Ween's Chocolate and Cheese (33 1/3) Read Free

underground. And though it was actually complete at the time of Ween’s major-label signing and licensed as-is to the band’s new backer,
Pure Guava
took on a whole different meaning due to a few simple words on the back cover: “Elektra Entertainment, a division of Warner Communications Inc.” This particular slab of brown was, shockingly, a product of the mainstream record industry, issuing from the same label that had released multiplatinum smashes such as Natalie Cole’s
Unforgettable: With Love
and Queen’s
News of the World
.
    The textural loopiness of
The Pod
and
Pure Guava
, combined with Ween’s continued penchant for absurd humor and their self-perpetuated drugged-out image — “In the time that this album was completed, we filled up 3,600 hours of tape, and inhaled five cans of Scotchguard,” dead-panned
The Pod
’s liner notes — resulted in music that was easy to dismiss offhand as the product of a joke band. Few bands will ever come up with tunes as enduring as “Pork Roll Egg and Cheese” or “Don’t Get 2 Close 2 My Fantasy,” but however brilliantmuch of this material was, the medium of these albums overwhelmed the message. The low-tech presentation suggested that Freeman and Melchiondo were just horsing around, as if they couldn’t be bothered to recruit a real band or round up proper instruments.
    Ween’s concert appearances during the
Pure Guava
era only reinforced this notion. A DVD of the band’s early-’90s performances, issued along with the live CD
At the Cat’s Cradle
, reveals a duo wholly at peace with their amateur aura. In footage from March, 1992 at the Columbus, Ohio club Stache’s, a DAT 2 player pipes in deafening drum-machine and bass accompaniment, as Freeman and Melchiondo strike funny poses and sing in pitch-shifted voices, yielding something that resembles a surreal talent-show act. Yet even in this setting, the strength of Ween’s songs, not to mention Melchiondo’s guitar prowess and Freeman’s vocal talent, shines through. If on
The Crucial Squeegie Lip
, Ween’s production values mirrored their nascent musicality, the two aspects had since grown to seem very much at odds. Somewhat shockingly, Ween had become a highly skilled band.
    This contradiction gave
Pure Guava
-era Ween a distinct underdog quality. In their own minds and in the minds of fans, the act of persisting with their rudimentary, DAT-driven setup even as their musical abilities and visibility skyrocketed was a point of punk-ethics-derivedpride. In the liner notes to
At the Cat’s Cradle
, Melchiondo fondly recalled the Ween live experience during this period:
    Every night we had to face the crowd pretty much naked, there was nowhere to hide, no room for an off night. We did a lot of talking to the crowd and one another between songs — we pretty much had to. We faced a lot of hostile audiences when we were the opening act on a show. There was a lot to hate about us but we won over a lot of people in the process because of our sheer nerve. A lot of our closest friends feel that Ween live pretty much ended when we switched to a traditional band format with a bass player and drummer … Once we started releasing records and touring more as a duo we got a lot better at it, we stopped caring about what the audience thought of us and just focused on having fun onstage. This was when we maximized our brownness.
    Andrew Weiss, producer of
God Ween Satan
and many of Ween’s subsequent full-lengths, including
Chocolate and Cheese
, also alludes to this period’s antagonistic appeal:
    Back in the day, when it was just the two of them with the tape deck, it was almost like performance art in a way when you would see them. ’Cause it was Ween versus the audience. Everybody hated them, initially. They would do shows at City Gardens, which was like the hot spot in Trenton; all the bands would play there on tour.I remember one [show] in particular, and Ween was opening for Fugazi, and it was just Ween