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.

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?

Dave Beats Around the Bush Before Listing a Dozen Songs (FU Base 10!)

List your ten favorite songs?



Inconceivable!

I am much more of an album guy than a song guy, and so-- in the spirit of the requisite hedging-- I will start by listing a bunch of albums I really love. So to all the ladies out there, this is how I do it-- forty-five minutes at a time-- so choosing a bunch of three minute songs is really difficult.

I'll start with an overly-long borderline crazy-person obsessive list of albums I love, because I don't offend anyone (I'm sure Roger Waters and Bob Mould read G:TB).

Apologies, as I will definitely make "sly declarations of new classic-status" on this list:


Raw Power (Iggy Pop)

Nothing Shocking (Jane's Addiction)

Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd)

Paul's Boutique (The Beastie Boys)

Jimmy & Wes: The Dynamic Duo (Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery)

Love (The Cult)

The Pod (Ween)

Badmotorfinger (Soundgarden)

Summerteeth (Wilco)

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Of Montreal)

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Pinkerton (Weezer)

Weird Tales (Golden Smog)

Tim (The Replacements)

Rage Against the Machine (Rage Against the Machine)

Trainspotting: Music from the Motion Picture

Lifes Rich Pageant (R.E.M.)

Vegas (The Crystal Method)

11 (Random Idiots)

Consciousness (Pat Martino)

Exile on Main Street (The Rolling Stones)

Girl Talk (Night Ripper)

Houses of the Holy (Led Zeppelin)

Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Pavement)

OK Computer (Radiohead)

Milo Goes to College (Descendents)

Demon Days (Gorillaz)

Neutral Milk Hotel (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)

Merriweather Post Pavilion (Animal Collective)

Zen Arcade (Husker Du)

Ok, enough of that. I started with ten albums and couldn't stop adding to it. I'm not great at making decisions. Which brings me to my next point: these days, I am more of a streaming guy than an album guy. I pay $4.99 a month to Rdio because I love it so much (and I will admit that it is album based, instead of song based like Spotify or artist/genre based like Pandora). I type in an artist and let the algorithm make the decisions for me. I'm usually happy, occasionally annoyed (thumbs down!) and often pleasantly surprised.

I rarely know the names of songs I am listening to when streaming music. I like jazz guitar: Wes Montgomery and Grant Green and Pat Martino. I like jazz organ: Jimmy Smith and Richard "Groove" Holmes. I like latin jazz: Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, and the Afro-Cuban All-Stars. I type the name into the artist box and the funky sounds never stop.

I also like '90's techno (much to my wife's chagrin). No one knows the names of these songs, but I like Aphex Twin and Underground and Chemical Brothers and Crystal Method. These artists are perfect for when you are cooking (and drinking while cooking, which is the only way I cook) and I listen to them a lot. When I am reading I listen to ambient techno: Stars of the Lid and OK Ikumi. Again, I don't know the names of the songs. King Tubby is good for this as well.

If I am going to plug an artist into Pandora for a party, I like to do The Clash or Flaming Lips or INXS. Good stuff pops out.

I occasionally go through hip-hop phases, and ask Mark and Zman for picks. I'll listen to Brother Ali and Clipse and Public Enemy and Ghostface and Raekwon's "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx" and The Beastie Boys, but I don't go for particular songs, I put the whole album on (especially "Fishscale"!) and live in that world for a bit.

But ten songs? Impossible. There are too many. It's like naming your ten favorite grains of sand. I prefer the beach. But what can you do? When the Tiny Dictator gives you an assignment, you have to do it, or he'll punch you in the shins (shins? . . . oh no! . . . I forgot about The Shins!)

Enough hedging-- here are some songs I love, in no particular order.

I pared my list down to a dozen because I'm not going to be constrained by an anthropomorphic base-10 evolutionary quirk . . . plus, plenty of people are born with six fingers and/or six toes.


1. Don't Come Around Here No More (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers)





I'm pretty sure this is the best song/video combination ever. I can still get lost in the world that Dave Stewart and Tom Petty created, even if I'm listening to this thing while I'm in line for coffee at Wawa. I love the sitar intro, the guitar outro, the weird arrangement and the super-reverb drums, and I love Petty's voice combined with the backing singers. I even love the cheesy '80's keyboard.

