Review of La Cucaracha by Ween

I get back from being out of town for a while and what do you know? Ween dropped a new album while I was gone. I feel so estranged from my good friends, who know what being a friend is, talking to a friend.

Let's look at my relationship over the years with the brothers Ween and their music.

In seventh grade, my eldest brother played Chocolate and Cheese in the car on the way to our piano lessons and it was one of those times when you listen to an album and immediately start committing it to memory.

I cringed at "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)" but somehow really liked it at the same time. Soon after I went out and bought the album, I believe it was the first album that I bought where I left for the mall with the sole intention to buy a specific CD.

I had of course bought CDs before that, but usually in a fashion of wandering around the racks until I noticed a band I had heard of.

Chocolate and Cheese was played at least once a day for the next couple months on my boom box. I learned the concept of panning from the bells in "Spinal Meningitis."

After that purchase, I eagerly acquired as much Ween as I could as quickly as I could. The order that ended up being: Pure Guava, God Ween Satan, The Pod. The first time I listened to my own copy of The Pod, I realized during "Awesome Sound" that I had heard it before. In the car on the way to the symphony years before, my brother's friend had been playing it. I only remembered the "Ouch. Hit me again!" part and thought it was funny. I didn't remember any of the other songs, though.

With every album that came out after that, I bought it the day it came out. The first time they came to Pittsburgh for the Mollusk tour, I counted down the days until the show.

By the time I saw them for their quebec tour, I had seen them more than ten times and that was around when I started getting burned out on Ween. So I took a break.

The Friends EP came out. I was slow on the uptake. However, I couldn't help blurting out "Friends" and "Slow Down Boy" seemingly at random. Now La Cucaracha is out. I'm listening to it right now. This is time four.

Let's step back a second for some critical analysis.

My household and general circle from which I plagiarize most of my written musical opinions are split. I would say that the majority of these people have been Ween fans. I would say that half of them are current Ween fans. A few have never liked Ween, and a few of them were fans, but consider the last couple albums as a remarkable decline.

Personally, I'm on both sides. (Flip flopper!) I realize that what made Ween famous was that they wrote crazy drug induced music on four track that could spontaneously disintegrate into hysterical laughter. I realize that they've lost the gritty lo-fi edge in a move towards serious song writing. And I realize that now, even though they've gone back to silliness, these songs are straight parody. I realize that they probably can't recreate what they did in their early albums.

But I still like it. I can't not like it. I've been listening to Ween too long not to like it. Even if I try to listen to it completely unbiased, as in "Would this be good if it were written by someone I already disliked, like Dave Matthews or something?" I still can't help but see the two non brothers smirking as they play, and it makes me smile.

They're going to start touring soon, I'm sure. I know they're playing close to my house towards the end of November, but I think I might be out of town for Thanksgiving. It's about time I went to a Ween show again, though. I feel the phase coming back. The phase that comes every time Ween puts out an album. I listen to all the albums again.

Boognish.