"The meaning of Ween"

It's just two guys who met in typing class and have set out to rule the music world.
Really.
So don't call them slackers.

One day, Ween will rule the world.

"I don't know if it will be now, or later," says Mickey Melchiondo, a.k.a. Dean Ween. "But every time we make a record, more and more people get the deal. All it takes is for people to get a little more punk-rock and open-minded. I know we're going to have a number-one hit."

"We're out for respect," adds Aaron Freeman, otherwise known as Gene Ween. "But when Chocolate and Cheese goes gold, we're each going to get massive boats to fish in. Like a hundred horsepower."

All things considered, Ween would rather be fishing. "We fish literally all the time," Melchiondo says. "We're out for bass. That's what we're after." (Never fear: They throw 'em back in.)

On this bright fall afternoon, Ween - the duo that will play the Trocadero on Friday night - can't get to Melchiondo's green aluminum junker on the glistening Delaware. The 24-year-old basement geniuses from New Hope have way too much to do.

First up for the food-obsessed pair - whose second Elektra album, Chocolate and Cheese, was preceded by 1992's Pure Guava, the CD that spawned that catchy and creepy radio hit "Push th' Little Daisies" - there's lunch. At a New Hope diner where they've eaten "approximately eight million times," Melchiondo and Freeman place identical orders: bacon cheeseburger with mustard (Ween's condiment of choice), fries with gravy and a side of cottage cheese.

After their repast, the mock-brothers - who have been inseparable since meeting in Mrs. Slack's typing class at New Hope - Solebury Junior High when they were 14 must hurry off to their studio in Pennington, N.J., to finish work on a collaboration with Eye Yamatsuka, lead singer of the Japanese avant-punk band the Boredoms.

"He's a Japanese space man. Really weird, but listenable, too," Freeman explains, in words that could also describe Ween's music.

Plus, there are preparations to be made for a tour that will probably include the Netherlands (where C&C's pseudo-Mexican revenge saga "Buenas Tardes Amigo" is shooting up the charts) and Australia (where "Push th' Little Daisies" was a Top 10 hit). For the first time, Ween will go out as a full band, eschewing the backup tapes employed in the past to play with ex-Rollins Band bassist Andrew Weiss and drummer Claude Coleman.

In other words, these Ween boys are busy men. Sure, the New Hope digs Melchiondo shares with his girlfriend are fully cabled, and the TV is loaded with Sega Genesis NHL '95. And he and Freeman (who now lives with his girlfriend across the river in Lambertville, N.J.) spent the morning building a massive pile of cigarette butts as they listened to music from Bootsy Collins to Frank Sinatra. ("Dude, this is Sinatra and Jobim. Check it out," says Melchiondo, wearing a wearing a vintage Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt.)

But Ween does not cleave to the slacker stereotype.

"Everybody tries to do that to you, because now there's a word for people our age," says Melchiondo. "Sure, we watch tons of cable and play tons of Sega. But we were doing this way before Wayne's World. We're two totally motivated individuals when it comes to our music. It's pretty insulting when people try to label you that way."

Melchiondo and Freeman have been serious about music ever since their fateful meeting a decade ago. They raided their parents' record collections, listening to Merle Haggard, Joni Mitchell, the Velvet Underground and the Mothers of Invention. They played in the high school band, Freeman on upright bass, Melchiondo on "auxiliary percussion" ("I was, like, a loser. I couldn't read music").

They took weekly trips to the Philadelphia Orchestra, and listened to the same tapes on headphones during the bus rides back and forth.

"We were just freaking out on music back then," Freeman says. Their uncles bought them Never Mind the Bollocks; Here's the Sex Pistols; and the Clash's London Calling. Soon, Melchiondo began seeing every all-ages show at Trenton's City Gardens - Husker Du, the Circle Jerks, the Butthole Surfers - and started a fanzine called Yuck. He and Freeman began recording their adolescent stoner-punk on tape machines in their bed-rooms. Just after graduating from high school, Melchiondo and Freeman played at a party in Maplewood, N.J., where they remember eating a big bucket of chicken. The other memorable thing that happened that night: They got discovered.

Next thing they knew, one of the party guests - an executive of Minneapolis' Twin Tone records - arranged for them to fly to Minnesota to sign a record deal. They didn't quit their jobs (Freeman did restaurant work, Melchiondo pumped gas at the local Mobil station), but they did decide to bail out on Bucks County Community College.

"We were just going there to please our folks," Melchiondo says. "And we never really concentrated on our studies, anyway. We concentrated on Ween."

God, Ween, Satan: The Oneness came out on Twin Tone in 1990, and was followed by The Pod on Shimmy Disc in 1991. Each was filled with an eclectic (to say the least) melange of funk, noise, folk, pop and electronically altered spoken strangeness that was consistently funny and frequently offensive. Nonetheless, you couldn't miss the catchy tunes behind the experimental silliness and sonic squall.

Melchiondo and Freeman were all set to pitch Pure Guava to another independent label when Steve Ralbovsky, a senior vice president for Elektra, approached them.

"They appealed to me because they write songs in such a broad variety of musical styles, and they do them all so well," says Ralbovsky, who heard about the duo through Elektra artist Chris Harford. "And if something is cool - whether it's hard rock or acoustic or funk - kids are going to know that's cool. The same kid can be into all those flavors."

Melchiondo says: "Once we realized that a major label was willing to put out something we had made on a four-track, we knew they were never going to mess with us. We've got complete creative control, down to our photos and our videos. We can make the music that we want."

For Chocolate and Cheese, released last month, Ween took the cash from Pure Guava (the album sold 100,000 copies), bought a fully equipped 24 track studio and set out to make the first Ween record that didn't sound like it was made in somebody's garage. "People think that we're into listening to all this crappy-sounding low-fi stuff," Freeman says. "But we like famous music, just like everybody else. Like Michael Jackson's Dangerous. We're into the classics. Prince, Neil Young, the Beastie Boys."

C&C moves them closer to the main-stream, a direction Melchiondo and Freeman expect will generate heat from what they see as their overly P.C. critics.

For starters, there's the C&C album cover, a female torso barely clad in a high-cut halter and cheesy Ween belt. Then there are such exercises in bad taste as "Spinal Meningitis Got Me Down," "Baby Bitch" and "The HIV Song."

They mean no harm, say the Ween-sters. For strength, they say, they look to bowhunter Ted Nugent, the Motor City Madman who is persecuted by animal-rights activists. "Without Ted Nugent, this world would suck," Melchiondo says. "You think he's worried about P.C. anything? He's out to rock and party, and there's nothing wrong with that."

There's plenty on C&C that sounds destined for the mainstream. The hyper-funky single "Voodoo Lady." The singer-songwriterly saunter of "Joppa Road." A Prince-like soul groove called "Spirit of 76" that's a tribute to the City of Brotherly Love. And a lyrical instrumental tribute to late Parliament guitarist Eddie Hazel, which shows off how talented a musician Melchiondo is

"We wanted to make a record that a secretary, a 14-year-old punker and your mother could all buy," Melchiondo says. "And I think we did it. The songs are a little quieter, and this record is very mellow and dark. But it's still totally Ween."