It's even better if you know the story behind the song. According to Wikipedia:

The original inspiration was a romantic encounter that Stewart had with Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac. Dave Stewart explained that the title's phrase was actually uttered by Nicks. She had broken up with Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh the night before, and invited Stewart to her place for a party after an early Eurythmics show in Los Angeles. Stewart did not know who she was at the time, but went anyway. When the partygoers all disappeared to a bathroom for a couple of hours to snort cocaine, he decided to go upstairs to bed. He woke up at 5am to find Nicks in his room trying on Victorian clothing and described the entire scenario as very much reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. Later that morning, she told Walsh, "Don't come around here no more."

2. Dead Flowers (The Rolling Stones)

Or "Rocks Off" or "Gimme Shelter" or "Some Girls." Whatever. How do you pick the best Stones song?

I love to play this one on the guitar, and I love the bits of narrative and the heroin references. The Stones invented alt-country. I especially like the Townes Van Zandt version from The Big Lebowski.




3. Since You're Gone (The Cars)

Epic and weird, plus look at those outfits. What's not to love?




4. Push th' Little Daisies (Ween)

Really hard for me to choose only one Ween song. Also love "Dr. Rock" and "Pollo Asado" and "Voodoo Lady" and a hundred others . . .




5. Space Oddity (David Bowie)

Brevity is the soul of wit, and Bowie narrates an epic in a couple minutes.



6. Life During Wartime (Talking Heads)

Best two chord song ever (as opposed to the worst: "Horse with No Name")




7. Lodi (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

Everybody loves Creedence.




8. Mountain Song

A no brainer. This album came out my senior year in high school and was a big FU to the whole eighties Human League/Flock of Seagulls crap. Never forget first hearing it, and it still has the same effect (Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name" works like this for me as well, but that came just after I graduated from college, so for me, it was more of a snowboarding anthem than an indictment of all music that came previous).



9. Paranoid Android (Radiohead)

The best song ever by the best band ever?

Only for smart people.



10. Listen Like Thieves (INXS)

Reminds me of high school and the '80's music I actually liked.



11. Punk Rock Girl (The Dead Milkmen)

Reminds me of high school and the '80's music I actually liked.




12. Cheesecake Truck (King Missile)

The best song ever by the best band ever. No question.




Plenty of honorable mentions, of course: "Song 2" by Blur, "Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot, "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits, "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden, "Waterloo Sunset" by The Kinks, "Peace Dog" by The Cult, "Handshake Drugs" by Wilco and loads of others, but I'm going to stop now and shut my brain off and go back to listening to streaming music, which is far less taxing on my neurons.

I've already made a definitive list of the worst songs ever and I don't need to tread that ground again.

Why bother, when there are so many good songs?

Weekend Placeholder/Ladies Love G:TB

Been an odd week here at G:TB HQ. My office has been without power since Wednesday as a result of the "unprecedented" storms that rolled through the D.C. area. I'm feeling oddly disconnected from the world - a not altogether unpleasant feeling.

Because one of our faithful readers is concerned about the Ceai-heavy content around these parts of late, here's a quickly-conceived and poorly executed notion to take you into the weekend. Our friends from the Outer Banks gave us their top 5 macking songs a few weeks ago. Since we don't know from how to score with the ladies, here's Whitney's Anti-Top 5 - the Worst Hook-Up Songs:

5. Prodigy, "Smack My Bitch Up"
This works (poorly) on a number of levels - it's an awful sonic complement to tenderly whispered sweet nothings, and very few things say 'I Love You' like domestic violence songs.

4. Metallica, "Creeping Death"
See above, but replace "domestic violence songs" with "songs about death".

3. The Smiths, "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others"
'Cause every girl wants to be reminded of her body issues, real or perceived, by a dreamy, moody rockstar she can't have because he finds her repulsive. Y'know, because he's gay, and all.

2. The Rollins Band, "Liar"
Subtle psychosis is a proven aphrodesiac.

1. Ween, "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)"
Ween's misogyny is underrated. "The Blarney Stone" was in the running here, too.

