Ween Time-Travels Back to ‘92

09/30/2008

Two man Ween extravaganza, life without a net, in Chapel Hill in 1992.

By Fred Mills

This ain't your mama's Ween. Or, perhaps more accurately, maybe this WAS your mama's Ween: just Dean and Gene, armed with samples, tapes, guitars and a drum machine, making with the rude, crude live show all by their lonesomes. The personnel:

Gene Ween-Vocals and Guitar

Dean Ween- Vocals and Guitar

Bass and Drums-

Yamaha Digital Audio Tape Deck

Kirk Miller- Live Sound Engineer

Now Music Video Distributors is set to drop a document of just that. Due Nov. 11, the CD/DVD captures Ween in full, uh, flight live at the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill, recorded Dec. 9, 1992.

It will also include a bonus DVD containing footage from the same general time frame, filmed in the Netherlands (Vera Groningen 10-31-91), Columbus OH (Staches 3-6-92) and WTSR radio in Trenton, New Jersey (1-10-92).

See below for Dean Ween's liner notes about the Chapel Hill show and a full tracklisting for the DVD.

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"From our first "real" concert in 1987 until the release of Chocolate and Cheese in 1994 we played concerts as a duo--Aaron on vocals and acoustic guitar and me on electric guitar with the bass and drums played from a cassette deck. Later on we purchased a DAT machine for the backing tracks and this speeded up our show a little. A typical Ween set was no more than an hour long, and we'd play about 24 songs in that amount of time. There was no jamming at all whatsoever. Things are a lot different now. Every night we had to face the crowd pretty much naked, there was nowhere to hide, no room for an off night. We did a lot of talking to the crowd and one another between songs, we pretty much had to. We faced a lot of hostile audiences when we were the opening act on a show. There was a lot to hate about us but we won over a lot of people in the process because of our sheer nerve. A lot of our closest friends feel that Ween live pretty much ended when we switched to a traditional band format with a bass player and drummer; I dunno about that but by the release of Pure Guava our show was no longer interesting to us. We were doing a lot more touring and playing the same songs with no room for improvising had gotten boring for us. Once we started releasing records and touring more as a duo we got a lot better at it, we stopped caring about what the audience thought of us and just focused on having fun onstage. This was when we maximized our brownness. I don't remember too much about this concert other than the fact that we played the Cat's Cradle a lot of times and in a few different locations. Public Enemy had played the club a few nights before and blown up the P.A. and our sound man Kirk Miller was pissed. I thought it was great because Public Enemy are one of my favorite bands of all time and I was just happy to be playing on the same stage. Our touring party consisted of Me, Aaron, and Kirk Miller, our soundman and driver. Once we signed to Elektra we added a tour manager, Paul Monahan, who would stay with us for many years. Anyway, this is pretty typical of what we sounded like on a good night those first few tours."

DVD track list:

1. Captain Fantasy (Vera)

2. You Fucked Up (Vera)

3. Tick (Vera)

4. Boing (Vera)

5. Listen To The Music (WTSR)

6. Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy) (Vera/Staches)

7. Cover It With Gas And Set It On Fire (Vera)

8. Seconds (Vera)

9. Marble Tulip Juicy Tree (Staches)

10. Gladiola Heartbreaker (Vera)

11. Common Bitch (Staches)