Most bands would give their drummer's right arm to have the kind of unpaid promotional support offered by the Weenheads - particularly on the internet, which Dean admits has "become a huge piece of the Ween equation", with fan sites logging the set-lists of every concert they've played, the guitar tablature to all their songs, and offering MP3 files and bootleg tapes of literally hundreds of live shows. There's even an automated 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week online radio station, weenradio , that broadcasts official album tracks and a wealth of live and unreleased Ween material. "It's all Ween, all the time!" marvels Dean of the station's catalogue of 1700 songs.With shows that routinely clock in at upwards of three hours long, the Grateful Dead comparison has some substance, although there's a quirky humour and hermetic cod-mythology (the "Cult Of Boognish") to Ween's world that's more reminiscent of Frank Zappa or the Residents, while their eclectic music features hints and flavours of everyone from George Jones to Roger Miller, Prince to Pink Floyd, Motörhead to Talking Heads.And always, the Beatles: there are moments on Ween's latest (and best) album White Pepper that sound like out-takes from all corners of the Fabs' career, without apparently trying to. Apart from the new album's "Bananas and Blow", which they admit is a deliberate take-off of Caribbean troubadour Jimmy Buffett, Gene and Dean claim the humour and pastiche in their work is largely accidental, the subconscious absorption of whatever they happen to be listening to at the time."A lot of times we're being funny but don't even realise it," claims Gene. "It comes out humorous even though we don't intend it to be.""The result is that people listen to our new record and don't trust us any more," adds Dean, resignedly "They'll say we're taking the piss out of love songs We're not.
They really are love songs! We can't just play a fast punk-rock tune, which is, like, our roots; instead, we're 'emulating' a fast punk-rock tune!"It's not surprising, then, that they regard the British view of Ween as bearing scant relation to reality. "English reviewers always refer to us as like these two kids in high school making fart jokes and spitballs, and it's not like that. They think we're Beavis and Butt-head!"Ironically, Ween's only significant chart success came as a result of Beavis and Butt-head's approbation, which helped drive their single "Push the Li'l Daisies" into the US Top 10. But it's another cartoon-oriented friendship, with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, that perhaps better reflects the rich vein of scatology, misogyny and bad-taste humour in Ween's work.Defending their lapses of taste and decorum, Dean quotes a member of the Bloodhound Gang who claimed: "We only say all these mean things about all these other people to make us feel better about ourselves," though he adds with some relief that "the last couple of records have been the first that we haven't said anything that we've had to answer to anybody for, which is kinda nice." And, he adds, "Anything in bad taste was done in good humour. Everyone's so PC nowadays that the red flag goes up.""And the more PC people get," adds Gene, "the more people like us and Matt and Trey try to push them."For all their pushing of the bad-taste envelope, the only time a record company tried to get them to tone things down concerned "Spinal Meningitis (Gets Me Down)", a particularly distasteful song featuring a small child's apprehension of impending surgery."Elektra begged us not to have 'Spinal Meningitis' as the second song on Chocolate and Cheese," says Dean. "They said, 'Please, please, if you put this as track two on your record, no journalist is ever going to write about anything but this song!'. Our response was, 'Well, we were going to have it as track one, so you caught a break!' "Even less concerned by the duo's idiosyncratic sense of humour were the Nashville session musicians employed on 12 Golden Country Greats, Ween's 10-track (of course) assault on the world of country music that included "Help Me Scrape the Mucus off My Brain".
Alerted by their friend Ben Vaughn (of 3rd Rock From the Sun theme fame) that it was possible to record cheaply with the same crew who played on all the George Jones and Merle Haggard records (as well as Dylan's Blonde On Blonde), they hove themselves off to the legendary Bradley's Barn studio in Mt Juliet, Tennessee, for what they describe as "probably the single most rewarding thing we've done as Ween"."They're a bunch of good ol' boys," recalls Gene. "They've seen all kinds of stuff, they're not uptight at all, they're just having a good time, spittin' and grinnin' and drinkin' beer.""They've been there, they've done it all," agrees Dean. "They didn't bat an eyelash at us; when the lyrics were funny, they would laugh We bought beer, and they drank it These are guys who you actually enjoy hanging out with. You'd have no idea they were the best players in the world."Having failed to wrong-foot their fans with a hardcore country album, Ween responded with the more characteristically weird, nautically-themed The Mollusk and now the delightful White Pepper, whose more persuasive, focused manner they attribute to their new co-producer Chris Shaw (best known for his engineering work with Public Enemy), who replaced their more mischievous long-time accomplice Andrew Weiss."We chose him because he was a great engineer," explains Dean, "and we wanted it to sound great without sounding over-produced I think we did even better, though.
We got more than we could ever have hoped for." The result is an album that should satisfy hardcore Weenheads while expanding their appeal beyond that fanbase into the uncharted territory of mainstream radio. Not that they're itching to become MTV staples, or anything like that."Our following is kinda unique," says Dean, gratefully. "We don't have peers in other bands - we've never been part of a scene. It's always been our policy not to open for other bands, and we skip festivals every year, so we don't have a lot of friends in bands We've never been part of a clique.