And, as Whit accurately notes, "Anything by 2 Live Crew immediately goes to the top of the list". Unless you've got a really special lady. Take this list to heed, boys and girls, and go out and enjoy yourselves this sweltering weekend.

I was planning to list 5 as well, but I wanted to get something online before the sun went down. More to come, unless there isn't. Your additions are, as always, welcome.

It's the Ghlorious return of... THE GHOOGLES

 We back, mofos...

rusty featherstone college

come along catch a heffalump

ghoogler

ghpt

puppetutes

greg mcelroy wife

pompatus

big dumper

sad hungry caterpillar

zman blog

freddie mercury hat

son of a bitch give me a drink

is your name michael diamond no mines clarence

pompatus of love

joe namath age

christmas eve in washington lyrics

little danson man

bruce chen

duckpin bowling vs candlepin

candlepin bowling vs duckpin

once in awhile you get shown the light

lyrics to tusk album fleetwood mac

cal raleigh big dumper

gheorghe mureșan

maura sullivan christmas eve in washington

bodacious ignatius

40 year old bearded clam

fratagonia

nut shot meaning

brett blizzard

2012 new york mets

gheorghe muresan jersey

1980s baseball cards value

needles and pins lyrics ramones

ween best song

cereal with sugar bear

andrew koenig

boner stabone

click clack urban dictionary

greg mcelroy's wife

screaming squirrel

who is greg mcelroy's wife?

nina hartley lex steele

naked nutshots

rootstone blog

peyton manning long neck

dumbest quiz

andrew dice clay brain smasher

this country was founded on running the damn ball

kevin millar wife tattoo

goofy beards

grateful dead get shown the light

virginia squires dr j

bobby meacham baseball card

doobage

clarence clemons weight

freddie mercury leather hat

kari wuhrer music

nut shots

agassi image is everything

pokey lafarge real name

host of remote control mtv

brainsmasher movie

minutemen this ain't no picnic

where is ryan atwood from

chopstache

ogie oglethorpe

frankie dishpan santana

oppenheimer burger

horror show greg kihn

ween where'd the cheese go

corniest song ever

90's workout guy

smaxey the seal

Once in a Lifetime Starts Making Sense

It looks like the new internet piracy laws are stalled in Congress, and so the G:TB and other venerable institutions will have no legal recourse when sketchy organizations like Sports Illustrated and Grantland rip us off. We'll just have to remain one step ahead of them.

Last month, I dreamed up a feature called "Songs I Am Loath to Admit I Do Not Loathe," which is not only grammatically instructional but also loads of fun for the whole family.  Soon after, Grantland debuted their ersatz version, which they lamely subtitled "Revealing the Tunes We Hate to Love." What can you do? It's the Wild West out here. Instead of complaining, I am going to turn the tables on those plagiarist fuckers and write about a song that I actually love-- a song I have always loved-- but a song that only recently started making sense. I'm talking about The Talking Heads' song "Once In A Lifetime."



This is difficult, as I don't want to betray G:TB's masthead and shibboleth, and take myself too seriously. It's much easier, in my old age, to be ironic about pop music. I rarely get the same profound emotional response from music now that I got when I was a kid. Though your bands may have been different, you know what I mean; your emotions were the same. Music could take you to a different planet: Houses of the Holy and Dark Side of the Moon. It could get you wound up: AC/DC and The Cult. It could make you feel subversive: The Minutemen and Black Flag and Minor Threat. It could rock: Sound Garden and Jane's Addiction and Alice in Chains. It could groove: The Clash and INXS and The Jam. And it could make you feel hip: Paul's Boutique and Public Enemy.

But as I got older, it got harder and harder for music to penetrate my consciousness. After college, I started getting into jazz and classical music, and my pop music taste tended towards the ironic psychedelia of Ween. And The Talking Heads. After a frenetic day of teaching math to emotionally disturbed kids, I would unwind by playing Road Rash on the Sega Genesis (I conquered that game, defeated every level, got all the way to the secret "cop level" . . . and the end of the game was so disappointing that I never played video games again). And while I whipped other motorcyclists with chains, beat them with clubs, or whacked them with nunchaku, I would simultaneously listen to either Ween's The Pod, or The Talking Heads.

