Ween Interview, 10/28
Jarrett Frankel
First off, apologies to all who sent me questions which weren't asked. Which is basically all of
you who sent me questions. When push came to shove, there were certain things I needed to
know in order to write my article(which will be posted here this weekend), so I had to basically
can the fan questions. Sorry. Anyway, here'es the interview in its entirety. Enjoy!
Jarrett Frankel
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Ween Interview, October 28, 1996
9:30 Club, Washington, D.C.
by Jarrett Frankel(JF)
JF: Great. [sighs]. What show is this for you guys? You've been touring for, what, a month?
GW: It's the last show.
JF: This is the last one? So, you guys been playing with Doo Rag the whole time?
GW: Ahh, most of the time, yeah.
JF: How has that been?
GW: Awesome.
JF: Did you guys choose them or-
GW: Yeah.
JF: I saw them play two years ago almost to the day.
GW: Uh-huh.
JF: Halloween two years ago. They were, um....they put on a show.
GW: Yeah.
JF: [as if in disbelief] Their drummer....
GW: Actually, the drummer isn't with them right now.
JF: Oh, really!?
GW: Yeah, so...
JF: Is that, uh, Thermos? Or is that Bob?
GW: Yeah, Thermos.
JF: Thermos.
GW: Yeah.
JF: Well, that was quite a show.
GW: Yeah.
JF: Well, anyway...The record [12 Golden Country Greats] is amazing. I don't know if you see it
this way, but I thought it was the ballsiest move that I've seen in a while. It was almost in like
the same spirit as - well, I saw it almost like a Metal Machine Music, you know, Lou Reed.
Like a big "fuck you". Except it's not noise, it's amazing little country songs.
GW: [agreeingly] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's kind of- it's funny how people react. We just kind
of did it.
JF: Yeah.
GW: We went down to Nashville, and, uh, recorded this record. We didn't know whether we
were going to put it out or not but it sounded good and so...
JF: Right. And actually did Elektra put up a fight?
GW: No, they didn't.
JF: Were they, like, threatening to shelve it?
GW: We didn't know whether they would or not. But, they accepted it and put it out.
JF: Cool.
GW: Yeah.
JF: Do you see it as a departure or a step in a different direction?
GW: Um...
JF: Or was it just a natural progression that you just felt like doing?
GW: It's just something different. I mean, there won't be another record that sounds like this,
you know?
JF: Right.
GW: It's kind of like a side project.
JF: There'll be, um...So, there's just as much of a chance of you doing a normal, or just--
[Dean enters the room]
DW: Hey.
Paul Monahan, tour manager: This is Jarrett.
JF: Howya doin'?
DW: [Sits on couch.] OK.
JF: As I told Aaron, this is my first interview here.
DW: Oh, cool.
JF: I'm doing my best...[jokingly] but stomp on me if you want.
DW: What's this for?
JF: For a local college-
DW: Station or-
JF: Newspaper.
DW: Oh, ok.
JF: I'm gonna do an album/show/interview type thing. Nothing big. We were just talking about
the record. Whether it was a departure or a natural progression. And you[Gene] were saying
that it was just something that you did, you really didn't think about it. And it's almost like
everyone's making more of a deal of it than you guys did.
DW: Yeah, that's [inaudible over soundcheck noise].
JF: I was saying, there's just as much...And I think I read that you guys were working on-- you
guys had already finished recording the next album.
DW: Mm-hmm.
JF: And that it was more along the lines of "Chocolate and Cheese".
[Dean pauses at this statement and looks over at Gene.]
DW: [Flatly] No.
JF: No?
DW: Not really.
GW: It's its own thing.
DW: The new record you mean?
JF: Well the one that's already recorded....the one after 12 Golden Country Greats.
DW: Yeah, yeah...no.
GW: "Songs for the [inaudible]".
JF: Uh-huh.
DW: Yeah, it's just. They're all different, you know what I mean? We haven't heard it yet so it's
hard to say.
JF: Right.
DW: We were recording it and [inaudible]--
JF: But, just--yeah, well, I thought this one[12 GCG] was good. I was telling Aaron that I
thought....well, forget what I thought.
