Bandsplain - Ween with Alex Pappademas

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Alex Pappademas returns to explain Ween, America’s first and only band "sprouted from the demon-god Boognish," and the one-of-a-kind bond between Boognish’s earthly conduits, Gene and Dean Ween. Alex’s book on Steely Dan, Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, Babylon Sisters, and Other Soul Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan is out in 2022 on University of Texas, Austin Press. You can follow Alex at @pappademas on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplane. Welcome to Bansplaine. I am your host, Yossi Salick. This is a show where smart, well-respected experts come on to explain cult bands. Today's episode is about maybe one of the cultiest of cult bands, ween. If you don't know what wean sounds like, you're not any of the men I have previously dated. Here is what ween sounds like. Today's guest is a repeat band slainer. Your friend and mine, maybe not mine, unclear, Mr. Alex Papadimus.

Hello, Yossi. I'm a huge fan. Come on. I wouldn't have come back. I did it once and, you know, if I didn't, if I had not had a great time the first time, you wouldn't be seeing me. in this little window right now. I was chided by my team for sending you several voice memos that said good morning and good afternoon in an extremely high volume in a weird voice and they were like, that's not what you should do in professional context with the guests. I felt like a coveted guest when I got those voicemails. For those of you listening, producer Dylan is pushing me to explain that Alex texted me good afternoon and then I send him a voice memo that said, good up. And he's still here so give it up for Alex Papanema. A saint. Alex, you love Ween. You are not one of the men I

previously dated. However, you do also love Ween. Did you know that was a type? Do you feel like you seek it out? Yes. What do you think that quality is? I think maybe like a good sense of humor about the world and maybe about themselves. That's interesting. Would you agree? I mean, sure. Do you think humor belongs in music? This is the question. That's a really tough question. I mean, it's kind of like, do props belong in comedy? I don't know, to each their own, you know?

Like, I like Weird Alliancovic as much as the next person. So when it works, it works. All right. Some bands are funny, right? I mean, I know wean is like... Yes, I would say that. I would say that. More than most funny, but some bands are just kind of incidentally funny.

Blink 182 is a good example. Where are you? Alex, tell me about Ween. Who is Ween? Who are Ween? Who, they, them? Yase, I'm glad you asked. Ween are Mickey Melichando

and Aaron Freeman, better known as Dean and Gene Ween. They met in 1984 in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where they're both from, that is a town on the Pennsylvania, Jersey border. The tri-state area, if you will. They meet in typing class when they're, I think, like, 14, 15 years old. And they start making music together very quickly.

Mickey is sort of more of the classic rock guy. Aaron's more of the weird music guy. But they connect really quickly over stuff like Devo and the Dr. Demento radio show. He was a nationally syndicated radio personality who was known for, if you had a novelty song for like 40, 50 years. and you wanted to break a novelty song. Pre-internet, you took it to the Dr. Demento show, and he could make or break your career as a novelty songwriter.

So that's where fishheads by Barnes and Barnes comes from. Fish heads, fish heads, roly-po. You know, just a lot of just really sort of, you know, a lot of pre-internet viral phenomena, these novelty hit songs. You know, Weird Al gets his big break. I think Weird Al's big break is like sending his demo to Dr. Demento. pretty much discovered him. He pretty much. Yeah, Alfred Yankovic. I used to get like 25, 30 tapes every week. And one of the cassettes that came in was this one from Alfred Yankovic, Littinwood, California. Belvedere cruising.

Incredible. Apparently, it is still, it's still a show, although only online. Woo, whoa, wind up your Facebook. Yeah, that makes sense. They start recording music at home, relatively quickly with the skills that they have. So it's like a, you know, open chord tune guitar, so you can kind of just clamp it wherever, and that's a chord and drums. And they produce a lot of sort of self-released cassette music relatively quickly before there's any kind of, you know,

commercial sort of wean music that you can buy. So they release a bunch of cassettes. There's an EP, I think, called Live Brain Wedgy, I think is the first one. And they make You know, could find it now Probably worth $500 million.

The first record comes out on twin-tone records in 1990 It's called God wean Satan, the on oneness. It is 70 minutes long, 26 songs. The figure on the cover is this deity that they've created called Bugnish, who's sort of good and evil. who's sort of good and evil and in the Ween mythology, he's the figure that sort of appears

to the two gentlemen who form Ween and tells them to form a band in his service. They're credited as Dean Ween and Gene Ween on this record and will be sort of known that way for a long time. And it's an incredible record. Little Spanish Eddie. Black Jack.

Sure. They're really trying to play well. There's like a classic rock element to it. And it's not, it's sort of, it, there's not a spirit of destruction. They're not like anti-rock music. They're sort of honoring their classic rock roots with the sort of limited skill set that they have. This might be one of those rare episodes where like I'm rendered speechless, a lot of this. Which part of that?

Would you like to revisit? I'm like still, I'm like still process. I'm like, I'm still in junior high typing class. And, you know, trying to move through the demon. That is it's half angel, half demon. The fact that wean is a, I don't want to say, it's not a portmanteau, but a made-up word combining the words, Woos and Penis, which you didn't say, but I found on the Wikipedia. And I thought it was important to mention.

It is, although I am convinced, and I've never, I've never been able to confirm or deny this. But when I was a kid, there was a science fiction novel I read. There was a Tom Swift novel where there's a kind of a brain-eating creature. that comes up to try to kill Tom Swift at one point. And the sound that it makes is ween, ween, wean. It's represented in the text like W-E-E-E-N. And I'm always convinced that that had some thing to do with it. Okay, so this first record comes out on Twin Tone,

but it is not available on streaming. Do we know why? I don't know why. Their whole catalog is in a weird place because at some point, like they go on to it. a major label phase of the wean career and then there's a post major label phase and it seems unclear even to the members of wean like who owns what exactly they've had their own record label for a long time now and everything they're putting out these days comes out on their own label but

a couple of years ago a weird thing happened and you'll see like the first thing that you see when you look at ween on spotify is a best of called bananas and blow which was assembled apparently without their knowledge by whoever sort of like has control of the records that are excerpted on there. And so there is weirdly, there's material from all the way back to the first record on that. But

it was one of those things where you look online and like they had to disclaim it. They're like, we didn't have anything to do with this. We don't know. So they're one of those bands that's in a weird place catalog-wise in terms of streaming just because I think there's, you know, orphaned by many record label changes and probably it's one of those things where nobody at the label

remembers that they have the wean catalog except that there is this one song. I looked it up because there's, you know, for this show, I wanted to do like, what's the most popular Ween song? And I thought I knew the answer, but it's not the song that I thought it was. There is a, the song Ocean Man was in a Honda commercial a few years ago, which they also didn't, the guys in Wien apparently had nothing to do with. Yeah. It's like, it plays in this like a 30 second Honda commercial where like a guy is walking on the beach and distracted by some girls playing volleyball, and then he's distracted from the volleyball girls by a really nice Honda. And then Richard Dreyfus comes on as like, the attractive civic cool from Honda.

Oh. And Ocean Man is the soundtrack for that. It's also in the SpongeBob movie. Okay. You're getting far ahead of yourself, Alex. I think this is, like, look, this is a way to talk about the very strange place of wean in pop culture. Right. But forever, over the years, because like, they have these sort of.

weird brushes with fame that despite doing like pretty much anything you could do to make yourself like an acquired taste that nobody was going to want to pay attention to but they keep having these weird moments where they kind of stumble into the spotlight again in in some strange way. I mean, I imagine these days they probably made $14 from that Honda commercial, but like there is something about they have a way of like sticking to the culture even though they don't seem to care about it at all. Like they do not seem to have cared at all about being. popular or, you know, making this into a career. And yet it became one. Well, in the absence of being able to listen to this first album, songs, sadly, shakes fist at streaming.

Are there a couple of songs you want a clip? L-M-L-Y-P. The Prince, partial cover of Shakadelica with elements of Alphabet Street. Why don't we hear a little clip of that? Yeah, that's funky. Yeah. I'll see myself. We can move on from that, though. It's weird because that one's not, it's, we don't need to dwell on it because it's not actually, it's sort of the most representative in that like it introduces you to all of the elements that will be present in Wien going forward. But it was not the first one that I heard. It's not the first one that I really fell in love with. It was sort of hard to find.

And one big difference between the first one and the next two, basically, is that the first one's done, I think, in a studio or at a house with, like, live drums. And after that, they moved out of their parents' homes and into apartments. And so they had to change their sound because they had neighbors. And, like, neighbors would have freaked out if you're, like, playing the actual drums in your home. And so it becomes much more on the next two records, it becomes much more kind of drum machine driven and kind of like a... instead of real job. Yeah, like a weird, it becomes the weird bedroom project that people sort of thought of wean as being when they first emerged. Right. I just want to point something out real quick before I move on just because I'm fascinated by this and I would love someone to do a podcast

or an article about this. This first, well, whatever, first in quotes, like actual release of wean was reviewed by Entertainment Weekly. I just want you to... Was it really? Yes. And they Got a B plus. And whoever the fuck was in charge of music at Entertainment Weekly in the like early to mid-90s was like really fucking cool. Yeah. There used to be more criticism in places. Like there used to things used to be just like, oh, you might be interested in this. Like people used to review more records, you know.

