Ween's Chocolate and Cheese (33 1/3) Page 13
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.