Peter Frampton, Kiss, and now Ween.

After twisting the alternative universe inside out for some 15 years now, the oddball duo has decided that the time is right to capture that legacy on a double live album. But don't expect the arena-romp of other double live efforts on "Paintin' The Town Brown."

Instead of capturing one night of onstage glory, Dean and Gene Ween have gone rifling through days gone by, weeding through years' worth of DATs to cobble together a collage of the many strange and previously uncharted musical lands they have visited in their career. The guys slam together tracks from their tour with seasoned Nashville session players next to cuts from their drug-numbed first-ever tour in Holland. The result (as the brothers Ween readily admit) isn't always pretty, but then again, neither is Ween.

Dean and Gene Ween (who aren't really brothers, but play them on TV) recently chatted with MTV News' Robert Mancini about revisiting what is often a forgotten past to put together the collection. The duo also talked about the benefits of having an anal retentive soundman, stealing back one of their songs from Phish, and why they're better than ever... really... they mean it this time.

Enjoy...

MTV News: Why did you guys decide at this point to go back and weed through all this stuff and put together a live collection?

Dean Ween: Well, we didn't, actually. The idea was that we started up this online merchandise page at the Ween Web site, because we wanted to sell T-shirts and hats, and we openly encouraged taping our shows, and you can video or whatever. You could bring in a mobile unit for all that we care.

So kids started trading all this stuff that they accumulated over the years, but they all had audience tapes. I mean, we were all conscious about it. All the Web sites were out there, so we decided that it would be a good idea if we put out the board tapes, you know, the soundboard tapes. There were things that we knew were really good, so we asked our label, Elektra... if we could do a limited run CD basically only for our fan club, they could only get it through the Ween Web site.

[Elektra] gave us the go-ahead, so we went and compiled the record and edited it and all that, and when they heard it, they said that they wanted to release it. It went from being this limited thing to being an international release. It started as one idea, but what it ended up as was a entire different thing, but... it's very rock 'n' roll, the double live CD, so I'm staying behind it.

MTV: So what kind of shape was this stuff in when you started weeding through it?

Gene Ween: Kirk Miller, the soundman that we have had since 1989, I guess, or '90... he is, like, an ex-Deadhead, and he is in the school of taping and has taped literally every show that we have done since 1980 to '90, so he keeps them all in crates.

Dean: I don't want to dis on Kurt, but you know what I'm talking about... it's anal. We might get a tape from him, like, from a really good show, just to have it, and over the years we have accumulated a bunch of funny tapes and things. But I went over to his house and said, "Kurt, let me see what you have," and he had them, like, in a numbered filing system, and he handed me this laminated booklet that listed the shows and the dates.

Gene: Yeah. He takes it very seriously, dude.

Dean: He didn't even want to give me the damn tapes back, and it is our band. He wrote down every tape that I borrowed.

Gene: Right.

MTV: So how did it feel to sort of revisit your past and the development of the band through this project?

Dean: It was about as much fun as getting wisdom teeth pulled, to tell you the truth.

Gene: Honestly, I can't do it. I listen to it once, and that's about it. It's hard when you actually perform the stuff to listen to it back, because you just pick apart everything. So I just keep away from that thing.

Dean: I think the stuff that's on the record sounds great, and it sounds great when you listen to it or something, but going through it.... I think what happens most of the time is that when you listen to a live cassette you have this great memory, but when you listen to a normal cassette, you don't get the visuals and the energy, and maybe it doesn't even sound good or something. I don't know, it's like watching home movies... your parents at a New Year's Eve party when you were, like, fifteen. That's about how gratifying and artistic it was.

MTV: What did you notice about the progression of your playing over the years?

Dean: I think we started out pretty well and then got worse for, like, five years, but then picked it back up on the country tour. That stuff was, like, the most incredible tour, because... it happened so fast, and we did like two days of rehearsal with all these strange older guys from Nashville, and our first gig was two days later in Nashville, and then we were on tour for a month, so we never really got to listen to the music and hear what was going on. Because, you know, I'm playing guitar, and he's singing, and when you listen back to it, there is, like, nine guys playing fiddles and piano and pedals and sounds, and that stuff sounded the best of all of it.

MTV: After going back through this stuff, did you rediscover any material that you now want to work back into your live show?

Dean: I did gain something from the whole thing. We had bigger balls. I was listening to something we made ten years ago, what we played, and how we played it, and it was really fresh, and there was really no reason to when we would play which songs. It was really random, but yeah, there's a few things, I guess.

Dean: Phish started playing one of our songs. They played it all the time, "Roses Are Free." We never really played, but when we heard them playing it, we were like, "We can do it better than that," so we started playing it.

Gene: Expect some new surprises for our upcoming tour. It will sound better than ever.

Dean: Totally. This is probably the best. If you ever come to a Ween show, come on this tour. Bring money.

Gene: Yeah, bring the money. Buy your little sister a ticket.