And like it wasn't, you know. I've opened. I've opened a can of worms. Yeah. Now it's J-school. Yeah. Let's not go down this road. Here's the thing you have to understand about arts coverage.

in America. I don't know even what that voice is. Ween has pivoted to drum machines. They have pivoted to drum machines. The pod comes out in 1991. The pod is the name of the apartment where they recorded it. The previous ones on Twin Tone, which is like a sort of iconic Midwestern indie rock label. It's where the replacements were on. But this one's on Shimmie disc.

It's a different kind of like it's a strain of American indie rock comes out on Shimmy disc that is much more sort of like New Yorkie and arty and less. It's stuff that's not sort of college music. It doesn't sound like R.E.M. Nirvana. So it's like things that kind of don't make the big sort of jump to light speed when grunge happens necessarily. But it's like King Missiles on there and Guar and Daniel Johnston and the boredoms. And so that's who their label mates are in this moment. Do you feel that's why they left Twin Tone as to like, they were like, oh, this makes this fits better for us? I guess I'm trying to contextualize them a little bit. Right. This record is much more sort of moody and murky and kind of bad drugs than the first one. I think it's

really great, but it took me a while to sort of get into it. But then it's become one of my favorite ones, but like it is absolutely like a sort of right mood kind of thing. Okay. Why don't you pick a song to play off of it? And then I want to ask you more about why it took you time to get into it, why it was an acquired taste, if you will. All right. Let's play Demon Sweat. You are listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments live together in gorgeous harmony only on Spotify. Guess what? You can also create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor, Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm slash music and talk. That's anchor.fm slash music and talk. That was Demon's Sweat.

I want the listeners to know the two things that happened. Well, I mean, really, it's one thing. But what's your reaction first? I want to know. No, no, please. Are you going to tell them about how you were a guitar soloing? No, but my favorite moment is one. First of all, that song is a builder.

It takes a while to go anywhere. But then once it goes somewhere, I just hear Yasi go, oh, no. Like, here's the guitar solo that I've been told is coming, and it's here, and this is what it sounds like. and I'm so upset. Oh, no. Listen. And the only other thing I wanted to comment was that I did, this was the first time I noticed listening to this song

that it's clearly not only is it drum machine, but it's live drum machine, which means it's not a loop, it's somebody is pushing a button twice here and there for like a little hand clap and then just not doing anything for the rest of the recording, which I think is great.

That was like a creative choice. You know, maybe it's the technical and creative of choices that kind of there's a lot of blurring of those lines in wean especially in early wean and in a lot of home recording like is this a you know is this do we mean to do that you know as it goes forward though things like that will be sort of a signature like there will just be something that's a little bit off in all of these songs even as they get more professional sounding so like that's that becomes kind of part of the sound it becomes part of the signature well Alex while i was listening i went on a journey because at first I was like, okay, they like Prince.

I get it. I feel you. This feels like a kind of a watered down homage to Prince, not in a bad way. And then we took a sharp left into guitar solo land. Which is a land that Prince dwells in a lot of the time. Sure, sure. But I don't know that. And it was like almost like, like you're saying like,

butt rock and prints smushed together into and then like you know pushed out of a sausage into a sausage casing of that guitar solo is how I felt about it yeah I think you're getting it

I think you're figuring all of these threads are kind of coming together it's butt rock and it's prints and I think the difference is and it's hardcore punk and it's like you know sort of bedroom drum machine you know lofi kind of stuff and there's no one there's no one thing that's the dominant and they're not using any of them to sort of mock any of the other ones like if it sounds like parody it's because they're you know it's their ineptitude that makes it kind of sound like a parody of those things it sounds like it sounds like homage yeah it comes from an absolute place of love and I think that's the difference is that people bringing in classic rock elements into their sound like when sort of guise this age at this time in like the indie rock world like you know you're

Usually there was a protective sort of coding of mockery and irony. Right. Let's like zoom out for a second and contextualize wean like in the culture at this time. I assume from how you were talking about it, you came to this album later. Like it wasn't the first one you got into. But like how are people knowing and finding out about these records besides the Entertainment Weekly review, which I'm sure sent many people to the store to purchase Godwin Satan, the oneness? As rushing out to Tower Records or something, like beating down the doors. Warehouse music.

Yeah, no, they're playing little places. People hate them a lot of the time. They're playing around, like, New Jersey. There's a really amazing YouTube clip. They were playing at this one club called City Garden in Trenton, New Jersey a lot around the time that one of my heroes in life, Henry Rollins and the Rollins band are sort of during Henry Rollins kind of New Jersey period. because there's a connection between Wien and the Rollins band because a guy named Andrew Weiss, who played and produced a lot of the early Wien stuff,

ended up being one of the playing with Henry Rollins and the Rollins band. And there's this amazing rant where he gets up, Rollins gets up on stage after a Wien performance that has not been well received and just basically tells everyone that you're morons for not understanding how great this was and in 10 years you're going to be bowing down on the altar of Wien. Out of total darkness comes one, one, one, one, one ray of light. And it's fucking wean.

Rollins also famously said we're not to listen to electronic music. So he's had several different kinds of opinions throughout the years. And Rollins band, would you not say kind of a funny band? I am a giant Henry Rollins fan. I will not hear any slight. That was not a slight. Don't you think they're kind of funny? I do. I got to interview Henry Moulton's once and because I literally can't help myself and I don't know why I'm like this. It was like a very serious interview about charity work he was doing with like Clean Water Foundation. And I don't know what we were really chatting about. I think I might have asked him if like all the touring gets lonely or something or like what his routine is. I don't even remember. And he was like, well, you know, every morning like I have this routine and I get up. And I do my exercises and I like work out. And I was like, wait, you work out.

And it took him like a beat. And he was like, no, I. And then he started laughing and it was really good. Great man. Fine man. Love him. Love all his work. I love his fanatic books.

He had a long great radio show. Anyways, neither here nor there. Good taste. Loved wean. Which I think is hilarious. Loved we like. Often, you know, I feel like he likes all the things that you would sort of imagine him to like.

and if you're a fan of him and all, you know what he's into. But then you find out that he's really into ween. And then at some point I read that he was really, when they toured with the Beastie Boys, he was super into the song Eggman. And like each time the song Eggman played in the set, each time the Beastie Boys played the song Eggman, he'd be, Rollins would be in the wings doing like a little Rollins dance. Like he would have a little dance that he would do just for Eggman. He just loved Eggman.

Prodigital would like to know, what are Dean and Gene like? I have previously been on this show to talk about. Steely Dan and they weirdly remind me of Steely Dan because you get the impression that it's two guys who found each other and share this incredibly strange sensibility and that that would probably be a really lonely existence if you were not able to you know to find your sort of opposite number they're not bros but there's something sort of there's something sort of broy about them I think by today's standards and you know they're a little bit they they're a little bit they they have a little bit of like I think of them as being like the missing link musically but also sensibility wise between like Frank Zappa and South Park.

Okay. I think we are sort of amusing each other. You know, there's something about it being a duo and being sort of like you're overhearing the kind of brain voices of these two people sort of, you know, communicating while very on drugs a lot of the time in the early days. Like having that sort of psychic bond. there's a really good story that I heard about them once where they are, I guess, working on some music in a hotel room and perhaps like engaged in some substance usage, some psychedelics. And one of the members, I don't remember if it was Dean or Gene, it doesn't really matter for this story, excuses himself for a moment, wanders out into the hallway to kind of just take a breather from what's going on and sees a newspaper story about spinal meningitis. like a USA Today outside of somebody's hotel room, comes back with the, returns to the room with the idea for a new wean song called

Spinal Meninjitis Got Me Down, which is on a record and finds his partner sort of in the fetal position on the floor saying, Mr. Would you please help my pony, which is also a wean song. So in that moment, it's like two days. saw simultaneously conceived. And so I think, yeah, I mean, like, they honestly, like, from the beginning, like, they reminded me of the other kids that I knew, like, my sort of fellow teens, who were into home recording and, like, there was, like, one guy who had a four track. There were, like, sort of guys who had bands, like, starting to do it, but, like, not at, like, a sort of we're going to,

not even at, like, we're going to start a garage band and play a parties level. It was, like, explicitly sort of like recording driven kind of stuff like just real dicking around with four tracks and like ween were like the next they seemed like an achievable goal in some ways like they see like it was like oh we could do we could do this like we don't really know it's like you know we're not going to become dinosaur junior because we can't play but like we could you know there's something you know ween were like at that next level so they remind me of like the guys that i knew who sort of like showed me how to use a four track and you know you have those things and their work reminds me of what happens when you give teenagers access to multi-track recording equipment and then just let them kind of just start going like a microphone and kind of seeing what happens.

I feel like they have the ability to tap into that willingness to do the sort of stupidest thing and then build on top of it and the most like the weirdest distorted voice and then kind of be like, what if I sang a song? What if I pitch my voice up like this? What if I just made myself sound like a weird duck? Yeah, I totally understand. I like the idea of like two, like the universe of two people who have a shared sensibility and sense of humor just doing what if to each other over and over again, but making it music is like a really cool idea to me. So like if that's what wean is, I'm into it.

Do you want to choose another song that maybe further illustrates what we've just been talking about? Yes, I do because actually I think weirdly they're for the time this is their biggest hit to date in the sort of chronology that we're talking about. I think as we discussed it kind of eventually gets eclipsed. But this is the moment when it all really starts to happen. Whatever it is that happens really starts to happen here. And it happens with a song from their major label debut, Pure Guava, which is on Elektra Records. And weirdly there is a like a bidding war. for wean services.