DW: Heh. [closes door to keep out sound check noise]
JF: Anyway. What was I going to say? Oh, Mary Lou Lord. She covered "Birthday Boy" on that
Jabberjaw compilation.
GW: Uh-huh.
JF: Have you guys heard that?
GW: Yeah, I have it, I bought it.
JF: Is it cool?
GW: It's alright.
JF: Yeah. What do you think about her?
DW: I don't know who it is[laughs].
GW: It's just a chick. Chick-rock, that cute chick voice that like 90% of women rockers have.
JF: Yeah. I thought she put a nice Shawn Colvin sheen on it.
GW: Yeah, it's just she gave it the alterna-chick-rock treatment, which is fine.
JF: Um, also, another compilation, The Schoolhouse Rock song, "The Shot Heard 'round The
World."
GW: Yeah.
JF: A guy I used to work with at a record store here in town, when we first heard it, he was just
blown away because out of all the songs on that record that was the closest to the original.
GW: Yeah.
JF: It's just so...almost scary how close you guys came to the original.
DW: Heh.
JF: As opposed to something like, I don't know if you heard the whole record, but Moby's
track["Verbs"], where he just totally fucked with it.
GW: Well, I just assumed to make it, you know, as close to the real thing. I didn't know that
everybody else was going to do their own interpretations.
DW: It wouldn't have mattered anyway[laughs].
JF: Did you guys look at that thing as somethig fun to do or...because there were a couple of
those last year or this year. The cartoon, kind of, theme song compilations.
DW: Basically we did it for the money.
GW: Yeah!
DW: Money talks.
GW: We just did it for the money, totally.
DW: Tribute albums are pretty beat. There's too many of them now.
JF: Totally.
GW: It's kind of toned down a little bit.
DW: It gave us a lot of money, though. I think...I don't remember if it was a lot or not. It must
have been though, or we wouldn't have done it.
GW: "Loser" gave us a lot of money.
JF: Speaking of which, you guys-
DW: We can't talk about that.
JF: You can't talk about that one? Because I read about that--
GW: It's not coming out anyways.
JF: Elektra's putting out a "One Hit Wonder" compilation.
DW and GW: Atlantic.
GW: I don't think its coming out.
JF: No?
GW: No, I think because, uh, I think 'cause Henry Rollins had to pull out his song.
JF: Oh, really?
GW: Or something with his recording agreement or something.
JF: With the whole Imago and...didn't he get sued?
GW: I don't know what's going on.
JF: Oh, that's something different.
GW: He did something with RuPaul, he did like...
JF: [jokingly] Some Elton John song?
GW: I don't know what he did.
JF: You guys did "Loser", right?
DW: Yeah, "Loser".
JF: How'd that go? What did you guys do to that? Make it Jazz or--
DW: It's awesome, no.
GW: No, it's incredible.
DW: It's fucked.
GW: It just totally, it sort of takes you into a different dimension.
JF: Did you guys put like, a fanatsy zone on it or something?
DW: It's heavy. It'll give you nightmares.
JF: If it doesn't come out, what'll happen to it?
GW: I don't know.
JF: Are you going to let it drift away into never-to-be-released land?
GW: They have it.
DW: Yeah, it's not ours. They own it.
JF: What to you guys think out Beck? Because, I think a lot of people almost think about you
guys in the same vein, in terms of no adherence to any kind of rules. You know. You guys just
kind of do what you want, whatever sounds right to you. Does it go beyond that?
DW: There's a couple of things that we have in common, I don't know. I like..it's better than
most of the stuff that's out there. He's got some songs that are cool, definitely.
JF: Yeah. [jokingly] People could be listening to worse, right?
GW: He likes to slow down his voice, we like to slow down our voice.
JF: Right.
GW: That's the main similarity, I guess.
JF: Tricks of the four-track.
GW: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. He likes pitch control.
JF: Um. [pausing to find question] Oh, a british journalist reviewed you guys, a show you had
done, and she was pretty down on you, in terms of, she thought, lyrically you were really
crass--
DW: Heh.