These days I constantly need new and different music to even pique my interest-- obscure funk and baroque instrumental, Afro-Cuban jazz and underground albino hip-hop (thanks Mark!), mashed up masterpieces by The Hood Internet and Girl Talk. But there are a few of the old bands that still do it for me. While it's hard for me to go back to the days of "Fire Woman," I can still throw on London Calling or Exile on Main Street. And I can still listen to The Talking Heads.

And so I was listening to "Once In A Lifetime" last week and it really hit home. I am lucky enough to say that David Byrne's opening monologue literally applies to my life.

I have found myself living in another part of the world.
I have found myself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife.
And I have asked myself: well . . . how did I get here?

I am sure there are people that have never asked themselves, "How did I get here?" I am sure there are people who imagine this is how it should go down: nice house, cute wife, big car, but not me. I am always thinking: "This is not my beautiful house . . . this is not my beautiful wife . . . how did I get here?"  I have traveled the world. My wife is charming, slender, and attractive. I slice peppers on a granite counter-top in a remodeled kitchen. I have blonde kids. Blonde kids? I am swarthy. And hairy. My friend Melanie once said: "it looks like you stole your children."

I often feel as if I'm having an outer body experience, I'm at the pool, chatting with other moms and dads, my kids swimming around, and I can't believe it. It's like I've infiltrated a secret club. I feel as if I deserve none of this. I appear normal, successful. House, job, wife, etc. I go to dinner parties. How? And I wonder: "Is everyone else winging it? Is everyone else an idiot like me?" Igor gives his weekly report in the comments: he's working his ass off, attending fundraisers, finding employment for disabled folks. How did this happen?

In a week's time, we are getting a dog. A DOG. I love dogs, but it seems like another piece in this bizarre puzzle; now I'll be walking through the park with my two blonde kids and a dog and people will think I'm normal. They will have no knowledge of my actual record with pets, which includes losing a lizard for several months in the dorm room I shared with Rob; having to euthanize another pet lizard of mine because a friend's lizard paralyzed my lizard-- and my euthanization was more cruel than the paralysis-- as I unsuccessfully tried to drown the lizard (iguanas can hold their breath a long time!) and then gas him with with exhaust from my car (my hand starting burning before the lizard croaked) and then finally (and successfully) put him down with a large board. I lost a ghetto conure out an open window. I inadvertently and unknowingly kicked the plug out and froze a monitor lizard to death. I kept a pet box turtle in a house with eight other guys, a box turtle that was allowed to roam loose on the second floor, and would occasionally stumble over the foot of the stairs and clunk down them like a bowling ball. No one will know this when they see me walking my dog.



Getting a dog is even weirder than having children because getting a dog is so premeditated. You have a family meeting and everyone agrees that they want a dog and everyone agrees they will help care for the dog . . . even though you know it's bullshit, and that the kids will love the dog and play with the dog, but rarely care for it. This isn't like having children. Having children you have a different sort of "meeting," and there's not much talk of responsibility-- the meeting is quite fun, in fact, and then nine months later you wonder: "How did I get here? And how did he get here?" But with the dog, you choose to get there, and that's where I am. Living in the song.

And sometimes I think "MY GOD! WHAT HAVE I DONE!"

That's why I'm still driving my 1993 Jeep Cherokee. I've been shopping for a "large automobile" for four years or so-- we've saved the money, done the research, gotten quotes, talked to dealers-- but I can't pull the trigger. I can't add a mini-van to this equation as well. But I will. Things will become even more absurd. This Honda commercial is geared for me and people like me-- people who can't believe they are in the market for a mini-van. It's a brilliant commercial, as it both satirizes the desire and also makes it seem okay. But I'm smarter than an advertising campaign. Right?