A small bidding war. People are trying to get wean on their major label because it's the early 90s. It's like 92, I guess. And Nirvana has happened. And suddenly nobody knows anything. And so it's like, yeah, like everybody's just sort of looking at the kind of underground rock community. Like every white guys with guitars was like, okay, that could be the next Nirvana. Give them $2 million.

Yes. And like everybody gets on the gravy train. And at the time, all of these people like the Flaming Lips, the meat puppets, like all of these bands that you would have never sort of imagined in a million years would have any chance at that brass ring. Get their chance at it. Even wean, even this, you know, that baby wean. Who knows? They got guitars. And it sort of happens.

This is, I mean, it happens to the extent that it happens. And it happens because of this song. It's a song called Push the Little Daisies. and we'll talk about the specific way that a lot of people hear it. But I think first, this is the, we need to just let this one breathe. Okay. Here's Push the Little Daisies. That was Push the Little Daisies.

This needs to be a YouTube kind of podcast just so that your facial expressions while listening to a song like that can be part of the experience. Because it was, it was for me. You look sort of horrified. I was like, am I on drugs? Producer Dylan Appley, pointed out that this is what the Quiznos creature might sound like if the Quiznos creature made music. You'll remember the Quiznos creature.

My first question was, do you think the ANR from Elektra Records was fired? There was a regime change at Elektra Records after this. I think it was a more global regime change, but they do fall victim to that later on. And I think, yeah, whoever's idea it was. But the weird thing that happens with this one is that, like, radio stations play it as a joke and people call up being like, what was that? I want to hear it again. Because there's something about it. It sounds nothing like anything.

Like you have to remember this is like early 90s. Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. Music is super downbeat and flannel-y and sad. And there's something about this. It was a big, like, novelty hit. But it didn't really get big until the two most important rock critics of the 90s weighed in. That would be Beavis and Butthead on MTV.

What the hell is this crap? They react to this. They hate it. They think it sucks. Right. And they say that it sucks. This guy sucks. Understandable.

It's a really good segment, but like, it's one of those. things where like, you know, this was back when MTV played videos, but like they probably played this Beavis and Butthead episode, you know, 50 times a week, like at the peak of Beavis and Butthead when there's sort of a finite number of Beavis and Buttheads that they can show. And so like it really, I think it went a long way towards really breaking them, you know, introducing them to people that would not, you know, have heard it before. And, you know, it's just, yeah. Alex, was this the first album that you came to as a fan? Like, or had you? you heard the other, any of the other albums before?

This was one I was in the, it's the, you know, it's probably 93, 94 by the time this one kind of like, you know, it comes to me. And I have always sort of, I've been aware of their existence for a minute and I, you know, I'm aware of this song and this novelty song. What happens in the, around 1994 is I get a girlfriend for the first time. Wow, wow, wow, we wow. The minute we get together, I'd sort of do that thing where you're sort of like, I'm just so into you and I want to kind of like know all of stuff. So I borrow a bunch of her CDs and this is one of them, right? Because it's back when you can't just send a playlist. You've got to like raid the whole thing.

Damn, not only did you get a girlfriend, you got a cool girlfriend. I like this record immediately, but I'm also sort of afraid of it because it's really clear that these guys are on drugs. I am so afraid of parental retribution at this moment. And I have internalized all of this fear on their part that something's going to happen to me if I, you know, sort of fall, run a foul of drugs. Right. And so I become like a real like reactionary, narcish kind of person. And my sort of new girlfriend that I have started dating, like, has smoked pot before. That's right.

And I'm starting to figure this out and has me, you know, and like I knew this. And I'm like, but she's probably put that behind her just because I can't, I can't have it around me. I can't have it in my life or whatever. Because I'm so terrified of what's going to happen to me. I will say that I have since conquered this fear, but just for the record. I wish I had had this problem as a youth. Okay. So I'm terrified of all of this.

And I have this real sort of like, you know, conflicted relationships. relationship with it because I'm afraid of losing this girl that I'm dating because I have stumbled into the sort of being in a relationship with somebody and I have no idea that that's like repeatable, you know, that like you can sort of break up with people and like then you can date somebody else if it doesn't work out and then eventually maybe you find a person, you know. I still don't understand that concept if we're being honest. Well, I mean, it took me a long time. I dated her for seven years, by the way. That's the punchline of this story is the ending. It's like I when we broke up, I was like the equivalent of a. college graduate age-wise. Like, I didn't actually... You were a full drug addict.

You were a drug-addicted wean mega fan. So Puregwava was a hard one for me because it was so clearly like the music of the drug world. It was the siren song of the drug world. It was impossible. It's like being like that scene in almost famous where she's looking at Simon and Garfunkel, like, they're on pot. Like, I knew that these guys were on pot.

And so I didn't want to sort of endorse it by liking it somehow. And I didn't because it was like, you know, and this would happen over the years that my girlfriend would be like, you're a, you're such a hypocrite because you like all of these things that are produced by this world. And yet, like, you get all uptight when I like smoke a joint at a party. Like, you suck. But I won't break up with you for seven years. I'm going to make you do it. So I have a lot of like, I have a lot of emotions around this one in particular because it's very tied to our falling in love, but it's also tied to like a lot of our sort of like early fight. over like what you know when I would be sort of like disproving yeah when I was being when I was absolutely being the police for sure and now that I look back I'm like oh I was like I'm policing your behavior because I don't believe that I am like worthy of love and that's also why I'm going to stay in this relationship for a really long time but like you know I don't believe that I'm worthy of love and so I think that you're going to leave me for like some skater dude who's cool and smoked weed and like doesn't have a problem with it. And so I was like,

we got to stay away from this. This is two therapy enthusiasts discussing Wien and you will enjoy it. Yeah, I don't know how to segue out of this. It doesn't take seven years for Wien to make another album. So what? It does not. We know what happened for you over the next seven years, sort of unhealthy relationship. But what's happening with Wien during this time? Well, things are going better for Ween than they are for me in this moment so they have this

major label debut they have this fluke hit like sort of it remains an acquired taste there's an incredible YouTube video of them playing push the little dais on MTV's chilling with the wheeze hosted by Polly Shore during MTV spring break they just get up on a stage

on the beach and they play this song with like a dat tape backing them up just two guys with acoustic guitar and electric guitar and the backing tape and you have never seen a deader audience in your entire life. You look at the crowd shot,

they cut to the wide shot and it's just dead. These people are upset. They did not come all the way to fucking Daytona Beach for this shit, whatever this is. And it's almost like,

you're like, okay, that's as far as this is going. But it's actually not as far as it goes because their next album is like the big leap forward in quality in sort of like use of like professional studios. It's the first masterpiece.

It's called Chocolate and Cheese. It comes out in 1994. They've become this band that exists in like the genre of no genre. And so like they fit alongside like Beck and the blues explosion. Right. And a little later like Chibomato and like Stereo Lab. Like the stuff that the real sort of like music that's like funny and clever, but it's not like comedy rock and like where it's actually like Beck sort of impersonates

like different styles of music, like, within a song. Yeah, totally. But they make this amazing full band studio record called Chocolate and Cheese that has, like, their sort of most, like, consummate kind of genre recreations to date. There's a Philly Soul song called Freedom of 76. A song called Voodoo Lady that has, like, these real, you know, intense, like, tribal drums to it. This is just a really good rock record.

It's funny. And there are a couple of songs that are, like, just straight up. joke songs, but like it's where you start to, like, it's where they're like musicianship and skill in crafting a song becomes just impossible to ignore. Like, even though they still, there's some silliness to it. Like, you're like, these guys like fucking rip and like they're really good at this. And they still have this weird juvenile sense of humor that doesn't change as they become better and better musicians, which is sort of the fun thing about the next sort of run of Wien in here. You have roses are free on here.

Is it a song where we can hear the genre cosplay that you are talking about? Yeah, let's play Roses Are Free. That was Roses Are Free. What's happening there? I did notice, I like to Google lyrics while I look at the listen to the songs. Sometimes it's fruitful. Sometimes it's not. These lyrics are interesting.

But while I was doing that, I noticed that Fish covered this song later. in 1999, not just live, like on a record. Many times live on a record. And that turns out to be, I wanted to play that one because the fish thing is a transformative moment for this band. It's transformative moment number two, fish covering roses are free. You have a band that has an incredibly ardent fan base that then gets super into wean. And so one of the things that starts to happen because of that is the fish.

fans and the jam band fans start showing up to the wean shows and become like there's this infusion of new audience from those people because obviously like that those two sensibilities are somewhat aligned you know it's funny because there's a lot of clips and stuff and interviews of dean wean being like you know fucking hippies like it's they like they're not those guys exactly and they're not super into that as a culture right but like they do like drugs and they are sort of like they do like you know and you know fish is sort of funny in that way and like fish is another thing that's another whistle that I can't hear but like it you know all of these and you've done fish on this show right and someone has bands playing fish to you and you're still Rob Mitcham came on

