Tag Archives: ween

#1294: Ween – Strap on that jammypac

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You know those times at a live show when a band comes out and, to get the crowd pumped up, the guitarists will start strumming one chord vigorously with the bass guitarist following suit with one note on a string and the drummer laying into the cymbals before signalling a count that suitably falls into the rhythm of the opening number of the night? I feel like Foo Fighters do that kind of thing a lot of the time. They just come to me as an example. Well, Ween’s ‘Strap on that jammypac’ is a song where the music is based on those specific moments, except the actual song that’s supposed to begin right after never starts. ‘…jammypac’ is the opening number to Ween’s almighty sophomore album The Pod, released in September 1991. And what better way to get this unusual album going than with a track just as unusual in nature?

The ‘jammypac’ in the song’s title refers to the apparatus donned by the figure on the album’s cover, widely known by Ween fans as ‘Mean Ween’, whose name is Chris Williams and a good friend of both Gene and Dean Ween. This was supposedly used to aid in the huffing of Scotchgard that went on during the making of the album. But of course it’s well-known now that this activity was a story made up by the two members of the band, who actually became ill with mononucleosis during the sessions. There were probably plenty of other types of hallucinogens involved, though. Dean Ween sings this tune, sounding like a Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies type of character that I can’t recall the name of, sometimes coming in a little too early or much, much later than the music backing him. Goes to show the vocal take was probably done after the music was recorded.

Overall, I guess you can say this is a song of invitation. There’s no better place to put it on the album than at the very beginning. Dean Ween wants you to put this jammypac on and promises that he and the listener will have a good time together, but sprinkled in among this is a tale of a man who doesn’t get the required amount of food he needs cooked by his woman and can’t take the situation anymore. It also marks the start of the dozens of internal references that occur throughout the album, with the mention of a ‘van Winkle’ who’s also mentioned in fellow album cuts ‘Boing’ and ‘Molly’, before getting their own dedicated song in ‘Sketches of Winkle’. Despite the track, I think, being influenced by those live rock concert situations, it wasn’t played in a live setting by Ween until they were on tour for Chocolate and Cheese a few years later. Whenever they’ve played it live in more recent times, it’s usually the show’s opening tune. It goes down very, very well with the crowd.

#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.

#1250: Ween – Sorry Charlie

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When you take on the task of listening to Ween’s The Pod, you’ll come across the first demented moment out of many on the album via its third track ‘Frank’. On it, with a sassy vocal, Gene Ween asks the titular character to supply him with a pork roll egg and cheese with some gravy fries on a couple of occasions. The sludgy guitar riff that closes it out gets louder and louder, becoming more distorted and incomprehensible before it completely cutting off abruptly and giving way to fourth track ‘Sorry Charlie’ – a much more subdued and quieter track in comparison. You might not even realize another track begins because of how low the audio levels are.

This Ween song right here is sung by Dean Ween. It’s always nice to hear a Dean Ween vocal. Gene Ween masters the ones he does with his versatility and range, that when Deaner takes over for once it’s nice to appreciate the kind of everyman, guy-at-the-bar vibe he brings to the table. A lot of Ween songs are based on real experiences lived out by the two, so I’ve always assumed ‘Sorry Charlie’ was the same. The track is Deaner’s observations of a guy named Charlie, someone he probably once knew in the past who shows up unexpectedly at his workplace one day. Deaner sings of the disappointment he feels for Charlie, who apparently has amounted to nothing since the last time he saw him. Charlie’s a man who left college but has a girlfriend in high school and sells pot to make ends meet. Dean wishes he could help him with whatever he needs, but regrettably has to decline ’cause he’s got his own shit to sort out. A very relatable situation.

A lot of the charm in The Pod comes in how its essentially an album of demos that were originally going to be properly recorded before the producer told the duo that what they had was sufficient. People might mistake it as a sign of not taking their craft seriously or trying to be funny just for the hell of it. I know I can’t help but laugh when I hear those programmed crash cymbals during ‘Sorry Charlie’, just because of how fake they sound in the context, or when Dean Ween yells out that faux-rockstar “Ow!” before busting out the plinky guitar solo. But one thing’s for sure, Gene and Dean Ween were always serious when it came to their compositions. They just weren’t all melodramatic about it. A lot of their songs are formed from an enormous fountain of sincerity. ‘Sorry Charlie’ fits neatly into that group. So take the time and dig the lo-fi production. And if you’re not into it, try out a live performance like the one below. Maybe that’ll reveal something.

