In Case You're Wondering Where the Cheese Went

Now back to your regularly scheduled dipshittery.

And when we ponder life's largest piles of dipshittery, what musical duo comes to mind most regularly? (If you thought "Random Idiots," you can go to hell. Even if you're on the mark.)

Yes! Ween!

We've talked a whole lot about Ween over the two decades here at Gheorghe. Why? Well, dummy, because that band is dedicated to the premise that life would be better if we all took ourselves a little less seriously. And by a little, I mean a metric shit-ton. Legendary clowns. They simply make me laugh more than any band I know. 

Here's a little story you don't know so well, unless you're Dave. Off-brand for me, but I'm going to abbreviate the backstory.

1. 2 dudes from New Hope, PA have a 4-track recorder in the late 80's.
2. They follow in the lo-fi no-band footsteps of 2 dudes from Brooklyn who might be giants, and they inspire two dudes in Williamsburg who are definitely not. 
3. They end up releasing a 29-song album in 1990 on Twin/Tone records, a small label in the North Star State responsible for the early records from The Replacements and Soul Asylum. God Ween Satan is a glorious mess. 
4. They release more albums, and actually start getting better. They get on MTV. They amass a cult following.
5. They release a country album in 1996 with reputable Nashville session musicians. It features a few filthy songs like "Piss Up a Rope" and "Mister Richard Smoker" that some of them Tennessee gents didn't much like. But it's a great record.
6. They release a prog-rock album in 1998 that's excellent.
7. They issue White Pepper in 2000. It's as mainstream as Ween will ever, ever get. They appear on Letterman to play "Exactly Where I'm At." Another single, "Even If You Don't," is super catchy and has a video. "Stay Forever" is really quite normal. Dave proclaims this album to be the best. The best album of all time. Ever. (He's the most hyperbolic person in the universe.)

Ween is mainstream and ready for middle America!!!

Well... heeeeeeere's the thing, though. Ignoring a historic discography that features songs called (sorry for the expurgated version, it's a family blog):

• You F***ed Up (first song on first album)
• Common B***
• L.M.L.Y.P.
• She F***s Me
• Flies On My D***
• Poop Ship Destroyer (a Ween original classic if there ever was one)
• Hey Fat Boy (A*****e)
• Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)
• Baby B****
• The HIV Song (this tune is just two words long)
• Don't S*** Where You Eat
• Waving My D*** in the Wind

...ignoring all of that, plus a bunch of songs that are hideously lewd but don't have the vulgarity in the title, setting all that aside and focusing on this new (2000) mainstream effort White Pepper... which probably is a racist title, now that I think about it in 2024 terms...

You still can't miss the steel drums, ragga Jimmy Buffett send-up "Bananas and Blow." (It's so good.) And you still can't escape the Steely Dan-ish nod "Pandy Fackler" with its lyrical wait, what?! (Read it here.)

There is still some saucy-as-hell Béarnaise beneath the polished sound of that macro-Ween era. You just knew that although we were happy for their relative success, these were still the same two dipshits from New Hope whose masterstrokes were all steeped in dipshittery. 

You had to know.

You know who didn't? Pizza Hut!!

Yes, the same Pizza Hut corporation whose franchise employed rob and me in 1990. (You remember the story. Never trust a big butt and smile.)

So... the story goes like this. In 2002, Pizza Hut, Inc. decided to leap into the stuffed crust phenomenon. (Never been a fan.) Can't blame them, it was an era of hiding cheese everywhere. 

According to Dean Ween:

“Earlier in 2002 we were hired by the largest advertising firm in the country to write music for a Pizza Hut commercial. Pizza Hut had hired them to come up with a whole new image to promote their new Pizza, “The Insider” which had all of the cheese inside the crust. In keeping in line with their new cutting edge image, the agency hired Ween to do the music, and we delivered in a big way. Unfortunately, they didn’t like a single piece of the 6 tunes we submitted and they had us rewriting the song every day for a couple of weeks before they hired someone else. In my opinion, it is one of the best tunes we wrote all last year.”

The agency got fired. Ween got dumped. It never went anywhere. 

Oh, but Ween leaked the first and best song they submitted to their fans. Please give it a listen. It's a silly little something, and it's clean. 

Oh! But they also leaked the 6th and final song they submitted.  Frustrated with the annoying back-and-forth corporate BS process and the repeated rejection of songs Ween thought were brilliant, they simply added a little tweak to the first song they'd done and sent that in. Welp, that was the last straw. Please give it a listen. It is very much NSFW and it makes me laugh every time. 

Both are in here, back to back. Each is 30 seconds. Enjoy. 

To the knowledge of the crack investigative team of interns at Gheorghe: The Blog, Ween has never been asked to do a commercial again. They have done some soundtrack work, including the song "The Rainbow" for Chef Aid on South Park. (Don't google it.)