I understand why people who like them like them but the things that appeal to those people do not appeal to me as a person if that makes sense of yeah no totally but that becomes a big thing for wean and especially like at this time like they've finally become like around chocolate and cheese like they start playing with a full band live for the first time and at that point the songs get longer and they sort of become a jam band in their own right like because they used to play to a backing tape and so the song would always be as long as the tape and now they can play something for 30 minutes and so I feel I saw them it was not related it was not related to the fish situation that they became a jam band it was

completely unrelated. No, but it's like it's it's it's sort of those two things happen at the same time and they become one of those bands like at starting at this moment as the as the fish thing comes into it. They become sort of like fish one of those bands where like the studio album is secondary in some ways to the live show and like that becomes more and more of the case down through the years. At this point now wean is like back together and still playing like they're still they're you know as soon as bands are playing out they're going to be playing out they have tour dates like coming up but it's a little bit like the way that nobody you know the new grateful dead studio album was like not the point of going to see the grateful dead you know it's like it was never

like it's just kind of you want to hear the hits kind of played at length and like that's sort of the type of band that they become so they become very conducive to absorbing that fish fan base into their existing fan base and then I don't know if like their sort of label issues start at this point but the next thing they do has nothing to do with any of the things that have really preceded it. And the next thing they do, it's one of the moments

when they really kind of like move into the zone of acquired taste and the zone where, you know, you could judge me for being a fan of them after this happens. They put out a country record called 12 golden country greats. Like we're not talking like contemporary

Nashville country at this time. So it's not like hot country, but it's also not alt country. It is very traditional, like Nashville. It's all of these guys, like, real sort of, like, it's produced by a guy named Ben Vaughn, who's, like, in that world, and they hire, like, they don't play on this record. They sing on it. They write the songs, but all the musicians are, like, guys like Pig Robbins and Charlie McCoy,

guys who played on Nashville Skyline for Bob Dylan. Like, they have the Jordanaires, which is the vocal group that backed up Elvis. Like, they get the real dudes. everybody who agrees to do it except the ones who are Christian and won't do it because of the lyrics. Because they read like the charts and everything and they're like, no, sir. Like I can't, my church would not permit me to do that because this is the first Wien record where you can hear every lyric and it is problematic. It goes into some places that if somebody did this today, they would be canceled. forever.

Like, we are in that weird zone of people who sort of like made art that would get you canceled before cancellation was a policy of pop culture. I had a hard time finding a song on here because the most representative song is a song called Piss Up a Rope, which is just misogynist. There's ridiculousness where like the B word comes out of your mouth because you're on drugs and you're sort of talking into a distorted microphone and you're just trying to say weird stuff. And then there's like moments in like this song where it's basically like it like I kind of

hate this record because it's, I feel like it's guilty of a lot of the things that they're not usually guilty of. Even though it's like a really consummate creation, it's a really, they did a really good job recreating like a sort of country politin record from the 70s and like a real kind of, you know, like pre outlaw country. where it's, you know, like all of that. But it's misogynist. There's a song.

Piss Up a Rope has a lot of lyrics about washing my balls with a warm, wet rag. There's multiple lines. Like, I want you to wash my balls with a warm, wet rag. And then the next line is he's explaining how long he wants you to do that for and what he would like to be the case at the end of it. Till my balls feel smooth and soft like sex. I can't defend it. I have no defense. Do you feel like they were putting on personas the way they kind of put on genres just because they think it's fun and funny? Like, is that the vibe?

Yes. And I think that they were also, I think they're often doing that. And I think that they are often sort of subverting the things that they are impersonating a little bit. And there's something about, you know, the way that they sort of distort their voices, it kind of like strips them of like their masculine authority. And you kind of can't take it seriously because they sound like Cartman or whatever. So it's like, you know, is Cartman doing beefcake? Like is that toxic masculinity? Like I don't really know. Like South Park is also a thing of like the, it feels like a thing of the past now and feels like a thing of a different kind of sensibility. Even though it's not still somehow on the air. Yeah, go on. Yeah. Still, still very much. Yeah. The thing about this record and about 12 Golden Country Greats is that they're singing in their real voices and it's uncomfortable to listen to, which I think is on purpose and it's a perfect recreation of this thing. But this thing is kind of a cursed object. It's as if you found a really offensive novelty country record on cassette at a truck stop like next, you know, like in with the David Allen Coe albums or something like that.

Sure. Like something that you would not, you know, like if there was like a really toxic. X-rated Ray Stevens album from that era, you know, the guy who did the streak. Like, if he had some real, like, twisted material, like, that's, you know, where this would fall. It's supposedly the first country record ever to have a parental advisory sticker. I don't know if that's true, but I want it to be true. And yeah, it's pretty fucked up. I see you have a song chosen from this record. Should we hear it? Yeah, I picked a song called You Were the Fool, which is not really one of the worst ones. The ones that I didn't pick include, uh, The one about Mr. Richard Smoker being a poopie poker because that's exactly what you think it is. Okay, yeah, let's hear You Were the Fool off 12 Golden Country Grates. That was, You Were the Fool. They have lovely voices.

I wasn't expecting it. Yeah. It's the most professional-sounding one they've done to date. Nobody knows what to make of it, including Elektra Records. And it's kind of, you know, I think there's a perception that. they did this as a joke or to get out of a contract or whatever because it's not, you know, I think this is the point where things shift at the label and suddenly wean is not the idea, like breaking wean to alt rock fans ceases to be a priority. Well, I'm just shocked that A, Elektra even put this out. Like they, that they heard it and they didn't intervene.

I guess it again, it was such a different time. But also my question is, at this point, Wynne has amassed a pretty, like, devoted fan base, right? Between the stragglers that have come in over the years of, like, the weirdness and then the influx of fish hippies. They probably have, like, a pretty solid fan base. What did the fan base make of this? Because I doubt it was what they were wanting or expecting. I guess, but I feel like in some ways, chocolate and cheese is. is the curveball because it's like gets on the radio and like has like real rock songs on it.

And like this one seems much more like if you're into wean for the contrarian aspect of it, this is a hugely contrarian gesture especially. I mean, it's weird to talk about it now because country is so, you know, it's such a, you know, it's such an indefensible position now in kind of taste wise to be like I listen to like Nashville, you know, sort of like mainstream country and, you know, whatever. And but at the time, other than stuff that kind of. It kind of sounds like Uncle Tupelo, you know, and like is in that alt zone. Like there could not have been a less cool genre to get into.

And nobody is really making the distinction, you know, at that moment that like, oh, like Nashville sort of country politin sound is a very different thing than sort of anything like that. But I so I think it was taken as a joke, but I think it was taken as a good joke. And maybe they didn't mean it as much as a joke. I think it's a sincere kind of love letter to these sounds that only they, in the way that only they could write by making these like gross kind of homophobic occasionally racial let's say here and there. Oof.

It's like it's, you know, look, I don't want to be the guy who's like it was a different time, but like it was kind of a different time. I mean, I don't, and I don't think. Yeah, we didn't have Twitter. We didn't have Twitter. No, it would have been over. It would have been a rap on me and like the second the promos of this one dropped. And I think honestly, like it probably, like, I don't know.

I mean, like, there's not much of that down the stretch after this point. Like, you know, and I think they start to, you know, they start to figure it out. And, you know, I just think that this one, weirdly, even though this one is the least fucked up sounding record they've ever made in some ways. It's still very fenced off. Right. Because it's very fucked up. And so, yeah, making a country record is not, at this point, somebody making a traditional Nashville country record is like that would be a very square kind of. move to make and sort of an obvious thing to do, I think.

You know, I mean, unless you were really going to, you know, I guess a lot of these like classic session dudes are probably dead, but like if you were going to really go back to it. It was, first of all, inescapable because like every single year of the 90s, Garth Brooks or Reba McIntyre had like three albums on the charts. And it was a punchline for rock for like whatever alt kids. Like country was a joke. So in that context, if there are. young people listening.

That's, you know, producer Dill says, country becoming, okay, was the last bastion of optimism like four years ago, which does that make sense? That's absolutely right. And I think that's where that you see it, that that's where it comes from, that it comes from like when like John Caramonica starts writing about mainstream country in the New York Times. Like, that's a moment. Shout out John Caramonica.

Shout out to John Caramonica. We love John Caramonica on this podcast. But like the idea that there would be, I mean, first of all, there's no newsletters, but like the idea of like a newsletter like, you know, shout out. don't rock the inbox, you know, that really covers this stuff as if it's part of the, you know, like the way that rock criticism looked at mainstream rock and hip hop and things like that. It was the one zone that no one would touch because eventually people started writing about, you know, like Brittany and in sync.

Like that rockism kind of eroded in that area. But yeah, Dylan's absolutely right that that's the last thing to take in. But like we're talking about the 90s when there are people like who are sort of like, like I listen to everything but rap and country. But country. Totally wrapping. Non weird fucked up way to be. And people like, okay, cool. That's it makes sense. Yeah.

It was a different time. This is a good time for me to ask you one question before then let's move on. What was Wean's relationship to success? Because this is a move for people who do not care about commercial. success, financial success, maintaining their relationship with the major label. Am I wrong? Yeah, no, I don't think you could conclude from this that they were career-minded people in that sense. Like I said, what I don't think it is is like we're going to turn in some bullshit so that we'll get dropped from this label or anything like that.

I think that they didn't really. They absolutely meant it. They absolutely like they liked this kind of music and wanted to make. it and I feel like that's true of all the weird kinds of music that they have made and would go on to make that none of it really, you know, like with with a few small exceptions that are obvious sort of parody songs like joke songs, but like by this point they are so much more successful than they could ever have dreamed of being like sitting there in typing class. There's no model for like how far they are off the map of like what they could have imagined.

And so it's almost like you have to come up with another dream at this point because you could never, even if you do badly on a major label, like that, you know, come, like, these are the people who made, like, Touch My Tudor on their first major label record. Like, it's like the fact that somebody bought that and that there was another major label record after that is crazy. Yeah, well, also, they didn't get dropped. The mollusk, the next album, still came out on Elektra. They did not get dropped.

