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

  3. Harvest by Sam Inglis

  4. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller

  5. Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice

  6. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh

  7. Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli

  8. Electric Ladyland by John Perry

  9. Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott

  10. Sign ‘O’ the Times by Michaelangelo Matos

  11. The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard

  12. Let It Be by Steve Matteo

  13. Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk

  14. Aqualung by Allan Moore

  15. OK Computer by Dai Griffiths

  16. Let It Be by Colin Meloy

  17. Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis

  18. Exile on Main St. by Bill Janovitz

  19. Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli

  20. Ramones by Nicholas Rombes

  21. Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno

  22. Murmur by J. Niimi

  23. Grace by Daphne Brooks

  24. Endtroducing … by Eliot Wilder Wilder

  25. Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese

  26. Low by Hugo Wilcken

  27. Born in the U.S.A. by Geoffrey Himes

  28. Music from Big Pink by John Niven

  29. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper

  30. Paul’s Boutique by Dan LeRoy

  31. Doolittle by Ben Sisario

  32. There’s a Riot Goin’ On by Miles Marshall Lewis

  33. The Stone Roses by Alex Green

  34. In Utero by Gillian G. Gaar

  35. Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti

  36. Loveless by Mike McGonigal

  37. The Who Sell Out by John Dougan

  38. Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworth

  39. Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns

  40. Court and Spark by Sean Nelson

  41. Use Your Illusion Vols 1 and 2 by Eric Weisbard

  42. Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy

  43. The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck

  44. Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier

  45. Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier

  46. Aja by Don Breithaupt

  47. People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor

  48. Rid of Me by Kate Schatz

  49. Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite

  50. If You’re Feeling Sinister by Scott Plagenhoef

  51. Pink Moon by Amanda Petrusich

  52. Let’s Talk About Love by Carl Wilson

  53. Swordfishtrombones by David Smay

  54. 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Drew Daniel

  55. Horses by Philip Shaw

  56. Master of Reality by John Darnielle

  57. Reign in Blood by D. X. Ferris

  58. Shoot Out the Lights by Hayden Childs

  59. Gentlemen by Bob Gendron

  60. Rum, Sodomy & the Lash by Jeffery T. Roesgen

  61. The Gilded Palace of Sin by Bob Proehl

  62. Pink Flag by Wilson Neate

  63. XO by Matthew LeMay

  64. Illmatic by Matthew Gasteier

  65. Radio City by Bruce Eaton

  66. One Step Beyond … by Terry Edwards

  67. Another Green World by Geeta Dayal

  68. Zaireeka by Mark Richardson

  69. 69 Love Songs by L. D. Beghtol

  70. Facing Future by Dan Kois

  71. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Christopher R. Weingarten

  72. Wowee Zowee by Bryan Charles

  73. Highway to Hell by Joe Bonomo

  74. Song Cycle by Richard Henderson

  75. Spiderland by Scott Tennent

  76. Kid A by Marvin Lin

  77. Tusk by Rob Trucks

  1 Several sources state that Mickey Melchiondo has defined the term, as it is employed in the Ween universe, as “fucked-up in a good way.” The following explanation by Andrew Weiss offers some further insight into its meaning:

  It’s an aesthetic. It’s initially probably scatological in origin. It’s kind of like the best stuff you get, for me, and I think for Mickey and Aaron too, or the most interesting stuff — you know, stuff’s always so well-orchestrated, or tries to be, when people make records, but the best sound you’re gonna get out of a stompbox [i.e. distortion pedal] is when the battery’s right at the point of dying and it sounds like it’s being strangled or something. So it’s kind of like those glorious mistakes are what you’re lookin’ for. But “brown” is really — it’s a far-reaching concept. It’s really not very complex or deep. Once you smell the brown, you know it when you see it.

  2 Digital Audio Tape, a now-discontinued archival cassette format used widely in the ’90s.

  3 A 1993 New York Times piece recounted the band’s middle-school-era fascination with tape-speed manipulation: “Mr. Freeman discovered that if he pushed the play and record buttons simultaneously on his father’s tape recorder, the tape would speed up and on playback, his voice would come out deep and distorted. ‘I thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen in my life,’ he said.”

  4 Jonze: “Me and a friend of mine, Doug Aitken, dressed up as a Hasidic father and son, and we went out and shot a Christmas-card photo of us chopping down a Christmas tree. When we got back into town, Ween was playing, and my girlfriend and I went. And I had the tight peyes glued into my hair, and I figured I would go enjoy Ween as a Hasid.

