Ween's Chocolate and Cheese (33 1/3) (7 page)

So by returning to more of a live-band sound in the
Chocolate and Cheese
era, Ween was definitely challenging fans — and, for that matter, detractors — of those distinctly primitive-sounding earlier albums. Reflecting on the shift, Melchiondo seems newly struck by its significance:

I was playing drums on every song that we ever did up until [
The Pod
and
Pure Guava
]. By moving into the studio and doing
Chocolate and Cheese
, we got back to that, and it’s a really big thing. That’s huge, you know! It’s like, imagine a band that has a drummer, and then
all of a sudden, they decide they’re going to do everything with a drum machine after that, you know? And we never mentioned it, but that was something very different about
Chocolate and Cheese
, returning to that.

A brief comparison of live-drum
Chocolate and Cheese
tracks like “Freedom of ’76,” and Freeman and Melchiondo’s drum-machine demos of the same songs reveals that Ween was indeed entering a whole new sonic realm. Greg Frey views the shift as part of the album’s “We decided to step it up” ethos. As he puts it, “[The use of live drums] was definitely an emphasis on Andrew’s part to kick the whole thing up a notch in terms of the professionalism of the presentation.”

Another new element that upped the professionalism of the
Chocolate and Cheese
recording process was the use of auxiliary players that could best be termed session musicians. It’s extremely common for, say, a mainstream pop singer to employ a large supporting cast of virtuosos to construct basic studio tracks, but pre-
Chocolate and Cheese
, Ween was never this sort of operation; on the contrary, Freeman and Melchiondo seemed to pride themselves on their self-contained methods. The
God Ween Satan
liner notes formally announce, “All songs arranged, composed and performed by Ween,” while
Pure Guava
’s insert
contains a similar declaration of independence: “All songs written, performed and produced by Ween.”
The Pod
spelled things out even more specificially: “Recorded by Dean and Gene Ween on a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder.”

It’s important to note that Ween in the early days wasn’t an entirely self-sufficient entity.
The Crucial Squeegie Lip
included a guest vocal turn from Chris Hoecke, and Freeman and Melchiondo’s childhood friend Chris “Cribber” Williams (aka Mean Ween) appeared live with the duo during this era. On
The Pod
and
Pure Guava
, the cast expanded to include additional associates, such as Guy Heller (Melchiondo’s partner in the side project Moistboyz) and Scott Lowe (another longtime friend). It’s clear, though, that these musicians were featured as much for their personal proximity to Ween as for their musical aptitude.

Post-
Chocolate and Cheese
, Ween embraced the session-player concept wholeheartedly. As we’ve seen, Freeman and Melchiondo eventually assembled a stable live band in 1997, with Glenn McClelland, Dave Drewitz and Claude Coleman, and they used this lineup on
White Pepper
. Even after Coleman joined as a full-time live member, Freeman and Melchiondo experimented with other percussionists in the studio, using Sim Cain (who had played in the Rollins Band with Andrew Weiss) and Josh Freese on
Quebec
. Most recently, of course, David Sanborn turned in the grandaddy of all Ween session cameos on
La Cucaracha
’s “Your Party.”

On
Chocolate and Cheese
, the band took their first
significant steps toward this mix-and-match approach. The personnel list offered the first clue that something was different. Noticeably absent was any sort of “All songs … by Ween” designation. In its place was a list of “The Players,” which credited Coleman, Lowe, Mean Ween, Patricia Frey and the singly named Stephan (last name Said: a noted songwriter and sometime Ween auxiliary musician) alongside Dean Ween, Gene Ween and Andrew Weiss.

In terms of Ween’s increasingly professional approach to record-making, the most noteworthy names above are Coleman and Said, since these players brought a high degree of instrumental skill to the table. Freeman and Melchiondo first encountered Coleman as a member of Skunk. (The bond between the two bands was a significant one: Ween had signed their Twin/Tone deal after opening for Skunk at a basement party in Maplewood, New Jersey.) After Skunk dissolved, Coleman became a fixture at the Pod, and eventually signed on as the live drummer in “The Ween,” a short-lived early-’90s Ween incarnation featuring Shimmy Disc’s Mark Kramer on bass. When an extra drummer was needed for
Chocolate and Cheese
, Coleman was an obvious choice.