My two blonde kids and dog will pile out of the mini-van, and I'll look at the situation and think: "Where does that highway go?" Is this really the life for me? Maybe I should drive my mini-van off the grid. Maybe I should be in a motorcycle gang or bumming around on the beaches of Thailand or helping refugees in Haiti or working as a fishing guide on the Mississippi. But David Byrne reminds us that none of this was actually in our hands to begin with, that we'll go "into the blue again once the money's gone."

It's the "same as it ever was." And so I will let the days go by, and try not to think about how weird everything is. And consider myself incredibly lucky that my life is like "Once in a Lifetime" and not this Talking Heads tune . . .



Talking Heads
Once in a Lifetime (1984)
Once In A Lifetime

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack,
And you may find yourself in another part of the world,
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile,
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife,
And you may ask yourself-Well...How did I get here?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

What Football Club Should a Gheorghie Support

Dave is a polymath, the Copernicus of the Raritan. He's a voracious reader, a deep thinker (when he's not a derp thinker), a man who reads physics texts for fun while also sporting a Ween tattoo. 

Dave's also a soccer coach, a tactical innovator who invents his own drills and adapts his style to meet the
unique needs of his team. He needs to root for a side that's stretching the game's limits, embracing modern training and tactics, viewing the game through a different lens.

Matthew Benham is a polymath, educated as a physicist, trained as a banker, wealthy from a statistics-aided run of success as a gambling entrepreneur, owner of multiple European football teams, including the fun to spell and say Danish club FC Midtjylland. (Dave should support them, but that's not why we're here.) 

Benham made much of his considerable fortune applying computational analytics to sports gambling, and when he purchased the football team he rooted for as a child, he set out to use the same approach to drag that team from the depths of the English pyramid. In 2012, when he became majority shareholder, that club languished in League One, the second-lowest full-time professional league in the country.

Around that time, Benham became friends with Rasmus Ankersen, a Danish entrepreneur with a passion for football and innovation. Ankerson applied statistical models to player acquisition and club management, and found a fellow traveler in Benham. Ankersen is the chairman of Midtjylland and the co-director of football for Benham's English club. And he gives a mean TEDx Talk.

Since that time, Benham's team has risen steadily through the ranks, seeking market inefficiencies to identity and acquire undervalued players and playing an attacking style that hopes to maximize expected goals (xG) over the course of a season on the theory that over the long run, teams that create more chances will more often be rewarded. After falling to Fulham in the Championship playoff final in 2019, Benham's team defeated Swansea in 2020 to gain promotion to the Premier League for the first time.

In their first seven games at the highest level, the team has made a mark. They defeated Arsenal, 2-0, intheir first match in the top flight, and currently sit in 7th place with only a single loss on their record. They just played a barnburner at Anfield, getting an 82nd minute goal from Yoane Wissa to tie hosts Liverpool. They're fun to watch, and there's a whole lot that suggests they'll stick around for a while.

Dave should root for Brentford, the Premier League's smartest and most interesting team.

Up the Bees! Up the Dave!

Things You Can Do in a Prius: Greasetruck Attempts to Enter the Rockabilly Pantheon

There is a long tradition in popular music of singing about automobiles. The car, like rock and roll, is loud, powerful, adventurous, and sexy. And not only is it sexy, but it is also (especially when you are young and don't have a swinging pad of your own, and especially in the '50's and '60's when cars were BIG and had trundle seats) a great place for sex. It is both the theme and the setting. This post is certainly not a history of the car in music-- there are plenty of places you can read about that. Here is a great list, and here is a LONG list, and here is an excellent little history.

I am going to discuss something more specific, and honestly, I think my thesis is groundbreaking, so bear with me. And, as an added bonus (or punishment, it's all a matter of taste) I have written and recorded a Greasetruck song to illustrate this theme.

If I were going to make a general list of my favorite songs about cars, I would wax poetically about "Bitchin' Camaro" by The Dead Milkmen and "Joe Stalin's Cadillac" by Camper Van Beethoven and "El Camino" by Ween. But though those songs are quirky and funny, they only allude to the sexual power of the automobile in our culture. They certainly prove my point, but I'm going to use more obvious examples to show you something particular and profound about the automobile. I assure you, you will never be the same.