Basically, the mollusk is the one where, like, I think they gave them two records and, like, they have the feeling that like nobody has listened to them at the label, you know, like they call up and they're like, what did you think of the mollusk? And the guy's like, uh, looking on the desk. You can hear him kind of being, oh, I found it. You know, like has not actually played it. And when you listen to the mollisks, which I love, I think that's the second, uh, true masterpiece. Um, it is a nautical prog rock album, but it's nautical theme. They recorded it at a house on the Jersey shore during the off season when there's like nothing to do, but like walk off. Um, it is a nautical. Um, but like, walk off. Um, on the beach and go surf casting or like sit in your house and make songs about the sea. And that's what this is. It's where it's where Ocean Man comes from, that song that we played at the beginning. But like there's all these, you know, songs about, you know, marine life and, you know, the sea-going lifestyle. There's a cover of a traditional English ballad about the ocean. Uh-huh.

There's no it's another one where I mean you could like you would not be wrong to be like oh they must be trying to get off of the major label They must be trying to give the machine something that it will reject so that they can be free But I just think that it was probably more like this is how what we know how to do and we're going to keep doing it with the budget that you give us until you tell us that it's time Well not just not just what we know how to do and again like I'm not I'm not a diehard fan I'm learning about this in real time, but it feels like to me, like, this is just let's see how far what if can go. Like, let's put all the what ifs push them to their most furthest conclusion, right? And it's like, what if we made a fucking nautical inspired record with Broadway show tunes and sea shanties on it? Or as Dylan said, proto se shanties.

Yeah. I think, you know, what if? Their whole thing is sometimes it's like, you know, I've seen interviews where they talk about like, Sometimes their working method is quantity over quality. They're like, let's see if we can do three songs in a day just to see what kind of thing comes out from that. I think like their access to their creativity, like I talked about this, like being able to sort of to access the weird voice that you speak in when no one else is around that weird kind of braw-w-wow, like just kind of getting into some making sounds with your mouth thing. Like, good afternoon. Like that one.

Exactly. Their ability to get to that place unselfconsciously, which again is probably drug enhanced. But there's something about it that like they're so clearly not self-editing while actually sort of coming up with really creative ideas. And I think the mollusk is kind of the perfect, you know, I mean, chocolate and cheese is this way too. But like the mollusk is a little weirder ultimately. And I think it's the perfect kind of like midpoint between. their most technical accomplishment and just a total drug-fueled strangeness. Like those two things are kind of happening at the same time.

Well, let's hear a song that really shows off that intersection. This is the title track off of the mollusk. That's where the sort of surf casting story comes from. I think they sort of, Dean like walks out and comes back and, you know, he's left behind this little keyboard thing on the thing and Gene has finished it. So this is where the title comes from. That was the mollusk. I have a thought.

I just feel that people make fun of me for loving David Matthews and his band. And however, this is okay. This is considered okay. And I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just simply asking the question. Why is it less embarrassing? I mean, I don't know if I agree with the premise that it's less embarrassing. I mean, I've just gotten through explaining to you, you know, Mr. Poopie Poker.

Like that's obviously, like, in some ways, this is a, I'm defending the indefensible the entire time. But it's like, its earnestness is the difference, right? Its earnestness is, that's what's embarrassing in general. I mean, if you believe that earnestness is embarrassing, Dave Matthews is much more guilty of earnestness. than ween are. Sure. Sure. But I also think that ween are actually a lot more earnest

about the things that they are presenting than maybe people sort of give them credit for being. I think people think that they're parodying the things that they're recreating when actually I would argue that most of these things are tributes in some way. Like they do legitimately like the things that they're imitating.

Just to be clear, sorry, for the record, I am not embarrassed about liking David Matthews. I was simply saying that maybe other people. I have not met many people who are less embarrassed about loving Dave Matthews that I know of. There may be people who aren't talking about it who feel more strongly than you, but I've not known anybody who's more vocal in that fandom and more kind of like confrontational almost about that in a way.

That's right. You know what that got me is a man did recently DM me a video of himself covering Crash. to me as a treat for myself. So be careful. I haven't opened the video yet. It just shows up as, you know, when people you don't follow send you things, it shows up as like, in case it's a dick pick or whatever, like you have to like click it to make it materialize. And I have not yet crossed that threshold.

But I will. What if it's a dick pick and a cover of crash into me in one hybrid moment? We'll never know. conveniently placed acoustic guitar and then thank you. Just think you've got your ball, you've got your chain. Anyway, so yes, people are definitely not ashamed of liking Wien. I mean, maybe they are aware, like self-aware, that this is a funny band, like a jokey band, right? I mean, no one could possibly not be aware of that.

But we're all having a good time together. It's like the joke is sort of, the joke is more communal. We're not laughing at them. They're not pointing to something. It's not like in a weird owl way where it's like, oh, look at this. Isn't the way that Michael Jackson's vocal delivery, isn't that strange and eccentric? And I'm going to make, I'm going to sort of parody it and like, you know, elevate it to, you know, higher level like in some, you know, to make fun of it. They're not joking about any of these things.

This does sort of lead me to, we talked about this a bit where like we got the fish influx, the fish fan influx. as a result of Fish's fandom of them, maybe didn't like it. That's kind of besides the point. But I do think like that Venn diagram of fandom does have that in common of like being in on the joke, right? Like valuing as part of their fandom being in on the joke with the band, arguably Fish is less funny. But the jokes are still there and the in crowd nature of it is still there and feeling like this like, you know, we know stuff and we're in on it with the band seems really appealing to both fan bases. Would you not agree?

Yeah. I think it's a shared experience of a sensibility. You know, we talked about what it was that united these two guys together was this weirdly shared sensibility. And I think that like, it's they're one of those bands where once you discover them, you're like, I can't believe there's like an actual successful rock band that thinks like this. I'm going to put forth a theory now for you. Please.

Does it not seem like though the reason a band like Fish could be so massive, right? 13 nights that, you know, Madison Square Garden sold out to this day. Whereas a band like Wean, while they got way bigger than they like arguably, maybe should is not the right word, but like that anyone could have imagined they would, given the circumstance in their music, you don't ever. get to the level of fish, or may I say David Matthews, with a cool guy fan base. Like you need to emanate past the cool guy fan base. You need to hit a more normal, normie, normalized Abercrombian fish wearing crowd to really ascend to that level.

This premise rests on the supposition, which I do kind of think is true, that much of Wien's fan base is however you want to define it. considers themselves alt or cool or like, you know, liking of things that are fringe or not mainstream. I think cool guy is doing a lot of work in that sentence that maybe it should not be doing. But I do think it's like there's an elitism to nerds as well, right? You know, I think that's, I think that's what it is. I think like it's a resistance to normies, but I think it's also in some ways a resistance to almost like normie alt people, you know?

So it's a very rarefied kind of group. like the fish fan base like those things like like and especially like jam band music not to you know stereotype the whole thing but like there's a very big social component to that and i think dave matthews has that too right like that it's it's as much about the experience of going to the show with your friends taking some drugs like hanging out in the parking lot like whatever all those you know all of that stuff like all that jam band stuff it's as much about everything that's going on around it and what the performance is an excuse for in your life and like what it gives you permission to do and who you meet.

Never underestimate the capacity of nerds to look down their noses at everybody, you know, not just at like normal people, but like at cool people as well, you know, so I do think there's a really, like they're cutting a pretty thin slice within that. And the,

you know, the jam band thing like almost like, throws a wrench in that because all of a sudden they have these people who are like, dude, wein's coming to town. Like that's another, it's another show that we can go to and have that jammy kind of

experience that we, like to have when they come to our town. But I think like inherently, like if you're, you know, I assume that the true wean fans, I haven't really done the sociology on this, but I assume that the, you know, the, like, true death to false metal type wean fans look down on the jam people, you know, as kind of, you know, whatever, like a lesser form of fan. Do you think that if wean had come out later, they would have gotten much bigger? Because of the way that you're saying, you're saying, saying like, you know, never underestimate nerd culture, but also never forget that nerd culture has now become mainstream, right? Like, it's, they eclipse their own status and they kind of

control culture now in so many ways. And like, Tari, um, shout up Tari, who helps produce this show before we were recording was pointing out that like, um, he kind of gets it wean in the, in, through the lens of like a tenacious D, which we also talked about earlier, but like, you know, tenacious day, besides the Jack Black thing, I also think got really huge because they did kind of come out riding the crest of the rise of the nerd. Yeah. The wean thing is so specific to its era. Like we've been talking a lot about context in the course of this conversation because I think as much as like those dudes, the version of those dudes, if they were 25 today, they would just be able to sort of put things on the internet and they would not have to sort of have their fate be in the hands

of a major label. There is something about having the major label behind you and sort of having them get sort of pushed to the point that they're at where they, you know, like there is like some sort of artist development happens with them that wouldn't happen today. They'd just be putting out tons of albums on the internet, which is essentially what they're doing now, except they're not, like there's not a huge reason to generate new material, I guess. And so they're just, they put out a lot of live albums on their, you know, sort of keep the money from that. Right. Producer Dylan made a side comment that they might be a TikTok band now. I don't know how I feel about that.

