"ween scene"

Ever sit alone on a hot sticky noon with flies on your dick?

Ween have, and they've written a song about it called you guessed it 'Flies On My Dick'. What is Ween? Two American boys obsessed with their weenies? Not quite. Dean  and Gene are a couple of four-track home recording nuts who've been making Ween music ever since they met in Junior High nine years ago. Pure Guava is their major label debut. 18 songs with peculiar titles ('I Play If Off Legit', 'Poop Ship Destroyer', 'The Stallion Pt. 3') and music to match. As for the vocals - is it a girl? Is it a redneck? Is it Bill and Ted on an excellent drug? No it's Dean or Gene sped up or slowed down while the musical accompaniment blurps and screeps unsteadily, dipping to heavy distorted guitar one minute, spiralling away in a high-pitched helium haze the next. You would never guess that these guys dig Metallica.

Now I'm talking to Dean Ween at home in Pennsylvania. His voice, unadulterated by technology, sounds like a confident Jonathan Richman. He punctuates every second sentence with a big fat meaty cough, hinting at unhealthy personal habits.

So Dean, you and Gene have been making music together since the day you met. Did you care if other people ever heard it?

Dean coughs.

"It was more just to entertain ourselves, really, but it was pretty good. Somebody gave us a gig in Trenton, New Jersey and we went over really well and so we kept playing gigs and it just went on from there. All the record labels we've been on have come to us. We never have tried to do anything yet for ourselves."

Are you fascinated by making noises and experimenting with sounds?

"No, more just hearing our own voices on tape."

Do you like 60s pop? Some of your songs are like distorted, hellium-zapped versions of sweet 60s pop.

"Ah well, we like all kinds of music really. We could never really pinpoint we don't like alternative music, I can tell you that. We don't like underground college rock or whatever. I don't know what the scene is like in New Zealand. We have like this bad college radio and everybody they listen to all this crap. We like rock music, we like rock and roll and we like everything, jazz, rock and heavy metal, but we don't listen to underground alternative music. That just happens to be the circuit we're on."

You mean the "grunge" scene.

"Yeah, none of that shit. I mean, I don't like any of that new music at all. I like Michael Jackson records and Prince and things like that. I don't listen to alternative music at all. Neither does Gene."

Do you like Led Zep and Black Sab?

"Yeah, definitely, actually. They're the bands that made me want to make music. It certainly wasn't any of those underground bands."

This is interesting, because 90% of the er, "songs" on Pure Guava are un-rock, veering from the John-Lennon-in-heaven-isms of 'Sarah' to the retarded leer of 'Flies On My Dick' (though live there's a lot more heavy guitar, says Dean). These songs are like evil nursery rhymes, the aural equivalent of those teeth-snapping dolls that menace Jane Fonda at the beginning of Barbarella. So do Ween have a nasty side?

"Sure!" says Dean enthusiastically. "Definitely. It all depends on how you feel when you go to record. If you're really pissed off then, that's (laughs) you know.....

Someone told me that on your first album some of your lyrics are a bit misogynist. Do you think that's true?

"Yeah, we take a lot of flak. With each record someone's got a problem with something. Our first record, a lot of the songs were written when we were like 15 or 16 years old. A lot of times the women that are getting railed on on the first album are like Gene's stepmother!"

I laugh, Dean laughs.

"Nah, we're not misogynist or sexist or anything like that. You gotta be careful. It's like everybody's so politically correct. I don't know. I think it's just paranoia these days. Everyone's very quick to call us racist or misogynist or something. We're nothing like that."

My informant, who saw Ween in New York recently, also said they appeared to have a bit of a redneck following. Dean says they might have been attracted by the single 'Push The Little Daisies" ("the ugly side of us"). But Ween also attract the sort of people who bring them food and place it on the stage. Dean and Gene gather up the good stuff and leave the lousy stuff. This is now a Ween tradition.

You sound like you're singing under the influence of various, er, things. Is helium one of them?

"It's not really helium. Oh I don't know [chuckles]. A lot of people don't realize that when you're done with a song you have the option to listen to it at like a million different speeds, so a lot of times we'll record a song it'll sound normal - oh look" suddenly Dean sounds alert. He goes off the line. He comes back. "We're on TV right now. Hold on a second."

He holds the phone away. Laughs. "MTV. We're on this cartoon show. There's cartoon characters reviewing our video."

Indeed, I can hear cartoon voices jabbering above the wheedling chorus of 'Push The Little Daisies."

"Hah, we suck." says Dean.

("These guys have no future!" cackles the cartoon voice in the background). Then a Janet Jackson video comes on and Dean's back on the line.

Wow it must be weird seeing yourselves on TV. Are you famous now?

"Well no, not really, no. I'm not usually impressed by, uh, by, uh, to me being famous is like [coughs] being like, I dunno, Barbara Streisand is famous, I think."

What's your favourite piece of equipment?

"My favourite piece of equipment of all time? The distortion pedal."

I read an article that said you and Gene are like smarter versions of Wayne and Garth. Do you think that's fair?

"No, I think that's a real piece of shit and anybody who says that should be just killed immediately."

It said you were like knowing versions of those two.

"People are very quick to say that kind of shit. I mean, of course they couldn't say we're like Simon and Garfunkel or something really nice like that. Instead we have to be like two idiots, you know."

Why do you use fake names then?

"Cos we started out as Dean and Gene Ween. If anyone asks my name I just tell them. We've never been very secretive about our real identity but now I would feel like Elvis Costello calling himself Declan MacMannus. Like I'm taking myself so seriously. It's like when Kiss took off their masks, you know, that was the worst thing that ever happened."

Are you two hippies?

"It all depends what classifies a hippy. We're pot smokers but we're not very politically correct. I mean, we're not really politically incorrect. We drink every day, we both smoke like tons of cigarettes. We're not really left wing liberals or anything like that, we're more like scumbags, I think."

Scumbags who are building their own studio and releasing their fourth album, courtesy of Elektra. Oh to be living in America! Are you opting for more sophisticated production this time?

"Well yeah, yeah. It's so funny cos a lot of people make all these assumptions. We've done our last two albums on four track at home and because of that people make all these assumptions about us but if we'd had a 16 track at home we would have done it on that. It's just the best we could get our hands on for no money and it paid off because we can really work a four track, it's really easy, we're masters of the four track."

And the next Ween album - what's it gonna be like Dean?

"It'll be great, that's all I can say, it'll just be great."