JF: And she actually cited "The HIV Song" from the last record as being um--
DW: [excitedly] Yeah, I know right what you're talking about.
JF: You know what I'm talking about?
DW: That's the best becuase she said--
JF: She said that you--
DW: She said that we were making fun of homosexuals and stuff.
JF: Exactly.
DW: But we never say nothing about homosexuals.
JF: No.
DW: She did.
JF: It was all on her, right?
DW: She said it. It was like, what the fuck? Yeah. Which is totally--I, um, England and...
JF: What do you guys think about people having misrepresented ideas about what you guys
sing about? I mean obviously--
GW: Oh, that's something you can't--you get hung up on that stuff then you're just an idiot--
JF: Right.
GW: --'Cause it's like, you throw anything out into the public it's--people love to analyze it, you
know. You can't throw anything out into the public and expect people not to--
DW: I'm gonna get really worried, too, when the british writers start really getting into
everything we do.
GW: Well, they are. They're really into the--it's funny, because on this country record we got
completely slagged by everybody in America.
JF: Right.
GW: Like it was so hip to slag this record.
JF: Right, Rolling Stone--
GW: And in England, which is usually like, the slag kings, gave us, like, glowing reviews in all
the major papers, like NME and shit--
DW: Like "record of the week"--
JF: Actually, you guys had a single of the week.
GW: Oh, yeah! Totally. Totally.
JF: But I think [friend and fan of Ween] Greg Dulli was guest editor that week, so...
GW: Oh, yeah. Alright.
JF: But I think you guys got great press there still.
GW: We did...no, I've seen it. We've gotten great press in England. It's really funny. It cracks
me up.
JF: Their press is a lot different, though, than American press, but...there's nothing you can do
about that. Um, Let's talk about the record. The first thing that jumped out at me, and [directed
at Dean] I was telling him I loved the new record, was the Muhammed Ali cameo on "Powder
Blue". Was that taken off subsequent pressings?
DW: Yeah, only the first pressing will have it.
JF: Right. The first time I heard that...I don't think I've ever laughed so hard. I don't know if it's a
good thing, but I laughed so hard.
GW: You're supposed to laugh.
DW: Yeah. It''s good to laugh.
JF: But what I thought about it afterwards was that, I though it was really brilliant because,
and I don't know if you intended it this way but, because you're going along, introducing the
band members, they're doing a little solo, and it's like wordplay is just as much, you know, it
can be just as much poetry as an instrument. It's Muhammed Ali as music. It just really kind of
hit me. It was just one of those things. How did you guys put that in? Where'd you guys
think--were you watching that documentary?
GW: Yeah, we were watching a lot of Muhammed Ali and just decided to put it in. For the
same reason pretty much, we just thought of it.
JF: The big thing, I guess, in the last two years, where its been really tangible, has been the
whole Internet thing. Do you guys have computers and do that whole thing or do you just
ignore it or--
DW: Yeah, we're big Internet--
JF: Really?
DW: Yeah.
JF: It's hard getting away from what you just personally do with it, but for the group, what do
you think it does? I mean, the dissemination of information that you can get across the web
is just--
DW: It's great for porn! Basically.
JF: [laughing]
DW: I think most people I know [laughs] just use it to just download massive quantities of
porn. First and foremost. I think if you polled people I think you'd find it's what most men do
with their computer on the internet. I mean everybody I know, my uncle, my father, me,
him[Gene], Claude our drummer. I foucus most of my energies on Asian porn.
JF. Oh. Yeah. So, it's safe to say you're not checking out Dole/Kemp96.org?
DW: No I don't go to anything like that shit. I don't even play with the web that much anymore to
tell you the truth.
JF: Mostly just newsgroups?
DW: I like the newsgroups, I think they're my favorite part of the interent. And IRC and shit like
that.
JF: Right. The web, it seems like every other page is advertising.
DW: Yeah, the web is sort of overrated right now. Until they get the shit going at high speed--
JF: Right.
DW: It's always gonna be sort of like...it's cool, I mean there's great stuff on the web, but its so
like, you know--
GW: It's just like a massive encyclopedia. That's about it. If you need to know something about
something, just like "Webcrawler" and [snaps fingers] you're there.
