From our first "real" concert in 1987 until the release of Chocolate and Cheese in 1994 we played concerts as a duo--Gene on vocals and acoustic guitar and me on electric guitar with the bass and drums played from a cassette deck. Later on we purchased a DAT machine for the backing tracks and this speeded up our show a little.
A typical Ween set was no more than an hour long, and we'd play about 24 songs in that amount of time. There was no jamming at all whatsoever. Things are a lot different now. Every night we had to face the crowd pretty much naked, there was nowhere to hide, no room for an off night. We did a lot of talking to the crowd and one another between songs, we pretty much had to.
We faced a lot of hostile audiences when we were the opening act on a show. There was a lot to hate about us but we won over a lot of people in the process because of our sheer nerve. A lot of our closest friends feel that Ween live pretty much ended when we switched to a traditional band format with a bass player and drummer; I dunno about that but by the release of Pure Guava our show was no longer interesting to us.
We were doing a lot more touring and playing the same songs with no room for improvising had gotten boring for us. Once we started releasing records and touring more as a duo we got a lot better at it, we stopped caring about what the audience thought of us and just focused on having fun onstage. This was when we maximized our brownness.
I don't remember too much about this concert other than the fact that we played the Cat's Cradle a lot of times and in a few different locations. Public Enemy had played the club a few nights before and blown up the P.A. and our sound man Kirk Miller was pissed. I thought it was great because Public Enemy are one of my favorite bands of all time and I was just happy to be playing on the same stage. Our touring party consisted of Me, Gene, and Kirk Miller, our soundman and driver. Once we signed to Elektra we added a tour manager, Paul Monahan, who would stay with us for many years. Anyway, this is pretty typical of what we sounded like on a good night those first few tours.
-Dean Ween
Gene Ween-Vocals and Guitar
Dean Ween-Guitar
Bass and Drums-Yamaha Digital Audio Tape Deck
Kirk Miller-Live Sound Engineer
Paul Monahan-Tour Manager
Tracklisting:
Big Jilm
Never Squeal
Captain Fantasy
Tick
Pork Roll
Cover It With Gas
Going Gets Tough
Don't Get Too Close
Nan
Marble Tulip
Ode To Rene
Mango Woman
El Camino
Demon Sweat
You Fucked Up
Queen Cole
Papa Zit
Buckingham Green
Birthday Boy
Fat Lenny
Reggae Junkie Jew
Bonus DVD:
Captain Fantasy (Vera)
You Fucked Up (Vera)
Tick (Vera)
Boing (Vera)
Listen To The Music (WTSR)
Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy) (Vera/Staches)
Cover It With Gas And Set It On Fire (Vera)
Seconds (Vera)
Marble Tulip Juicy Tree (Staches)
Gladiola Heartbreaker (Vera)
Common Bitch (Staches)
The Goin' Gets Tough From The Getgo (Vera/WTSR)
Reggaejunkiejew (Staches)
Old Queen Cole (Vera)
Shalom Absalom (WTSR)
Don't Laugh (I Love You) (Vera)
Mountain Dew (Vera)