#1191: Ween – She Wanted to Leave

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Before I properly dove into the world of Ween in the autumn of 2015, The Mollusk was the first album I listened to by the band a year and a bit earlier. Like many others out there, I heard ‘Ocean Man’ at the end of the SpongeBob movie, liked it and added it to the old iTunes library. (I’d already known ‘Daisies’, ‘Freedom of ’76’ and ‘Loop de Loop’ by seeing them at various points on the TV, which left me confused because they all didn’t sound they were made by the same people. But this is way besides the point.) ‘Ocean Man’ was the only Ween song sitting in that library for a while. So one day when I was chilling in my uni room, I thought “Why not?” and listened to the record in its entirety. Probably one of the best decisions I’ve made in this lifetime. I was 18 by the time this was going on, but it felt like the album should have been a longtime favourite of mine by that point. Was definitely a “Where has this been all my life?” kind of thing.

How suitable that the last song on The Mollusk is the final one from the album I’ll be talking about on here. There’s not a lot of love for ‘She Wanted to Leave’ that I’ve seen online. I’ve read other people saying that the album should have ended with ‘Ocean Man’, which I don’t understand. I like the song myself, but as an album closer? I think I’d really be wanting more. And ‘She Wanted…’ brings it all home with a sort of unexpected emotional ending. It’s a breakup song, “straight Richard Thompson” according to Dean Ween, but instead of the usual guy-girl clichés, Gene Ween sings from the perspective of a man who’s completely left out to dry and lost for words after their lady’s been wooed away by a bunch of pirates. Left broken by the whole ordeal, he goes straight to the booze and wallows in his misery. Quite the sad way to end what is an incredibly fun album. In fact, the last words “For I’m not the man I used to be/And now I’m one of them” left such a mark initially that the sentiment inspired me to make a post about the best ending lines on an album.

So you’ll notice the song really ends about 2-and-a-half minutes into the runtime. Leaves you wondering, “Well, what else is there?” And a few moments later, these whooshing synths come in – I guess meaning to sound like these ominous breezes in the middle of the quiet ocean – before a familiar melody begins to play. It’s only a slowed down reprise of ‘I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight’, the song that started the whole record off and, by that point, in the closing moments seems so long ago. The little hidden touch puts a feather in the cap of the whole package. This is the way that the album should close out, and it was always meant to be. Clicking on the ‘the mollusk’ tag below will take you to the other songs from the album I’ve written posts for. And if I’d known it when I was doing the ‘B’ section, ‘The Blarney Stone’ and ‘Buckingham Green’ would have had their own articles too. It’s just how these things go sometimes.

#1141: Ween – Roses Are Free

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Ween’s 1994 album Chocolate and Cheese is considered to be one of the band’s best albums among Ween fans. I’m partial to it, myself. There are a couple others I think are better. That’s neither here nor there. After acquiring a huge bonus via signing to the Elektra Entertainment record label, the band used it to rent out a proper studio and carefully construct the tracks that would become the 16 available on Chocolate…. A huge contrast to the 4-track, pretty-much-demo-releases of The Pod and Pure Guava that came before. It would sound like Gene and Dean Ween were taking things truly seriously this time, but the album contains just as much absurdity and humour, although packaged with tighter songs, slicker production and with some underboob on the front cover.

‘Roses Are Free’ is a song that can be found on that album and is one of the big, big highlights on there. Again, a much-beloved song in the Ween fandom, ‘Roses…’ is a massive tribute to Prince. It would apparently baffle Dean Ween that no one would ever point out the icon’s influence on the track; it seemed so obvious to him. And once you read that and listen to it, you can kind of tell. The subtly provocative way Gene Ween sings the song, the chord progression that occur throughout… that rockin’ guitar solo. All out of the Prince guidebook. The lyrics aren’t meant to mean anything in particular and were written mainly to fill the spaces in the grooves. Even so, they are known to get some of the biggest cheers at a Ween show, particularly the “Get in your car and cruise the land of the brave and free” and “Resist all the urges that make you want to go out and kill” lines. Two very poignant statements that come out of nowhere in this song about nothing.

As much as the version on the album is cool and everything, the song takes on another life when performed live. Although the song benefits from being recorded in a bright and shiny studio, its studio recording is still very much a two-man job with Gene on vocals and guitar and Dean on guitar accompanied by a drum machine and synthesized bass guitar. Could say it somewhat restricted. Though with the five-piece band that Ween eventually developed into, the track morphs into a true monster. The keyboards further fill the soundspace, the drum performance hits harder thanks to Claude Coleman Jr., and the guitar solo handled by both Gene and Dean goes on for another minute or so because they both get so into it. It’s a sight to see. It’s a marvel to hear. I’ll embed a well-known performance of it below.