DW: Usenet is the shit though, I think. The newsgroups. That's where you can really focus
and find something that will actually help you-
JF: Right.
DW: -Or whatever. Or if you want to really focus, people don't really update their web pages
hardly ever. Some people do, but it's so much work, I find that-- whereas the newsgroups are
constantly refreshing themselves.
JF: Right. And you guys have a newsgroup.
DW: Yeah.
JF: Do you ever get sort of voyeuristic, where your tendency is to want to look in there or do you
guys--
DW: Oh yeah, I totally keep up with our newsgroup.
GW: Oh yeah.
DW: I keep current with it all the time.
JF: Actually, I put a message on there saying I was coming to talk to you guys to see if anyone
wanted to ask you questions.
DW: RIght. Oh, yeah.
JF: They weren't the greatest questions. Do you ever get the sense that the people who are
using newsgroups are not too bright?
DW: I get the sense that people in general are stupid.
GW: Did you post it on the Ween newsgroup?
JF: Yeah.
GW: Yeah, well they're, I mean our people--
JF: [laughing]
GW: --that are on our newsgroup, it's not too many people. We all know each other.
JF: I got a question from a "Dr. Of Ghostbusting" who wants to know why you never come to
Laramie, Wyoming?
GW: RIght. 'Cause it stinks like shit. [all laughing]. 'Cause his mother stinks like shit.
JF: I'll write that. Of course, I have to find out if you have a theory about the 2Pac murder.
GW: [laughing]
DW: I don;t really know.
JF: Was it OJ?
DW: I don't know who did it. I read a huge article in Vibe the other day, but it didn't really
enlighten me too much.
JF: No?
DW: They offered some theories I had never heard before.
GW: They're busting people now. They're busting--
DW: They're like sweeping the, yeah, Compton and shit. Totally.
JF: It was just like an excuse though. Like 2Pac was just an excuse.
GW: Yeah. Right.
JF: Hmm. [pause] We were talking about Elektra before. I guess you said that they pretty
much went with the album. It obvious since they went with "Piss Up A Rope" for the first single
when they could have easily gone with something a little...tamer. Like "You Were The Fool" or
something.
DW: Well there really wasn;t a single.
JF: Right.
DW: There was like, there was a sticker saying "Featuring Piss Up A Rope" and that's about it.
JF: But as far as shipping to radio or MTV or whatever...
DW: No, there was no isolated EP you could get America that had "Piss Up A Rope On It" or a
featured song or whaveter.
Manager: I think it was a fantasy we all had that "Piss Up A Rope" would be...that they'd figure
out a way to get it on the radio.
JF: Wasn;t there like a massive attepmt to get people to call radio? Remember, they were
luring people with the whole "We will send you a free disc."
Manager:Yeah, they tried that...they did try that internet thing...contest.
DW: I knew it wouldn't be on the radio.
Manager: It'd be too offensive. There were some Top 40 morning shows that played it. Jokey
shows played it.
JF: Really? Not even college radio?
Manager: Maybe. Somebody would get yanked off the air on college radio for playing
someting like that.
JF: Yeah. It is a great song though. Let's see. Well, I don't have much else, uh--
DW: That's it, we gotta go down anyway.
JF: Yeah that's really it. Thanks for talking with me.
GW: Alright, dude. Yeah.
JF: Have a good show.
DW: Thanks.
thumb...@aol.com
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Ann Waller
> JF: Actually, I put a message on there saying I was coming to talk to
you guys to see if anyone
> wanted to ask you questions.
> DW: RIght. Oh, yeah.
> JF: They weren't the greatest questions. Do you ever get the sense that
the people who are
> using newsgroups are not too bright?
Ummm...I don't really want to get personal here, but I get the feeling
that the questions you received from us couldn't have been much worse than
the ones YOU asked in the interview.
Ann
Uberkuh
In article <awaller-0211...@cola36.scsn.net>, awa...@scsn.net
(Ann Waller) writes:
yeah that was a shitty interview!
ween wasn't too helpfull either though,
You seemed like you were boring the crap out of them (yum!)
~auf wiedersehen
gp