Just on a wholesale idea of it. Like their music would be soundtracking TikToks. I mean, I don't know what goes on on TikTok. Their music could be soundtracking TikToks where you never know what those kids are going to get into. Producer Dylan, these are two olds talking about old people stuff and we don't know about that tickety talk. Okay, so I feel like wean fans like, I don't know what they were listening to, concurrently back then. But I can tell you right now with just a quick click of the mouse onto the Spotify,

the bands that they are most closely listening to are butthole surfers, meat puppets, the flaming lips, pavement built to spill, soul coughing. Anything making you feel primus is in there, the silver Jews, the Minutemen. These sound like cool peeps. I love to hang with them at a party. I can't help but notice that those are all, there is a cutoff point on the sort of like kind of start of activity for all of those bands. I mean, that points to sort of something of an arrestedness on the part of the fan base, I guess, you know, that maybe these are people who, the people who are still listening to Ween, maybe like, you know, this is part of your nostalgia now for your, you know, these are like, this is dad rock. This is what dad rock sounds like now.

It's so weird that that's what dad rock is. butthole surfers is now dad rock it seems insane that's you dads are it's like you know it's like one of those things where like people are still like oh the millennials as if they're they're 12 forever but no it's like people age like the like millennials are dads now it's like there's not even like tapes and tapes is dad rock I don't even know what that would be I mean Green Day and Blink 182 or dad rock they were also too weird and too like not like punchline joky to work as a humor band like as comedy rock you know and like like they didn't really fit into like the sort of like you know lalapalooza alt rock context either they were always too funny for that i you know i think they cost

themselves a lot of success kind of on you know in both directions because like they weren't you know if they had been just sort of they had been sillier they could have been the south park guys and if they had been more serious they could have been like a huge you know grunge band or something like that you know potentially. They definitely had the musical ability to do it. They just didn't have the desire. Almost as if they've been robbed of their ambition, you know, like brain chemistry wise.

I don't know. By drugs. Whatever. I mean, they seem to have a pretty fucking successful career for people who were like, I don't care. And they were like, here's six albums on a major label. Yeah. No, they're not an argument against drugs.

Okay. So after the mollusk, sorry, that was a huge. huge detour, but I thought it was enjoyable. That's when they start collaborating with the South Park guys. Yeah. They were like, they played at Chef Aid for. Chef Aid. Yeah.

In 1998. Yeah, the only context where they could really fit in, where they really made sense and like, you know, absolutely seemed like a huge successful rock band was a little mountain town in Colorado. Many colors in the homo rainbow. Show me y'alls. I'm going to show you my. And there are sort of poorly animated likenesses appeared on South Park.

And that was really, that's like one of those things where, you know, it's almost like those, you know, like the South Park guys kind of paying tribute to their predecessors in a way. You know, sort of their immediate predecessors is how I always saw that. Because I do feel like Matt and Trey are the Dean and Gene that made it in a much. bigger way. And again, in the same kind of random way. Like, if you know anything about the Matt and Trey story, it's like this weird sort of animated Christmas card, you know, Santa versus Jesus video that would have been just a viral video. You would have clicked on and enjoyed back in the day. And like instead, it's like, I always picture like people like mailing it to each other, because how else would it happen? Like physical mail like George Clooney like putting it in an

envelope sending it. Well, that's like jackass. Yeah. No, those were physical video. I had some of those videos. Like I had those big brother videos and they would, you'd order them and they'd send them to your house and you'd hide them from your parents. And, you know, that was back, you know, it was weird. Things like mattered more. If anyone wants to really understand, by the way, if you're listening and you're young and you want to understand what the 90s were like, especially the late 90s, the

album, Chef Aid, the South Park album, that's how big soundtracks were back then, that this was a big thing, was produced by Rick Rubin, featured Primus, Ozzie, Ozzie, born DMX and old dirty bastard. Mace, Puff Daddy, Lil' Kim, and System of a Down on one track, together. Wyclef, Elton John.

Like, this is real. Devo, Rick James, and, of course, wean. These people were all on a soundtrack for a cartoon show. And it came out, and it was big. That's what the late 90s were. Chef Aid is the one that has chocolate salty balls on it,

surely. Say, everybody, have a seen my ball. they're big and salty and brown If you ever need a quick, pick me up Just stick my balls in your mouth That's right That's right It sure is Isaac Hayes as chef

Anyways So ween is, you know Being upheld by their people And after South Park They put out their last Electra album, correct? White Pepper is the last Elektra, right? Yeah, white pepper.

I think they also put out out a live compilation album in between, but we don't have to talk about that. Except that it's called Payton the Town Brown. Pain the Town Brown is a live album mastered from a cassette source. It's basically a bootleg that they just put out themselves, I think, and it doesn't sound great, but it gives you an idea of what they were becoming as a live band, because I think there's like a 20-minute version of a song from the country record. on there and, you know, they were starting to just, like, jam out longer and longer on these things.

Like, once they got away from playing against a dat tape and once they had an actual band, they did become pretty jammy and would do these shows that, you know, you would go home really having smoked a whole pack of wean at the end of that night. You would know, it would have a small whole carton. You know, they sort of just slump off of Electra at that point. I don't think white pepper. With white pepper. That was awesome.

Yeah, I think, yeah, that's the last one. that is I kind of like it but it's a little bit of it it tips in the direction of seriousness in a way that I think probably some you know that like the true wean fans you know who enjoy the ridiculousness like it's an attempt to sort of like it's somewhat of an adult pop album in a way that those are the earlier ones have not been it's not you know like both white pepper and Quebec I think are sort of are divorce records I believe it's about they're about jeans relationship kind of deteriorating over time. I just can't imagine this band dealing with that subject matter through that lens. Well, I mean, but this is the thing. I kind of love when people in that position, I like when artists deal with something sort of unprecedented in their lives or have to deal with like a big adult thing or a huge life transition or something like that and try to deal with it using the tools that they have at their disposal, you know, and I like, like the idea of wean writing trying to write wean songs like about getting divorced should we hear

even if you don't that's the video that matt and tray directed for them and it takes place in like a singles bar and it's a really it's a great strange conceptual video but uh yeah the song called even if you don't and i think it's sort of the connections to what we've been talking about are kind of obvious um that was even if you don't okay is the internet correct in saying that White Pepper is the name is like a two Beatles album smashed together and that this is a Beatles homage album

because I could really hear that there if that's true. I have never heard that theory. That is obviously, yes, a very Beatlesque song. Although there's other songs on this record. There is bananas and blow, which sort of sounds like Warren Zivon maybe a little bit. And Pandy Fackler, which, everybody thinks sounds like Steely Dan.

Oh, is it basically like... When you say everybody thinks, is that your way of saying you don't agree? You know, there's nothing in the world that sounds like Steely Dan to me, Yossie. There's no other... I mistake nothing for Steely Dan, but there are things in the world that I can recognize... Throwback to Bansplain episode one, if you would like to go back in here. Point your pod catcher at Bansplain episode one previously on Bansplaint. But, yeah, no, I mean, it's the same in the same way that like people think that Billy

Joel Zanzibar is him trying to write a Steely Dan song. And you can hear it, but, you know, he's not, he's not all the way there because he's not Steely Dan. He's Billy Joel. So, yeah, there's a few things. I mean, in general, I think this one is like, you know, it's the closest they came. I mean, this in Quebec are kind of similar in this way. Like, I don't know that they're trying to grow up necessarily because the subject matter

hasn't really shifted, but like they're just musically, they're just more adroit than ever at these, you know, kind of homage. parody tribute kind of sounds. And so they can produce any, you know, they can sound like any band they want to. And they do over the course of this record. And it's sort of, you know, they shift in really interesting ways.

But then, you know, you can hear that song is obviously it's about, I think this supposedly, and I may be getting this wrong, but supposedly like there are wean songs written about the same relationship, like for the life of the band. And it goes up through like marriage and divorce.

and everything that they, you know, go through at, you know, at the end because it starts to be, you know, Jean gets into some kind of hellacious personal struggles for a little while there. Well, I mean, you know what? When life gives you lemons, you make very weird music about it. When life gives you white peppers, you make white pepper ice cream. White pepper ice cream, delicious. This was the last, like we've already said, last electro album. Then that same year, they also contributed a song to a SpongeBob Square Pants episode.

Sponged Bob Square Pants. It was loop de loop. What's that? It's called the loop de loop. You got to take a lace in each hand. You go over and under again. Also, their association with SpongeBob continues after this point. According to my source for all things, Wikipedia, the creator of SpongeBob told Wien that their album, The Mollusk, C-Shanties, was one of the show's biggest inspirations.

And I mean, how about that for cultural impact? You know? I mean, like, in a weird way, that's the most tangible cultural impact is that there's, you know, there's like three full-length SpongeBob movies that like, the last one, like, would have still come out in theater. if it's not been for COVID. Like there's still, the SpongeBob thing is like, it's bigger than, you know,

than everything. So it's another example of like somebody inspired by wean like, takes it so much further than they ever took it and can just sort of conceive of like how to make this thing kind of connect in a mainstream way. You know, I think probably because like, you know, there's no sponge bob,

you know, there's no four letter words in SpongeBob. There's no racially problematic sentiments, you know, and all of those things. So it's, you know, in some ways it's like all of these things are wean with the sort of like,

problematic edges sanded off, like not to, you know, say anything negative about SpongeBob, which a show for children. Like, of course it is. But like, it's just that, you know, that sensibility makes its way into the mainstream kind of like shorn of, you know, what is fucked up about it, you know, which is like understandable. Yeah. Spongebop is a show for children, but it's like wildly adults too. Like there's so many dialogue and references on that show that there's no possible way children could understand, but make full sense to adults. It's for Oh my god. So like the third SpongeBob movie has a like a very pretty large supporting role for Keanu Reeves that is pretty dependent on like understanding like what's sort of like funny and mystical about Keanu Reeves that like there's no way. Which children do not.

