Song Project #9
Ween make themselves deceptively easy to dismiss. They are juvenile and vulgar, not just as a matter of course -- not entirely juvenile and vulgar -- but gleefully so, deliberately. They invite you to think they're stupid; if you do, the joke's on you. It's not a new approach to humor, nor (to me) a very interesting one; yet Ween are a great band. If it isn't because they write songs called "Flies on My Dick" and "Hey Fat Boy (Asshole)", why is it?
Not because they are great musicians (though they are); you can't swing a cat in this world without scratching out the eyes of three great guitar players who have nothing to say. Ween are great because they love music, all kinds, and are serious students of song. No band has tried on more styles than Ween, and everything they play sounds like they've been playing it their whole life. When Ween decided to make a country album, they made an excellent trad country album with old Nashville pros, an album good enough to demonstrate that they could make country their entire career if they wanted (notwithstanding the likely resistance of the country market to songs called "Piss Up a Rope" and "Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain").
My favorite trick of Ween's is their unparalleled skill at pastiche. Not Weird Al-style straight song parodies, but writing an entirely new song in an unmistakable style. They've done innumerable knockoffs -- Prince, Funkadelic, Motorhead, wifty prog rock, Gamble & Huff Philly soul -- but this is the one I love most:
Listen to Pandy Fackler
This is just superb. Tell me if you can't figure out exactly who they're doing in the first ten seconds, before the vocals start (and ideally before reading further). It has the perfect polished sheen of its model; it bounces and lilts and is always under complete control; the chords are pop jazz, the vocals cynical, the vocabulary advanced (rhyming "facade" and "promenade" is a precisely right detail); even the crudity ("sucking dicks under the promenade") is only taking the genteel decadence of the original model one step further, exchanging one kind of bad boy for another.
I love the partial hook that opens the song, which isn't expanded to its full form until we've had verse-break-verse (at 1:31); and it's the hook the song goes out on, too. The solo that follows the full hook (at 1:59) could be lifted right out of the original model's songbook; in particular, the changes at 2:40 and 2:49 make me smile, and the descent back into the hook at 3:22. Other touches that are spot on: the break at 0:40, and the coloring guitar beginning at 1:05. I hadn't noticed till I sat down to write this: all the vocals are in the first minute and a half, with no singing for the last 2:20 of the song.
Of all the great bands in rock history, Steely Dan may have had the least influence. Not only does no one sound like them, their compositional tricks don't seem to have entered the rock toolbox at all. Except here.
For some reason, I've never listened to Ween, even though they were the first intimate (ie, non-arena or stadium) show I'd ever attended (at the old 9:30 Club in DC); they were awesome and I hung out with them backstage, and they were very cool and funny. It's not clear why none of this led me to their records, but there it is. Curious.
Scraps
I was slow to come round to Ween, because of the juvenile humor and because so much of their early stuff was kind of weirdass wankery (what fans refer to as their Brown material and mourn its relative lack of presence in their modern work).
I would start with Chocolate and Cheese, which isn't the album with "Pandy Fackler" -- that's White Pepper, also excellent -- but is about two thirds amazing.
My wife and I love Ween's "Push Th' Little Daisies" - it's just so over-the-top giddy, and the video just makes it better.
Scraps
Yeah, I love that song too, though it makes Velma back away slowly.
natas
i think people in this world can be roughly broken into two types of people, those who think Ween is the best band ever, and those who don't. The first song I ever heard by them was don't laugh I love you and I can still remember exactly where I was when I heard it and what I was doing at the time even though it was nearly a decade ago. to me and many other people they are the best. Its wierd, their fans are almost crazy enough about them that they could almost be the next wide spread panic of phish or something but some how they don't. I think its because ween is too good to be worshiped like that, and too smart.
sorry about the bad spelling and what its very late where I'm at.
I love Ween, and I love "Pandy Fackler." In fact, I included it on a Ween-vs.-Weird Al pastiche mix late last year. (Weird Al, apart from his direct parodies, is also quite a pastiche artist.) I should make you a copy of that.
Scraps
I know Weird Al's masterful Devo pastiche (and wish I had the video that went with it, but other than that I only know the direct song parodies, which are very hit or miss with me.
I would be interested in the mix, definitely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nIlFsERnmk
We must hang out in the next two months, before Laura and I move, and I'll burn you one of those mixes and couple of others.
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