For over a year now I’ve had a running joke about starting a pyramid scheme. I’ll convert two of my friends into Ween listeners, and they’ll convert two of their friends and so on and so forth. This is all to lead up to Ween getting back together and having one last world tour. Now it was just a joke, but I was successful in getting my friends interested in my favourite band.

Like many other bands, the beginning of Ween’s music career was founded by two friends with a dream of playing music. Aaron Freeman and Michael Melchiondo Jr. (Gene Ween and Dean Ween). They were two white kids from Pennsylvania yet together they came up with a whole range of songs including ‘a Mexican murder ballad’. In my own humble and not at all biased opinion I think their music is top tier. An anonymous person has described it as ‘music geeks, who write music for music geeks’ which I can’t help but agree with. Now on with some real reasons why it’s such a good band.

Songs:

There is a song for everyone. You have pretty songs, weird songs, very rocky songs and they even dropped a country album once. Some people don’t like the alternative sound, and that’s completely fine. If they don’t like that then there’s always classic poppy songs somewhere in the discography. I think my two favourite ways of showing the difference in sound is by showing ‘Spinal Meningitis’ and then afterwards ‘Joppa Road’. They’re even from the same album yet the difference is striking. Almost every album is like this, on the Mollusk you got ‘Mutilated Lips’ and then the very popular SpongeBob song, ‘Ocean Man.’ 

I think another reason for their success is that they don’t take themselves too seriously. Sure, they have beautiful songs, some with very difficult and emotional lyrics, yet on the same track there are songs like: ‘Poop ship destroyer’ and ‘The HIV song’. They sound cool, don’t get me wrong, but music doesn’t always need to be intense, it can just be fun. 

Duality:

Like mentioned in the previous paragraphs, they have a wide range of genres, but they also dabble in different emotions. There are some gorgeous heartfelt songs that just make my heart burst. Songs like ‘She’s your baby’ and ‘What was Deaner talking about.’ Gene Ween’s voice offers an innocence that makes the songs quite tender.

I think another talent of theirs is the way they perform live. They switch up their songs until some even become unrecognisable. For example: Johnny on The Spot. The Studio Version was rather boring and is a song that I skip often when listening to the Mollusk album. However, whenever I listen to the ‘Live In Chicago’ performance I can’t pull my ears away. An entirely new minute long solo was performed by Deaner on the guitar. It’s also my favourite clip to pull up when I mention he’s my favourite guitarist. The pure skill and talent never ceases to amaze me.

I don’t think I could recommend an artist more than Ween. They are such a classic band and I’m so grateful that I grew up with their music. For those of you in America, they’re doing a tour right now so if you’re quick enough you can snag some tickets. For the rest of us who aren’t as lucky, I hope that in the future that world tour does comes along.