Whoever greenlit Ween for a Pizza Hut commercial committed, what John Cleese once uttered in the Cheese Shop sketch, "an act of purest optimism." Worth a try, I suppose, but that was the closest Ween ever came to mass acceptance. In the 20 years since, Ween has taken as many extended hiatuses* as they have released studio albums. (Two of each.)  

*Hiati? Is that right? Looks like Haiti. That cannot be right.

Anyway, when the boys saddle back up and hit the road again, I'm driving to NJ and going to see them with Dave. Until then, where'd the motherfucking cheese go?

Waving My Dick in the Wind: The Best of Ween

So there's a Ween compilation out now.

Greatest Hits albums used to be a big deal.  (Just ask the Eagles.)  Nowadays, though, you can compile your own and listen away.

I could describe the shit sandwich that the record company issued as a Ween best-of, but someone else has already done that better.  On the Rate Your Music site for this release, a reviewer named "Tornadoes" writes:

Haphazard and half-assed digital-only sampler that was assembled without Ween's participation. It's ostensibly a collection of the Elektra/Warner years but it contains nothing from their major label debut Pure Guava (since the rights to that have since returned to the band) nor does it have anything from the preceding album The Pod (Elektra reissued that for a time but that licensing arrangement later expired). It does have GodWeenSatan since Warner now controls that outright (since they bought Rykodisc, who had bought Restless, who had bought original releasing label Twin\Tone – but yeah, you don't care about that chain of title runthrough) but this compilation goes overboard and inexplicably makes that release the centerpiece of this compilation. Don't get me wrong at all, GodWeenSatan is my favorite Ween album, but it's idiotic that 12 of the 20 tracks were taken from there, and several of the selections are HIGHLY questionable. ("Nicole"? "Old Man Thunder"? "Puffy Cloud"? Why?) There's also zilch from 12 Golden Country Greats, even though Warner still owns the rights to it, and the absence of "Ocean Man" is unforgivable. Whoever assembled this has a lot of explaining to do. My mom would also like to mention that this lacks her favorite Ween song ("Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?") and I agree with her that extra demerits are in order for that omission.

I recall when Ween's record deal with Warner originally ended, it was mentioned on the band's website that Rhino Records had the option to make a best-of and that the group might record a few new songs for it or allow some rarities to be used. That collection never came to be but now we have this useless release that was created without Ween's input, since Warner is allowing the obscure X5 Music Group company to raid their archives and assemble "professionally curated music products and playlists customized for a global, digital music market." That's corporate-speak for "we have the legal right to repackage and put out unnecessary horseshit just to scam out a few extra Spotify clicks," by the way.

Ween's demon god The Boognish

I love the venom.  And Tornadoes is right.  This is terrible.  Spotty and incomplete, like Pete Klam's drawers circa 1992.  Poorly conceived at best.

To paraphrase, I offer a comment to Warner Bros that simply takes the name of the first song on Ween's first album: You Fucked Up.

So what are we gonna do about it?  Replace it with a playlist, natch.  Warner used 20 songs, so shall we.

Here goes.

Ween 20-Pack

Vitals
Where: New Hope, PA
When: 1984–2012; 2015–present
Who: Dean Ween, Gene Ween, others eventually

Here's the deal.  Two friends who met in 8th grade liked to get hammered and make music.  Then they started recording it.  4-track lo-fi.  Super stupid but very funny songs about genitals and food and girls.

Then they started touring.  Then they got better at this.  And made better songs.  And recorded in a studio. And filled out a real band. And still liked to get hammered and make music.  Super stupid but very funny songs about genitals and food and girls.

Along the way they had MTV success and live albums and a prog-rock album and a friggin' country album with Nashville session guys and the friggin' Jordanaires and almost a Pizza Hut commercial and a soft-rock song with David Sanborn.  And an absolute ton of fun.

Then Gener got too far gone and cleaned up and quit Ween and Deaner said it's a life sentence so I'll leave the light on and eventually Gener came back a few years later and now they are living happily ever after back together.

I love Ween, and not because they are Random Idiots but way better.  Not just that.

Here's my stab a best-of album. Okay... so I made the standard 20-song GH, and then I made one for the Next 30 Ween songs. Too much great stuff to tickle your fancy, Mr. Fancypants.

The second set is more fun.  Bookended with juvenilia stalwarts, it's chock full of jokes like "Pollo Asado," even more offensive material (a la"The HIV Song"), the best live cover song ever if you listen until the end, and amusing crap like "The F**cked Jam," which drove our buddy Tinsley so insane at the OBFT that he threw the CD into the dunes in a fit of madness.  Both are chronological, so you can hear the progression from idiots to refined idiots.

And let me type this in bold: NOT SAFE FOR WORK.  Lord, no. Not nearly.

Enjoy.