Have any frame of reference for this kind of like floating Keanu Jesus head inside of a tumbleweed. Hello. Call me sage. Good man. I'm made out of sage and I am a sage. So it works out pretty well. Why that's funny and like what it's referencing, like what it's playing off of. Like I have no clue like what a five-year-old is making of this, if anything.

You know, but it's also it's like how everything has celebrity voices. Like it's all just like for these, this captive audience of adults who have to pay for these things and watch them on pay-per-view. Totally. I'd love to watch on TV. Also, last fun fact about Wien's contribution to the culture. they also composed and performed a theme song for a sitcom called Grounded for Life. It was on TV for four years. That happened.

Grounded for Life. That happened. Starring Donald Logue, who you might remember as the cab driver in the MTV commercials many thousands of years ago before he became like a proper actor. And they, which was, again, totally makes sense because I don't know if you've ever watched this show. It's really fucking weird. Like it's like a total thing where you're like Who let this be on TV? It's like stonery and weird.

No. That's like the major label Donald Logue stuff that I don't mess with. I like his earlier stuff. I do like his earlier stuff. I love Dow of Steve when I was a young man. I don't know if it holds up at all. I was very good. I did too.

No, it's good. It's good. I want to believe that Dow of Steve is still good. Yeah, I mean, we keep getting these weird moments because there's also like people keep wanting to work with them. You know, like, I think like, because it's obviously like the creative people who grew up listening to Ween like move into these like, you know, creative roles at places. And they're like, you know who'd be perfect for this is wean. And then usually they're kind of perfect for it, but not exactly.

There was a thing at some point where they did. I think it was like Pizza Hut hired them to do like a jingle for stuffed crust pizza. And so they do a song called Dude, Where'd the Cheese Go? Which is about how, hey, the cheese is inside of the crust. Where did Cheese go? I don't know. And I guess they keep submitting it to Pizza Hut, and Pizza Hut keeps having notes on the song. Like, just really noting them to death on this Pizza Hut song.

And so at some point, they just give up and they give them a version that's like, dude, where'd the motherfucking cheese go at, bitch? Bitch where the motherfucking cheese is. I don't know. And obviously, Pizza Hut's like, well, thanks, guys. I think we're not really aligned on this. And I think we're going to move on. But so then that comes out on the internet, obviously, because by that point, there is an internet for it to come out on. Incredible.

But that's a different band, a more career-minded band, a more, you know, I don't know, serious about their business band would have kind of just kind of nutted up and taken those Pizza Hut notes to heart and, you know, done the version of the pizza. Yeah, like Weezer would have written a fantastic Pizza Hut jingle. Rivers would have written 12 albums about Pizza Hut and how it's his favorite place to eat in the entire world. delivered it. Yeah. Okay. Talk to me what happens now. They're awful, extra.

What's going down? And also, not coincidentally, the 90s are over. It's now the year 2000. We're firmly into the millennia. Is that how you say it? Yeah. Okay. Great.

We are in the new millennium. Yes. I've graduated high school. You've graduated high school. Yeah. The 90s are over the time when guys like this could function and have a life in, you know, sort of our major cities and, you know, on a major label, those things are, that, that world is shifting. And like the world, you know, by the year 2000,

it's like, it's TRL, it's all of those things. The time when you could like kind of just build like a little marginal success in the alt world into some kind of a mainstream sort of thing where then you're on, you know, sort of the tours and the lollapaloozes and everything. Like that kind of goes away for a while. A version of it reoccurs, but there's not as much money flying around the record industry as there once was, and it's not flying in the direction of people like

Ween. It's flying in the direction of something. And why? Because. Yeah. Why? Because of Napster. Because of Napster. Napster stole the money for bands like Wean to be fostered. I

see here that Ween did make an album called All Request Live, which I'm only assuming was a tip of the hat to Total Request Live TRL, but it was just songs requested by their fans on their message boards that are live versions of songs. I mean, that's where it all goes, right? It all goes to the internet

where anything, any marginal thing can sort of accumulate, you know, the most people possible can all find it and do it. So it becomes, they become sort of what they always were probably meant to be, which is a somewhat self-sustaining independent band that makes most of its money through live shows, I assume, and through those live albums that are the souvenir of the live show. They put them out themselves. They have their own label called Chaco Dog Records. You know, they are fairly in touch with those fans, like through the message boards and everything. And, you know, there's this whole vast back catalog for people to discover.

a lot of the urgency, I think, of making new records sort of goes out of the equation at that point. You know, there's, Quebec is great. That's the last one that I'm really familiar with, honestly. Yeah, it sounds like that's the last one they put out on another label because that was put out on something called sanctuary records, which I think is like a BMG subsidiary or something in 2003. The aptly named sanctuary records takes them up after that point. Quebec is great. It's another one where you can hear everything and how good they've gotten at just at music. You know, it's amazing like that, you know, if they had been, if they had been a boring, serious band with kind of like poetic sort of, you know, oblique Michael Stipey lyrics and they put out that record, like it would have been, you know, like as successful as anything else. Listen to our three hour REM bandsplain episode, please. Thank you. If you want oblique poetic bands, please refer back to our three-hour long R-E-M-Bans play an episode.

Alex, do you want to play a song from Quebec? You said it's a good album. Yes. I'm going to say, let's listen to If You Could Save Yourself, You'd Save Us All, which I think is probably in the divorce wean canon as well. It feels like it is to me. I'm going to go ahead and say that it is. Sounds like that Jawbreaker song title. or lyrics

If you save yourself You could save us all That has got to be a coincidence I cannot imagine I'm sure it's a coincidence I don't think they had any Yeah anyways Listen to a bands playing

Drawbreaker episode Okay let's hear What's it called Alex It's called If you could save yourself You'd save us all No Dropbreaker That was if you could

save yourself. You could save us all. I really liked that. And who can say if it's because I actually like it or if it's I'm just so relieved to have a respite from the Quiznos monster voice singing of earlier wean music. Producer Tari did message me reading my mind. This is a mean thing to say, but someone should have heard him sooner. This is much better than that. the other. And I know it's look I think that's actually that's a good sometimes bad things have to happen to you right in order for you to write a good song and I think you know what the the sad part I think is that as they're dealing with all of these adult things like they

stop being as prolific and they kind of some of that migrates out into solo records at some point around like 2011 uh jean wean aaron freeman has a bad show in i think vancouver um has walks off basically at some point and that's the beginning of vancouver meltdown as it's called in the wikipedia entry as producer dylan says who has not had a canadian breakdown amongst us and the canadian breakdown yeah it's when you have the breakdown in the denim matches um the Like, yeah. So when you have a breakdown in a Tim Horton's. Right, exactly.

You never want there to be a specific geographic meltdown referenced on your Wikipedia page. Like, if that's its own heading. Bolded, bolded section. Yeah. Focus on non-ween projects, Vancouver Meltdown. Yeah. So there's this dark period that they enter into. I mean, you know, they've obviously, drugs have been a part of the process all along.

and at some point, Gene goes to rehab and cleans up. And then there's a weird moment when sort of in the course of his recovery, he breaks up the band by telling Rolling Stone that he's done. And apparently he hasn't told his bandmates yet, which is a very rock and roll thing to do to somebody, you know, to kind of break that news. But it's almost like you're having a conversation. You're doing a Q&A with Rolling Stone.

You're like, yeah, the band's basically done. Maybe you haven't told everybody yet. Maybe this is how they find out. These guys have been partners at this point, you know, like at the point where this happens, they've been in the band for 25 years, like since high school. Like, that's pretty remarkable that you can hold that together without sort of turning on each other for that long. Like, that's a good run. And, you know, it would have been a good stopping point, you know, in some ways. Like that and they did sort of go off and make their own records, you know, separately.

Like there's a record that Gene makes called Freeman. I think, you know, there's like a Rod McEwen covers album at some point, too. Like, but they might, of course, they end up sort of, they gravitate back together because there's nobody else who can do this. There's no, you know, it's like the guys in Steely Dan went and made solo records in the 80s too. But like they always like they end up producing each other because they just wanted to work together clearly. Like they were just meant to artistically like this was what they were meant to be doing. Alex, can we not talk for 10 minutes without you bringing Steely Dan back into the conversation? Apparently not. it would appear that is not the case. But this is what it's like to actually have a conversation with me right now. Oh my God. Producer Dylan likes to point out that like I have one cultural touchpoint and it's never mind by Nirvana. And I somehow bring it into like every fucking episode of Bandsplain.

It's like you could play a drinking game by it. And yours is Steely Dan. Like you can only orient things around. We talked about Dave Matthews. We talked about Dave Matthews for 25 minutes. Like this is a show about we have. This is my show. This is my show.

And we can talk about Dave Matthews all the time. I'm just kidding. Okay. Sorry to intro. I just, I hear you. It's, you know,

it's almost as if the real divorce would have been between Gene and Dean, but they merely had a separation. And then they were reunited. Yes. Because they were meant to be together. They were made for each other in some weird way. I believe. Yeah.

This band almost feels like a cartoon story the whole time because it's like, it's like what you were saying about they're like, they're joking, but they're also really not joking. They're very sincere. It's, it seems that there is a note that while Gene Wean was doing solo album, Freeman. Yeah, that's, that's Gene Ween. Dean, Dean was fishing. He got really into fishing. became a licensed fishing boat captain. The mollusk was simply a precursor to his real dreams. He also had a web show about fishing called The Brownie Troop Fishing Show. Welcome to the Brownie Troop Fishing Show. I'm Mickey.

