In late 1994, I heard an album that was unlike any I had heard. The band was called Ween, and I wanted to help their pony.
Recently, I have been watching old videos of their performances in the mid 1990s and lamenting that Deaner is not well enough to tour. I have become increasingly concerned that the two times I have seen them live would be my only times seeing them.
Yesterday, I was speaking to one of my dearest friends and family--JP (one of the live Ween shows I saw was with him). When I told him of my recent concerns, he conveyed that he had attended their last live performance in Spokane, WA. At that show, JP had a vision of the importance of The Stallion. Midway through the show, he began shouting between songs, "IT"S ALL BECAUSE OF THE STALLION!"
When he relayed this experience to me, I realized that I was woefully uninitiated to the band's lore and needed to journey deep into the Ween experience. I didn't even know their "little guy" drawing had a name and was indeed a demon/god called The Boognish. So I have committed to listening to all their records in release order and journaling here about the experience.
I started with their first major release from Twin/Tone Records. I have never listened to this album and have, in fact, never even heard one song from this album to my knowledge. I listened with open ears for references to the dichotomy of transcendent/diabolic imagery of the Boognish and the Stallion!
Overall, the album is a relic of late-80s, early-90s punk rock and alternative that seems directly descendant from the SST style of American punk that blossomed in the 1980s in small clubs and CD players throughout and across America. It sounds like the beginning of 90s alternative. I hear the Meat Puppets and Butthole Surfers lurking around each corner, and the Dead Kennedys are there in the room for each recording. But of course, the music is not just derivative. It is VERY unique and infused with many more psychic highlights borrowed from the radio of our youth--disco, funk, Doobie Bros, classic rock, and (though early in it's full Ween manifestation) Prince. In short it is a raw, youthful, brilliant debut.
Exuberance is the engine that scoots this moped down the road! It is fun, even when it makes the listener uncomfortable, which any Ween album needs to do in order to qualify as part of their oeuvre. In short the album is a total "meatwagon, goddammit" that right away implores listeners to "open up the door!" It was indeed cold outside in the uptight world of late 80s America. For many of us, it felt like there was no proper place, no belonging. I immediately remembered feeling this way too back then. "Come on, ya dick!" Just let me in.
The album creates that space for us outsiders, lets us in, and quickly introduces us to our shared host at the party, Boognish. The spirited sprite-like puckish god comes in a third of the way through the album on the song "Up on the Hill," a great early Ween song that presages the band's later musical development beyond the rawness of this album. He appears as a Pan-like mischief-maker who is very connected to the adolescent masculine libido of the music makers. The "mistery" of the album is the mixture of weird music, an invented god, and old-fashioned youthful male lust, desire, passion, and heartbreak. In short, it is a slightly weird punk album with heavy, mainstream, pop-style themes of love and heartache that is all twisted up with an obscure mysticism.
Great songs include the following:
At times the album's themes become too pedestrian to hold company with a deity because of the almost burdensome influence of youthful masculinity. While those themes can at times be fun and celebratory, they also get fairly intense and drawn out and can make listeners feel a lack of "oneness" with the band. It is not just female listeners that might experience this alienation because, after all, the songs are about Deaner's and Gener's Weeners--or "weasels," as the album repeatedly reminds us. While some listeners do indeed have weasels of their own, each listener's relationship with their own personal weasel will vary, and thus our ability to connect with the detailed vagaries of D & G's weasel dramas are sometimes limited, especially for listeners without the appendage.
I really like this album and wish I had heard it when I was a youngster like these makers. It is fun, exciting, weird, and welcoming to fellow weirdos. After listening, I find myself asking the same question as the Gener in one song, "What is your secret? Could you give me a clue?" I don't know what revelations all of their later music will hold, but I look forward to finding out! And I look forward to finding out the influence of the stallion!
I keep thinking about one line--maybe because of Deaner's recent struggles: "I don't know if I'll be okay." No one ever does, but it is nice to hear someone say it out loud so you don't feel like a freak every time you think it. In a way, the line reminds us that we will be okay, if only because we are not alone to wonder if we will be.
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