I further need to limit my thesis to rockabilly car songs. And again, I can't afford to be general. If I were to get into my favorite rockabilly songs about cars, then hands down, my favorite is "One Piece at a Time," which was written by Wayne Kemp and sung by Johnny Cash. It was the last Johnny Cash song to reach number one on the Billboard charts. I love the song because the hero, a working class guy at the Cadillac factory, steals a Cadillac part by part. He's patient, clever, and creative. He perseveres, not only over the years, but also over difficult engineering dilemmas-- and the song specifically addresses these; it explains how they drilled out the frame so it would fit the engine block, and the general asymmetry of the car. And then, after all this work, there's a great plot twist at the end: when he registers the car at the DMV, it takes them all day to type up the title because it is so difficult to determine what year and make the car is.

This difficulty in determining if the car is new or used or something else entirely addresses a classic philosophical dilemma-- if you were to replace parts in your own car, piece by piece, when you had replaced every part, would it still be the same car? Or would it be a different car? If you were to replace your brain, synapse by synapse, with circuitry-- circuitry that worked essentially the same as your brain-- say at a rate of one percent per day, when would you cease being you? Or would you still be you? Or a would you be a clone of you? But that's the subject of another song.

The song that inspired me to get to work on my own rockabilly car song was originally done by Charlie Ryan and the Livingston Brothers, but it was made famous by Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. It's called "Hot Rod Lincoln" and it starts with a spoken couplet: "My pappy said, "Son, you're gonna drive me to drinking if you don't stop driving that Hot Rod Lincoln." This song tells the story of a drag race, and again, it alludes to the power and sexuality of the car, but it's not the perfect example. The reason I need to mention it because when I heard it on WRSU the other day, the lyrics to my own rockabilly car song came to me in a flash. I’m not going to claim it’s the best song I’ve ever written, but it is definitely the fastest song I’ve ever gotten down on paper—from start to finish it took me five minutes to write. It came to me in a dream, like the way Mohammad received the Koran or Joseph Smith received the Golden Tablets of Mormonism or George De Mestral thought up Velcro.

The kind of rockabilly car song I’m talking about is when the car obviously represents sexiness and the engine obviously represents the sexual act and the driving represents full on doing it (riding, as they say in Ireland) and the car is also the place to have sex in. So you've got the outside of the car, which is a phallus itself. And compare a sports car to a minivan-- which is more phallic? Which will snag you more snatch? The humming throbbing engine is obvious enough as a symbol, but the smooth leather interior is symbolic as well. The folds in the seats, the new car smell. You’ve got both the male and female apparatus here. The outside is male, and the inside is female. Your driving a penis while sitting inside a vagina.

Now this is the paradox. The car is the thing and it is the setting for the thing. The long sleek body of the the fifties vehicle, with it's odd attachments, fins and such, is the male genitalia. And everyone knows what that greasy engine represents when it's trucking along. And the shiny smooth inside of the car, leathery with plenty of folds, is the female genitalia. You get inside and it has that nice smell (if it's clean) and a lousy smell (if it's not.) But the car is also the place to have sex, so it is the penis, the vagina, and the bed, all rolled into one.

So the car is having sex with itself, inside itself. There’s something deeply philosophical about this, and maybe that’s why cars are so deeply embedded in our culture, and so often sung about. Before I had this epiphany, I hated cars-- I thought they were loud, annoying, dangerous, overblown, and an environmental disaster-- and perhaps that’s why Greasetruck has only recorded one song about a car, and it's not very sexy at all. It's called "George Bush Stole the Plans for My Air Powered Car" and it features a monologue about how George Bush and Bill Clinton like to ride around together in a pneumatically powered car and visit nudey bars. But I have seen the light, and now I understand why public transportation will never make it in the United States (although trains are pretty sexy when they go into a tunnel). Now Greasetruck will attempt enter the car rockabilly pantheon, but the competition, is to say the least, stiff.