I will be your host. This is our first episode here. We're on the Delaware River. And this is the saddest thing that bums me out because it clearly never happened. but with the South Park guys, he was apparently working on a reality TV show about fishing with Les Claypool, Les Glepool from Primus. Yeah, that would have been amazing because obviously Primus, you know, another band, the very important and another joke band that were also super good at music. People who did drugs. Definitely did drugs.

Yeah, an incredibly sort of, yeah, like a weird sort of internal cosmology and somewhat jammy. fan base, you know, I mean, Primus have a song called 11 that's in 114 time. It's that kind of thing. It's a little more proggy. That would have been incredible. And like, I want that for those guys. Like, I want that afterlife for those guys where they just go fishing and film it and, you know, different people go. But again, that's the concept for fishing with John. It's like, what if I went fishing with Tom Waits? Can I read you something beautiful? Yeah. This is Gene Wien going to rehab, then coming out, then telling Rolling Stone behind you, Dean's back that the band has broken up.

Just two months later, what did Dean Wien say? Addressing the rumors. I'll read it to you because it's gorgeous. I can only speak for myself, but as far as I'm concerned, as long as Aaron and I are both alive on this planet, wean is still together. We're never broken up. The idea of quitting is just laughable.

This isn't something you can quit. This is a life sentence. okay, maybe it's not beautiful, per se. It is powerful. I mean, it's true. It's really, I mean, look, you can you can opt out of a marriage, but you can't opt out of, you know, a brotherhood in the same way, like a creative partnership like that, like runs deeper than, you know, than most things. And yeah, I like the idea that's, yeah, your loyalty to Bougnish, it's like there is like the master like we do this for 10,000 years or not at all, you know, I think that's, I'm voting beautiful on that. What's the state of affairs of the wean fandom now? You know, is their fan base still kind of the same makeup? Like, the internet is powerful. Like, are there new fans joining the fold of Bougnish every day? Young fans?

I believe so. I believe that it's become one of those things now where it's almost like a non-linear experience of the fandom in the way that, like, certain jam bands are, in the way that, you know, Star Trek is like it's new to you. And like there is always like this like endlessly replenished supply of, you know, sort of 14 to 18 year old people discovering that kind of thing. Like, you know, also just for as much as like we've talked about, you know, the kind of mainstream pop cultural ways that wean sort of briefly broke through the ice or whatever and kind of poked their heads up into the, you know, the rarefied air. How about that for a couple of metaphors?

Copa barra? Like a copybarra. Yes, copy bearer breaking through the ice, as they do, as we all know they do. They've never had like that moment where they get super overexposed and become normy and therefore, like, nobody's interested in them anymore. You can still feel like this is a weird kind of marginal fringe thing that belongs to you. And I think that that's probably, like, that makes them sort of like kind of endlessly replenishable fan base. it's not like, oh, wean, like, that's, you know, sort of like that's my dad's music or something. It's like it's the, you know, it's, it's the music of, you know, your inner 14 year old wherever

you are. Except that's what your kid's going to say. Your kid's going to be like, I'm not listening to this. That's your kid's going to be like, fuck Steely Dan for fucking ever, never put that goddamn trash on in front of me again. And also, wean is my dad's music. I'm going to be like, Steely Dan paid for that juice. As always. It is time for nobody's favorite part of the show where we hear from fans about why they love Ween.

Why don't we listen to those fans right now? Okay, here's why I love Ween so much. I love that you're never really sure if they are serious or joking or paying homage or making fun of. I started a lo-fi band a long time ago and I've been releasing music sort of, in the vein of wean for a long time. They're definitely my idols. I look at them as sort of my big brothers that I never had. But you could probably say that I've been living

in their shadows since I was probably 15 years old. My love for ween, I think, stems from feeling like they can really make anything they want. Over the course of a single Ween album, you can go from metal to sort of glam rock, to sounding like a pharmaceutical commercial, to them listing facts about marine life to some of the most juvenile humor you'll hear on record. Win are my Beatles. I bought a four track because they made Godween Satan and the pot on one, and they sounded really fucking good. I learned that you don't have to be perfect right out of the box.

You can just kind of love music and go from there. I really never envisioned that this was a band that I would sort of be able to grow old with, so to speak. Sort of against all odds, you know, Wien has sort of stuck it out and kind of proved people wrong who thought they were just kind of like a, you know, a novelty act, you know, in the early 90s. I think some people who might have seen like push the little daisies on MTV might have might have kind of lump them in with this like kind of early 90s wave of just kind

of weirdo alternative bands and maybe had one album and just kind of went away. But, you know, Wien all along, they were in it for the long haul. Take like, it's going to be a long night. my friend has said to me where he's like that's like they didn't just rip off a motorhead song they kind of wrote the best motorhead song that Motorhead never wrote and that's

what I think makes them so fun and enjoyable to listen to and at the same time they get really fucking dark too they've always kept this real innocence about what they do and they've also kept the humor about what they do while allowing sort of the seriousness in. And what I love about it is they really don't sort of cushion the blow between those two things. They might throw it an extremely silly song at you and then a dead serious song.

And they don't sort of make any apology for that transition at all. They just sort of let it hang there. And it's kind of up to you to like decide, you know, kind of make sense of it emotionally. Pitchfork will probably write a thing on Wien and how they were a joke for a while and how they had a huge jamhead falling because fish covered roses are free. It'll all be true and it'll suck a whole lot. Don't read it and don't watch the videos they post. Listen to me, someone who really cares a lot.

Well, loved to hear from those fans who are not coincidentally all men. And you're the person. They're talking about who they don't want to hear Explain Ween. And sadly, it's too late for that. The entire, all of this has happened kind of in the, sort of in the, like what Dave Hickey, the art critic calls the sunshine of absolute neglect. You know, it's like if Wien had been sort of like the, like the repository for like the hopes and dreams of rock critics, if we were sort of like, these are the guys who are going to like lead us to the promised land or, you know, bring back rock in the 2000s or whatever, you know, whatever sort of that, like they have never had that burden put on them. So they've always been kind of free to do whatever they want to do. It's like sort of they're like the, it's like the opposite of radio head in a way where like everyone is like, radio head's going to tell us where things are going.

And like wean is not telling anyone where things are going. They're just sort of like burrowing further into being wean, which is what I kind of love about them. I'm like the wean of podcasters in which nobody ever expects anything particularly insightful or powerful for me. And every once in a while I pop up with one good point. and then continuing to ramble about David Matthews and Nirvana's Nevermind and producer Dylan and whatever else I can think of. Would you agree? But you have like a passionate fan base that's like, like, look, it really works on other levels. Like you don't.

You got to really think about it. Exactly. If you get really stoned and also not coincidentally, my fan base is also all strange men. So lots of similarities on that note. This has been a real pleasure. I do feel like there's the couple of albums that I want to go back and revisit because I thought they did peak my interest. But more importantly, I really have a stronger grasp on why people love this band. And that makes a lot of sense to me.

And I think it's like, you know, good for them. I mean, that's all we can hope for is to peak your interest. Right? I mean, that's the point of the show that we're just trying. It is. These men, we just come on, we get on the microphone, we're like, we just talk and talk and talk and we try to get some kind of a reaction and we never get it and we keep sort of or we get a little bit of it and it's intermittent reinforcement is much stronger than consistent reinforcement, right? If you push the button and you get the food every time, you'll stop pushing the button. But if you want the mouse to push the button a lot, the food only comes out every 10th time. That's the principle that's at work here.

Every time there's a glimmer of excitement in your voice, that's what we live for as guests on this show. And it's only me trying somehow realizing, tying something to David Matthews. Being like, oh, that reminds me. Right. Yeah, your eyes light up when it's like, wait, there's a Dave Matthews connection that I can make here. And that's the secret to being a bands playing guest is just make sure that it leads back to Dave Matthews in some way. Well, on that note, do you have a song? that you would like to leave our listeners with a last bit o'ween to carry them through their days and nights.

Yeah, let's ride out to Voodoo Lady from Chocolate and Cheese, the lead single off of the breakthrough album, Instant Classic, Chocolate and Cheese. Thanks so much, Alex, for joining me here today. Make sure to tune in next week for more Bandslane. And here is Voodoo Lady. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bansplaine, only on Spotify. Our awesome and talkative guests today was Alex Papadimas.

Follow him on Twitter at Papadimus, P-A-P-P-A-D-E-M-A-S. Huge thanks to the wean men you heard on this episode. Ryan Baxley, Dan Zivini, Hank Steamer, and our very own Casey Simonson. Bansplane is a Spotify original show. This episode was produced by the Dean to My Gene, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and edited by Michael Hartman, with help from Casey Simonson and Tari Miller. Executive producers for Bansplain are Gina Del Vak and me, Yossi Salon. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethanyi Costantino and Jennifer Claibin, and graciously recorded by Carlos Delagaza in Los Angeles, California.

Special thanks to Felipe Guillermo, Robert Adler, will be able to be able to be able to beaughson. Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Meyerson, Jessica Hopper, and the framed drawing of Dave Matthews I Got on Deepop. Spirit does, in fact, continue to guide this entire show. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of bands playing. Only on Spotify. Fun fact, you guys, Carlos de la Garza is the dad of two of the Linda Lindas. That's it.