Ween's Chocolate and Cheese (33 1/3) (17 page)

Above
: “Baby Bitch” track sheet from Graphic Sound Studio.

Left
: With Mohamed on the set of the “I Can’t Put My Finger On It” video.

Above
: Fan-made Boognish belts.

Below
: Still from the
Live in Chicago
DVD: Ween’s current quintet lineup live in November, 2003.

Above
:
Pure Guava
insert: at Brookridge Farm. Freeman: fifth from left on balcony; Melchiondo: fifth from right on porch.

Right
:
Chocolate and Cheese
insert portrait (bottom right) and outtakes: at Ringing Rocks.

Left and below: Chocolate and Cheese
insert portraits and outtakes.

Credits
Figures 1–10: courtesy of Ween

Figure 11: Ole Lütjens 2010

Figure 12: Tom Nichols

Figures 13–15: Danny Clinch

Also available in the series:

1.
Dusty in Memphis
by Warren Zanes

2.
Forever Changes
by Andrew Hultkrans

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.’