Thrill of Discovery: Ween - Part Six

Day 8: August 17^th, 2011 (cont’d)

The Mollusk



9:57 PM
“The Mollusk”

Hahahah this video is amazing. Wonderful and whimsical and kind of boring but legos! The spinny Sgt. Pepper band is great though.

Ween’s next genre exercise: prog rock. And fuck, fuck fuck fuck this is legitimately great. I remember this song from early college when I’d downloaded all the Ween albums off of someone in Hashinger Hall’s hard drive. That wonderful year, everyone had this program that let everyone else on the residence hall’s network download songs from everyone else’s iTunes library. It was amazing. And I had all the Ween and clearly never listened to it. Except for The Mollusk. I’m pretty sure I listened to this one because I remember this title track and “Ocean Man” and “Buckingham Green” being in some heavy rotation (but why not the album? WHY?!) The title track is great though. No dick jokes, no crude recording/crude humor. Just straight up whimsy. A song about a little boy and his mollusk. And some weird proggy stuff and THEN SOME FUCKING HORNS. This is just plain good. What happened, Ween?

“Mutilated Lips”

How did I neglect to mention the baller psychedelic elements of this jam? HOW GODDAMNIT HOW! A surprisingly competent and complementary fan video!

Oh there’s the trademark Ween-ness (is this called Brown-ness? Is this what the fans call it? I read that somewhere? The typical fuckedupness and weirdness that makes a Ween song a real motherfucking Ween song?), singin’ bout some lips that are all mutilated. Doesn’t make any sense really, the song that is, but that’s probably the point and it’s oddly catchy even with the weird high pitched counter-vocals. I remember this too from that one time I listened this album. Hmm.

“The Blarney Stone”

Fuck, how many times has Ween played this town? Also, you can always tell when it's a Deaner track (it's usually obvious but sometimes the vocal effects get in the way) but I was listening to this and I was totally like "This has Deaner's stains all over it." Nice. Shitty sound quality, but fun and goddamnit I wanna see this band live and I want to be very, very high. I think I might actually enjoy being high if I was at a Ween show compared to every other time I've been high and wanted to run home crying. Fuck, this looks like fun.

Oh man! Taking the piss out of an Irish drinking anthem this is great! “Got ooze in my pores my feet are all wet/ Got mold in my ears but I ain’t dead yet.” There’s something really funny about this in a way that seems to transcend the hardy har har novelty of a parody of a drinking song. It’s because it sounds legit. Like it could be a real thing. Like thousands of years from now this will be the only drinking song anyone will find and they will think they all sounded like this, even though it’s kind of a joke. (Note: Just read that each song has a “nautical theme.” Fun! Is this a sea shanty then?)

“It’s Gonna Be (Alright)”

Solo acoustic renditions of Gener's tender situations are the reason I keep listening to this stupid fucking band. So choice.

Aw shit, I love these. The ones where Gener puts on the wounded indie-rocker ballad face and fucking kills it (kills, in this case, means brings the house down on top of everyone’s broken hearts). This is probably his best one, well actually “Baby Bitch” is the best but this one is an immediate sensation. Or causes an immediate sensation. My “Aw shit bitch this my jam” sorta thing. But yeah, up there with “Birthday Boy” and “Don’t Laugh (I Love You)” and “Sarah.” It’s like every once in a while Gene and Ween realize that they need to just play it straight. Just for a second. Capitalize on the fact that they’re excellent, innovative musicians and that he’s an excellent songwriter and just play for the squares.

“The Golden Eel”

What a hilarious looking band. Gene looks like he has pink eye and/or hasn't slept in days and is practically the opposite of what a rock star looks like. And Dean looks like...well, he just looks like a dude covered by shadows. WAY MORE ROCK STAR BRO!

Fuck this album is epic sounding. Who knew they had it in’em? I mean, certainly the seeds for this album (which I’ve read is at least Deaner’s favorite) must have been there the whole time, but goddamn this is just really fun and it sounds great. Who would have ever thought Ween made an album with some top-notch production? Granted, the two previous albums sound pretty great but here, with all this wild fun stuff going on it sounds spectacular.

“Buckingham Green”

I would go see Ween and they would play this song and I would probably scream like a little girl and think about that time I saw GBV and how this was like that (not ever as great, natch) and I would realize why I now hate going to shows: Because they'll never be as great as the really, really great ones because the other bands just don't try hard enough. This has the insane fucking monumental moments you SHOULD expect from every show you go to goddamnit.

Fuck, I might as well put the whole goddamned album on this entry because every song is so fucking good. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome. Maybe my music snobbery has backfired on me, and well, maybe that started at GodWeenSatan if I made it this far. I mean, it’s not that at all. I’m not my fiancé who will dismiss anything if she doesn’t like the first chord, but it has been a trial. A trial I wouldn’t have fucking undergone if I hadn’t thought it would payoff. And this is the goddamned payoff, right here. “Buckingham Green” is a towering behemoth ready to crush you with its greatness. Everything Ween was ever capable of doing encapsulated in this fucking monster jam. Everything after this is probably just leftover shit escaping the bowels of a dead body. Ok, probably not, but you know how good this song is? How? How! How if the band isn’t fundamentally great, then how can they put out a song this good? Fuck. I’m a sucker for this orchestral bullshit.

“Ocean Man”

Cute video. Was afraid I was gonna have to start posting those usually awful (occasionally awesome but mostly kind of why-did-you-feel-the-need-to-do-that? covers people like to post that I usually use when I can't find a proper video.

OH YEAH AND THEN THERE’S OCEAN MAN. A song that gets stuck in my head once a month. Just good old fashion fun about a man from the ocean! AN OCEAN MAN! What a just super solid jam on a just plain fucking outstanding record.

AND OF FUCK!!!:

Oh sweet fucking christ this is incredible. I'm now having a flashback to the one time I watched this abomination of a film which now seems like less of an abomination because Ween has the greatest shameless advertising cameo I've ever seen by anyone ever.