  “And this one song had this sort of ‘Hava Nagila’-type [imitates Hebrew-chant breakdown, often performed as part of either ‘Vallejo’ or ‘I Can’t Put My Finger On It’] … And it was this epic, long, ten-minute jam they turned it into. My girlfriend dared me to go onstage, and I had to do it. As I walked onstage, the sound person sort of stepped aside and let me on without any badges or anything. So I went on and I did a whole jig. And Aaron didn’t notice it for most of the song — he was doing this sort of hypnotic chanting — but Dean was very ecstatic that they suddenly had this guest dancer, and I was doing all the jigs I could think of. And when the song finished, Dean said, ‘No, please stay — dance with us for the show.’ And I said, [mock-solemnly] ‘No, my work is done here.’

  “I knew friends that knew them and I was really proud because for months they were saying, ‘In LA, this Hasidic Jewish guy came and danced with us!’ They didn’t know it was me. So we met in a very romantic way — we kind of already had a shared moment together.”

  5 Chocolate and Cheese also featured a tribute to a different sort of inspiration. A note on the inside sleeve reads, “Dedicated in Loving Memory to John Candy (1950–1994).” Aaron Freeman explains: “John Candy had died around the time we were making Chocolate and Cheese. I remember seeing Cool Runnings with my sister and being impressed as always with his performance. I hate it when fat comedians die.”

  6 Freeman actually attributes the phrase to himself and Melchiondo rather than to Williams: “Europe comes to mind: It was where I and Mickey realized that if Europe is good for one thing, it was both their chocolate and cheese products. This epiphany led to the title, sort of like chocolate and peanut butter but with cheese.”

  7 For more evidence of same, see Z-Rock Hawaii, a thoroughly zany album that Freeman and Melchiondo recorded with Eye — leader of legendary Japanese avant-rock collective Boredoms — in the midst of the Chocolate and Cheese sessions.

  8 When approached for this book, Phish frontman Anastasio declines to comment directly on “Roses Are Free” but he’s complimentary toward Ween in general:

  “When we got signed to Elektra in ’92 or ’93, Sue Drew, our A&R person at the time, gave me a copy of Pure Guava. Ween had also just been signed to the label. I loved that record from the second I put it on, and remember playing it with my wife Sue (then my girlfriend) in my room in Winooski [Vermont], and the two of us just cracking up. That was my first encounter with Ween. I thought they were incredible. I particularly loved ‘I Play It Off Legit,’ which had that line, ‘
My mom bought me this new shirt / When I wear it I’m the shit / It’s really not that legit, my mom bought it.’ I also loved ‘Reggaejunkiejew.’

  “I decided to go backwards in their catalogue and I bought The Pod, which had the masterpiece, ‘Pork Roll Egg and Cheese’ and also ‘Dr. Rock.’ Then I discovered God Ween Satan and went around the house singing ‘Squelch the Weasel’ and ‘El Camino’ for weeks. I was hooked. The interesting thing to me about Chocolate and Cheese is that it has some songs on it that really showcase the depth of their songwriting talent. Particularly ‘Baby Bitch,’ and ‘Freedom of ’76.’”

  In a 1998 interview, Anastasio summed up his feelings about Ween thusly: “I love Ween. Ween is white soul.”

  9 In an earlier conversation, Melchiondo had referred to the character as Lebanese.

  10 Scott Lowe, who was present during the session, recalls that orchestrating these drop-outs was somewhat tricky:

  With “The HIV Song,” there’s a couple points where the band is playing on the track but we wanted the music to stop for one of the little [instances of] “HIV.” And to stop it, we all had to line up on the board and hit a mute button on the mixer on all the channels that we wanted to mute, just leaving the vocals on, and we all had to hit it on cue. We had to mute maybe ten tracks or more, so it required four or five of us to all stand next to each other and we could each hit maybe four buttons apiece and we just kind of hit them on the beat and then put them back on after it said “HIV.”

  I think that there were a couple of rests in there, but they wanted to put more in. Initially when they played it live, they did play it with a couple of rests, but there were times when they played it all the way through and they decided later, “Let’s lift it here and here, too.” So we basically, by hand, had to put it back in, and we did that in the mixdown stage. Today you could do that on Pro Tools with the click of a mouse, and even in the old days of analog mixing, they would still have computer controls that would do it automatically, but we didn’t have that ability in this studio.

  11 See Honey in particular.

  12 This conversation took place in 2007, for a Time Out New York story on La Cucaracha.