The archetype is Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place to Go.” The narrator and his girl are simply “driving around” with no particular place to stop and have sex, so of course, they park “way out on the Kokomo" and decide "to take a stroll.” The lyrics are ambiguous. Is the stroll into the woods? Into her pants? The next lyric helps: the narrator is foiled because he “couldn’t unfasten her safety belt!” I appreciate this because I didn't learn how to undo a girl's bra until I was thirty-six. Does the safety belt represent her bra clasp? Or is it just the car's seat belt? That seems unlikely, considering people didn't wear seat belts back then. Perhaps it is a chastity belt. I'm sure Chuck Berry didn't specify so it could be all these and more. I wish I could be so playfully obtuse in my lyrics.

I am also partial to Chuck Berry’s "Maybelline," both for the content-- a high speed car race with a cheating woman-- and the use of the verb "motivating," as in, "I was motivating over the hill/ I saw Maybelline in a coupe de ville." The race is a sexual contest—a courtship ritual, like when male elks butt antlers or peacocks strut with their tail fanned or when basilisk lizards do those crazy dances-- and Chuck Berry needs his engine to run fast and powerful to court a girl as wild and sexy as Maybelline. So he's in the phallus, racing his engine, but she's in a phallus, and racing her engine, and maybe not with him. It's racy because "Maybelline" is an assertive powerful woman who makes her own choices. Once again, "she done started doing the things" she used to do. The narrator can't control her sexuality-- and he's having enough trouble controlling his own engine, but he does catch her at the top of the hill-- the climax of the song, and it's all downhill from there. And now, with looser censorship laws and new technology to assess, Greasetruck will try it's hand at the genre. Though I know I can't compete with the greats, I believe my new song conquers new territory; it is the first rockabilly song celebrating the sexuality of the hybrid vehicle. It's called "You've Got to See Us in Our Prius." Hope you enjoy it. Feel free to offer your own automobile analysis. You've Got to See Us (Driving Round in our Prius) by Greasetruck

You've Got to See Us in Our Prius

So if you need to pick up chicks,

then a cool set of wheels is your fix:

a Lamborghini or maybe a Porsche.

Something sleek and something fast--

the chicks will think that you're a blast

but maybe that's not your style at all.

Maybe the girl you want to impress

likes whole grains and patchouli scent.
Maybe she just got back from saving the whales.

Then the car you want runs really quiet,

Let's put the world on an oil diet.

I'm talking about 78 horsepower here.

Hey baby, you've got to see us,

driving round in our Prius,

The wind blowing back my Moonbeam's hair.

But I got to tell you something if you don't know:

hippie chicks don't dig fellatio . . .

something to do with not eating any meat.

And the car's too small for full on screwing,

so you can guess what we've been doing--

I feel like I'm back in the tenth grade.

Well, look at me I've come real far:

getting hand jobs in an electric car.

Who could guess what the future would bring?

So if you see a Prius driving real slow,

and my smiling face in the window,

you'll know what's going down in there.

We'll be driving this little car forever,

can't sell it cause of the stains on the leather

actually, you would think it would be faux-leather, but it's not.

So we're driving this thing come Armageddon.

Driving this thing to my grand-kid's wedding

I suppose I'll be doing Viagra then.

Getting hand jobs in my electric car--

who ever said I wouldn't go far?

I know all you guys are all turning green.

Heroes and Villains

Last night I watched immeasurable douche Mike Love perform to many thousands of people, and I loved it.  Weird.

As I mentioned yesterday, there were two reasons that I set aside my disdain for the performer and shelled out quite a few bucks to take my whole gang (my two kids, girlfriend, her two kids, and a French exchange student . . . more on that later) to the Virginia Beach Amphitheater – my least favorite venue in the area – to sit in 96-degree heat and watch a show put on by a reasonable facsimile of a group my parents enjoyed in the 1960’s.

As I type that, it seems even more implausible that I dug it, but I did.

The first reason I jumped at the chance to see the 50^th Anniversary tour of the Beach Boys was that I hadn’t ever before.  Those of you who’ve seen my ridiculous, not-quite-obsolete collection of compact discs knows that I am what they call a “completist” (my parents call it “idiot”), passionate about getting pretty much everything into my collection.  I’m just as bent on seeing shows. Although the spending money I had (and blew) in the 1990’s pre-kids has largely waned, and it’s not quite as simple these days, I still have a dosage of fanaticism that neither doctors nor prudent significant others can cure.

