WEEN Hints At 30th Anniversary Chocolate & Cheese Performance

My first exposure to WEEN had to have come through watching Beavis and Butthead crack wise about the music video for “Push Th’ Little Daisies” from the group’s 1992 LP, Pure Guava. Despite the clip starting with Butthead demanding to know, “What the hell is this crap?!” and with the cartoon miscreants concluding that “[Gene Ween] IS a loser” and that “These guys got no future,” the duo from New Hope, PA definitely sparked enough in me to have me curious. Ultimately, Pure Guava, would also become the first WEEN album that I would ever listen to, when friends played it for me during a Willy Wonka‘s Wonderous Boat Ride-style psilosybin trip melting into the light-blue shag backseat covers of a Datsun 2010. Somewhere between that first exposure through an MTV animated program and my mutating brain trying to process tracks like “Reggaejunkiejew,” Pumpin 4 The Man,” and “Don’t Get (2 Close 2 My Fantasy),” I had already begun associating WEEN with their 1994 followup, Chocolate And Cheese, before ever hearing a single song off of it. Seeing that CD displayed at a local record store as a teenage boy seemed almost dangerous. The cover art featuring the massive Boognish belt strapped below some of the most iconic underboob in history is a memory that was seared so deeply into my mind that it has never left me in the 3 decades since I experienced it. In fact, today marks 29 years since Chocolate and Cheese first hit shelves at Sam Goody and Camelot Music stores in malls across America and, based on a new social media post by the album’s creators, the boys have something up their sleeves for its 30th anniversary next year.

Earlier today, the band uploaded the following 3 images in a post that appeared on both their Instagram and Facebook accounts

The posts consist of just these images without any caption, but the clues seem pretty straightforward. The decision not to acknowledge the current anniversary today, but to give a heads up for the 30th a full year from now is an interesting one, but clearly effective — they’ve got me writing about it, after all. Of course, the mention of a location is the most telling aspect, since it implies that some sort of notable event will be taking place and Philly is home territory for Dean and Gene.

The assumption that at least part of the celebration — if not the entire thing — would involve them covering Chocolate and Cheese live in its entirety is a logical one, as there is definitely a precedent of them doing such things. In fact, this wouldn’t even be the first time that the Brothers WEEN have performed the full album live; they actually did that very thing for their set at Desert Daze back in 2019. WEEN is known for playing incredibly long shows, so pulling this card for a festival slot works perfectly. They had a 2-hr slot available to them and the album is 55 minutes long, so they played the entire thing sequentially and then came back for an encore of 4 non-album cuts to close things out. [Someone seems to have recorded it, so if you feel inclined to watch the whole thing, you can do that below.]

I didn’t attend that festival, but I was fortunate enough to see them give a similar treatment to The Mollusk when they played in Bend, Oregon, two years prior. Without any sort of heads-up, they band through all 14 songs from the album and then went on to play 16 more unrelated tunes without ever taking a set break. I later traveled to Nashville the following year to see them play two nights at The Ryman Auditorium, the former home of The Grand Ole Opry. For these special shows, the guys reunited with a troupe of prolific all-star Nashville session musicians dubbed The Shit Creek Boys who had accompanied them on their 1996 release, 12 Country Golden Greats, along with its supporting tour. Although they did perform numerous tunes from the country album, they were scattered about the setlists and mixed in among the rest of their catalog. While amazing, those shows were much more about the historic venue and the players involved than it was any sort of true presentation of the album itself. The only other release that I can think of that they’ve revisited in full for a concert was God Ween Satan, evidenced by the live album that was released in 2016, yet recorded in 2001 on its 11-year anniversary. The fact that that show was recorded at John And Peters, the very New Hope bar that they cut their teeth at, indicates that, although we have the recording of the event, not too many fans were actually in attendance to experience it.

Chocolate And Cheese is arguably one of the band’s most celebrated releases and it also marked some major shifts for them at the time. After getting a deal with Elektra as part of the post-Nirvana indie group signing frenzy of that era, WEEN already had their first major label release behind them. That said, Pure Guava was still created using the same relatively lo-fi approach as their previous albums, which consisted of them using a 4-track to hammer everything out as a duo. With C&C, Aaron “Gener” Freeman and Mickey “Deaner” Melchiondo delivered their most polished studio album to date, in large part because it was the first time the production actually involved a studio. Much like the bitter folks that claim Pavement ceased to matter after original drummer, Gary Young (R.I.P.) was booted from their ranks, you can still find old-school fans claiming that the “real” WEEN died after they expanded their lineup, shifting to a full live band and away from performing as nothing but a duo accompanied by a DAT machine. Freeman and Melchiondo still handled the lion’s share of the instrumentation themselves, but Chocholate and Cheese is notable for having producer, Andrew “Mean Ween” Weiss contributing, as well as Claude Coleman, who has remained their official drummer ever since. This was the early point in the metamorphosis where they finally started to be viewed as a more legitimate musical force by anyone beyond their core fanbase. Plus, a song as infectious as “Voodoo Lady” is hard to deny, even by the most ardent of naysayers. If it wasn’t, then it wouldn’t have been included on the soundtrack for such vapid douche-boy comedies as “Road Trip” and “Dude Where’s My Car?”

These days, WEEN is touted for their undeniable musicianship and widely recognized as a mindblowing force as a live act, if not one of the greatest. I would personally love to experience a full live performance of The Pod or Pure Guava, and, who knows, maybe it’s not too late for those earlier releases to receive that treatment, anniversary or not. But whether or not that ever happens, the idea of hearing the fake brothers deliver “Spirit Of 76” in the City of Brotherly Love couldn’t be more perfect. I know it’s still just speculation at this point, but it’s also fairly solid speculation. I’m already imagining what type of related merch they could potentially break out for this one when they blow the roof off of Philly next year… hypothetically, of course.