"WEEN, NOT HALLOW"

WEEN COULD VERY WELL BE the best thing that happened in 1991. Or did they happen in 1990? Actually, they've been playing, composing and recording for years, but their LP God Ween Satan-The Oneness entered the lives of we mortals in 1990/91.

I know many people for whom this album was a revelation, people who claim it changed or even saved their lives. It took me a good year after first hearing Ween to truly be able to appreciate them and now, finally, I submit to the overwhelming homestyle blender-fry that Gene and Dean Ween cook up out of post-Buttholes avant-brain-death, food obsessions, the '70s rock legacy, a stray Prince nod, and good old four-track technology.

And there's no way you could possibly understand, but there's a moment on God Ween Satan, where the songs "Old Man Thunder" and "Birthday Boy" exist, and some-where in the midst of those songs, be-tween the guitar scree and the stick to-yer-ribs pop distortion and the completely stoned Bob Seger references, more is said/felt/known about this age, this decade, this pre-millenium rock-idiot legacy in which we live, than has ever been said, by anyone, ever. And Ween themselves don't even get it. That, I suppose, is the beauty. Oh yeah. They've got a new record, The Pod (Shimmy-Disc). I'm still digging through it. Talk to me in a year.

THE ROCKET: Do people ask you where you got your name a lot?

DEAN WEEN: Yeah, people ask us about our name a lot, and what's the Boognish, and how we met each other.

Where'd you get your name?

It's kind of like "wuss" and "peen."

Do you seek to exorcise your child hood demons through your music?

Not really, we just channel them. We're in it for the duration now, there's no hope of getting rid of them. So you allow them to work for you. Yeah... I guess we're just a bridge between him and the people.

Him?

Boognish.

Did you have records previous to God Ween Satan?

There was one, it was on an independent label in Trenton, NJ, and one side was live and the other side was done on a...not even really on a four-track, like on a two-track, with 89 overdubs or something.

How do you play on stage with just two people?

It's pretty easy. We use a tape with drums, and just the two of us, and usually all fuckin' hell breaks loose ...it's pretty cool. I think with just the two of us it can get more out of control than with a six-person band.

Why is there so much negative energy towards women in your songs?

It kinda comes and goes...a lot of that is, we really have a ton of songs, a whole shitload of songs. We signed with Twin/Tone almost two years before God Ween Satan came out, and at the point where we signed, those songs were already two or three years old, and we didn't know if we should just bag all the songs up to a certain point and start from there or whether we could actually... We were always under the impression that we could be like Elvis Costello and put out a billion records, but it didn't work that way.

We didn't think it would take that long to release God Ween Satan, but by the time it came out, it was like the minds of two 14-year-olds, "You Fucked Up" is about Gene's step-mother, when he talks about the "nazi whore" and all that. We never thought we would have to answer for that, but people think it's sexist. We don't really write songs like that anymore.

How did that Pink Floyd bit get on the beginning and end of "Birthday Boy"?

That's "Echoes" from Live at Pompeil. We're pretty big Floyd-heads. We ran out of tape to record on, when we were using our four-track, so we started recording over our personal tape collection. We recorded over that, and a little bit snuck through on whatever track we weren't using.

Do you like the Butthole Surfers?

Yeah, of course, totally. The Butthole Surfers are one of the few great rock bands that I've lived through. I really like their stuff. I don't really listen to alternative music, but I consider them more of like a classic rock band. There's very few bands that I saw when I was growing up that made such an impression me, where I knew I was seeing the real shit.

We played with the Butthole Surfers in 1985. They caused a riot that night, and I think they set the club on fire by accident, and all the emergency lights came on and the power went out and they got banned from Trenton forever. That was about the most amazing shit we'd ever seen. We were 15 years old, it was one of our first club gigs. And there were many times, in high school, we'd get really fucked up and listen to Psychic... Powerless.

How long have you been playing together?

Since we were 13. Eight years.

One last question. What's a Scotch-guard powered bong?

Our friend on the cover of The Pod is doing one up. It's like a nitrous-powered bong, the whole chamber fills up with smoke and then you release the valve and the nitrous forces the smoke down your throat with the nitrous. Well, my friend invented this contraption with a footpedal, and once the chamber's full you step on the footpedal, and you're pretty much history after that. We probably shouldn't talk about it. I don't want to give anyone any funny ideas.

(Ween have a free show in Portland at the Reed College Commons 5/1, and are at the Offramp Cafe in Seattle 572.)