I’ve said it before, I take some sort of bizarre personal contentment in the fact that I saw Jerry Garcia and Joey Ramone (not to mention Dee and that curmudgeon Johnny) before they passed on to the great gig in the sky.  I’ve seen some bucket-list RnR HoFers who are still kicking, acts like Springsteen and The Who and Neil Young and Ray Davies and Bob Dylan (who was lousy, but still . . .).  I planned to see the Stones with Flynn but waited too long.  I’ve seen the Allmans with Dickey, the Beasties with MCA, and The Black Crowes with both Robinsons. I saw Jimmy Buffett and Aerosmith before they were total jokes.  When I missed bands before they parted ways, I was happy to see them when they regrouped: The Police, The Pixies, The Pogues, Phish . . . really, and band that begins with a P.  And Devo, and Violent Femmes, and Camper van Beethoven, and many more. I’ve seen Ween and the Flaming Lips, which everyone with a sense of humor should do.

 

There are still many more on that list.  But now I’ve seen the Beach Boys.  Check.

Our friend Otis has a story I always remember, because it’s the king.  He saw Elvis in concert.  He was 7 or 8, and his folks took him to the show.  Yes, this makes him even older than I am, but it’s also a pretty cool conversation piece.  My parents never saw the King in concert, and none of their friends that I know did, either.  But one of my fraternity brothers did.  Kinda cool.

And here’s the segue to the second reason I was there last night: because I could bring my children.  When my daughter Zoe was too young to know any better, I began the process of influencing her musical tastes unduly.  And the first band she ever loved was The Beach Boys.  Favorite song: “Help Me, Rhonda.”  And the look on her eyes when I told her we were going to see them in concert far, far outweighed the look on my completed rolled-up eyes when Mike Love told the crowd last night that he loved his first car back in the 50’s but loves the Bentley he now drives even more.  (Seriously, what a prick.)

Yes, once or twice last evening I wanted the sweltering heat to claim a heart attack casualty in an Aloha shirt and a red baseball cap onstage . . . but mostly I was thrilled to be there.  We had seats in the 10^th row or so, and my little girl was, like Loverboy, lovin’ every minute of it.  As the dads out there know, that would be reason enough to go, and reason enough to enjoy it.

Except . . . I really liked the show.  For myself.

The band(s) sounded spot-on, and included that appendix because there were – count ‘em – 14 people on stage.  Somewhere in the middle of the show, it dawned on me . . . ah, this is probably the assemblage of Mike Love’s touring band, Al Jardine’s as well, and maybe even Brian Wilson’s guys.  These people have been “Beach Boys” or something akin to it for, in some cases, decades.

Anyway, it was a big group with the three truly original living members and a couple of other “original” guys; I guess it’s hard to keep Bruce Johnston out of that club when he’s been playing with the group for 47 years or so.  The sound was big, and it sounded great.

Somewhere in the midst of it, I had to let my guard down against Mike Love, dammit.  He simply is the voice everyone has known on so many of those old hits.  That nerdy, nasally voice that displays less vocal talent . . . but you know what?  They’re classics, and they blazed through 46 songs (!) in two sets and an encore and left nothing on the table.  Love’s banter made me want to dismember him and burn his ballcap collection (they showed yearbook photos on the big screen – he was pretty damn bald in high school), but in the moment of “I Get Around,” when the lights got bright and the crowd was cheering, eh . . . it was fun, fun, fun, and the reason I go to shows as often as I can.

 

In 1988, when Axl was on top, he was a total dick – but he was an awesome lead singer.  I listen to “Mr. Brownstone” and think that if he could’ve held it together, I’d be going to hear him today . . . but he didn’t.  (You can’t be an ass AND suck.)  Same with a lot of people on the list – I don’t want to have a beer with them, but when they’re on . . . yeah, I’ll buy a ticket.

So, make no mistake, last night only confirms that Mike Love is still a douche.  But he fronts my daughter’s first favorite band, an all-time music group for the ages, and a collection of old dudes who can still put on a show the reminds me why I love rock and roll.

Happy Independence Day.