs the tick and themselves in the process. The narrator will die soon. The tick wins. It goes on to annoy another person and so on and so forth.

This song, man… Really serves up the second punch after ‘You Fucked Up’ delivers the first. If ‘Tick’ is indeed sung by Dean Ween, then I think it’s cool that the album opens up with both bandmembers singing the respective two numbers. It’s not a very well-known fact that Dean Ween plays the drums almost entirely throughout too, so ‘Tick’ I feel is just a showcase of Deaner’s skills all over the spectrum. But if we’re going to focus on anything he does, it has to be his guitar playing. I don’t think I’ve said, he’s also the main guitar man in Ween. He switches between thrashing power chords and fiddly guitar lines in the chorus. He provides the itchy guitar riff underneath the verses. He blasts out those kind of jazzy chords in the instrumental break. He closes it all out with a solo. He’s all over this track. I think this really is Dean Ween’s song. ‘You Fucked Up’ got me interested in GodWeenSatan, ‘Tick’ solidified that it was indeed a good decision to start listening to it. And there was only… an hour and 12 minutes of the album left to go. Things could only get better.

#1267: Ween – Stacey

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When I decided to properly get into Ween by listening to their expansive, wacked-out debut GodWeenSatan: The Oneness back in the autumn of 2015, ‘Stacey’ was one of three tracks on the album that couldn’t be played on Spotify. Alongside ‘Bumblebee, Pt. 2’ and ‘Hippy Smell’, the song was added to the ’25th Anniversary Edition” of the album when it was reissued in 2001. And the funny thing is that it had only been out for 11 years at that point. But I guess there must have been some licensing issues going on with labels, hence ‘Stacey’ was unavailable to listen to. I found a solution by downloading a pretty high-quality rip of the album online – think it was the first result on Google, it was very easy to find – and once ‘Stacey’ got around, well, it was a pretty instant like, I want to say.

‘Stacey’ is one of the many Ween songs named after a girl. Just as entertaining as the rest, even if the story behind it may raise a couple eyebrows. The track’s inspired by a young lady both Gene and Dean Ween knew at their school who was, to put it politely, a little slow. The “Hello”‘s at the end are meant to be an impression of her. But the song expresses an admiration for the subject and acts as a sort of tribute. Though whether it’s sincere is another question. I like to think it is. Ween songs aren’t usually mean in their intentions, except for those instances when they very much are. There’s only one verse really. “I know a girl named Stacey/With a brain that’s kinda spacey/I like her more than Sue or Tracey/Do you know a girl like Stacey?” That’s repeated three times or so, and the rest the duration is filled with killer guitar licks, riffs and a face-scrunch-inducing solo courtesy of Dean Ween.

I don’t think the question of why ‘Stacey’ and the other two songs were left off the LP’s original release in 1990 has ever been asked. I’m sure people were used to GodWeenSatan as the 26-track record it initially was before 2001 anyway, so when the three ‘new’ songs came along, they were welcomed into the tracklist with open arms and time for questions was reserved for a later date. Twenty-four years on since that reissue, I don’t think anyone could imagine the album without them. Below’s a live performance of ‘Stacey’, done in September 1991 when the duo were promoting their new second album The Pod. Mushrooms may have been digested prior to it.

#810: Ween – Marble Tulip Juicy Tree

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I could never have predicted what I would be in for when I chose to listen to GodWeenSatan: The Oneness for the first time back in 2015. Before then, The Mollusk was the only Ween album I’d heard. And I thought that album was fantastic. Still do, today. So I went on Spotify, searched up Ween and thought, “Why not?” and pushed play. ‘You Fucked Up’ started and finished, and I was into it from then on. The madness started there and for another 70+ minutes just kept coming. I would describe ‘Marble Tulip Juicy Tree’ as the grand finale of the entire album. It’s what the previous 24 songs (or 27 if you have the ‘Anniversary’ edition) have been leading up to. Even though ‘Puffy Cloud’ is the album’s actual closer, I think of it as more of a credits song. Or at least something that comes in the stinger.

So what’s ‘Marble Tulip Juicy Tree’ about? If you were to guess that it would be about nothing just from looking at the title, you would be right. You’d also be a bit wrong too. It’s about everything, and nothing at the same time. It’s no secret that members Gene Ween and Dean Ween dabbled in a lot of drugs in their younger age. The lyrical content would probably have been inspired by some mushroom-LSD-hallucinogenic trip. That doesn’t stop it from being one of the most uplifting and glorious punk rock songs that I know. I think this song is made up of only five chords, but the way everything’s just executed is brilliant. Backwards guitars, guitar solos that pan from one ear to the other. There’s this booming speech by one of the band members friends that comes in as the song nears its end, and when that finishes the track climaxes with these strident guitar strums and what sounds like some sampled strings. It’s a massive song, honestly.

Listening to GodWeenSatan that one time sent me on a journey. 2015/2016 was my Ween year. I started a song discussion thread thing on the Ween reddit, I was so hyped about them. And coincidentally, the band reunited while I was gradually making my way through their discography. It was a good time to be a Ween fan. Glad I did become one sooner rather than later.