As we know from
God Ween Satan
and the demo era, Melchiondo had plenty of experience as a drummer, and in fact, he appears behind the kit on two
Chocolate and Cheese
tracks, “Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?” and “What Deaner Was Talkin’ About.” But for other songs, Ween sought a more polished sound. When asked why he thought he was tapped to play on two of
the album’s tracks, Coleman answers, “[Drums are] my primary instrument and my career. Mickey’s a pretty awesome drummer in his own right, but he just wanted someone who was a real drummer, to play something a little more technically complicated that was maybe out of his reach.”

“Take Me Away” and “Freedom of ’76,” the tracks on which Coleman plays, don’t seem so much complicated as sophisticated. On “Freedom” in particular, Coleman lays down a smooth, relaxed groove that perfectly complements the song’s mellow vibe. His presence is very much in keeping with the album’s overall sonic upgrade. Since Coleman’s “Freedom of ’76” drum part mirrors Freeman and Melchiondo’s drum-machine demo of the song almost exactly, it’s clear that Coleman wasn’t coming on board to offer creative input. Instead, he was there for his technical expertise, something that didn’t seem to concern Ween much in the pre-
Chocolate and Cheese
days. Recruiting Coleman, then, was a significant step away from a DIY sound. However, Melchiondo stresses that the drummer wasn’t so much a hired gun as a talented friend. “We were pretty tight,” he says of Coleman. “It didn’t feel like we were bringing in a guy to play on the record — that’s for sure. He was hanging out all the time smoking pot and drinking.”

Stephan Said served a similar function to Coleman. A virtuosic multi-instrumentalist, he too was brought in to sweeten up various tracks, providing the haunting Spanish-guitar lead on “Buenas Tardes Amigo” and other crucial acccents. More so than Coleman, who lived in the
area and had spent time with Freeman and Melchiondo, Said fit the bill of the hired-gun session player. He recalls meeting Freeman and Melchiondo through a mutual friend — Danielle Stampe, better known as Slymenstra Hymen of GWAR — and later receiving a spontaneous invitation to stop by the
Chocolate and Cheese
sessions. “I just remember passing through one night, and they were like, ‘Come up to the studio,’” says Said. “And they knew I was a master of folk and traditional music from all around the world. I grew up playing violin and banjo, Dobro, mandolin, fiddle, and so that fit really well with Ween, because they were borrowing from all these different styles, and I did all the tasters, you know what I mean? That was my involvement, to just authenticate some of the traditional references.” This notion of authentication seems foreign to Ween’s initial mission of producing shoestring approximations of any genre they pleased, however sketchily. In fact, fans of
God Ween Satan
and
The Pod
will recall how the willful
in
authenticity of ethnic-flavored tracks such as “El Camino” and “Pollo Asado” contributed hugely to their appeal. Said’s involvement, then, perfectly encapsulates Ween’s growing meticulousness.

Weiss himself played a similar role, performing on the record in addition to producing it. At the time of
Chocolate and Cheese
, he was already a seasoned musician, having played bass in two key offshoots of Black Flag — the Rollins Band and guitarist Greg Ginn’s instrumental trio Gone. (Additionally, Freeman and Melchiondo would tap Weiss to handle live bass duties on the tour that followed
Chocolate and Cheese
— which featured Claude Coleman on drums — and this stint prompted Melchiondo to label Weiss “the mighty bassosaurus” in the
Paintin’ the Town Brown
liner notes.) Weiss recalls contributing bass to several
Chocolate and Cheese
tracks, including “Take Me Away” and “Joppa Road.” On the latter song, Weiss provided one of the album’s most memorable tasters: a busy, jazz-fusion-worthy fretless-bass solo that drives home the song’s yacht rock–ish approach.

It should be clear by now that
Chocolate and Cheese
was an entirely different project from the Ween records that preceded it. Freeman, Melchiondo and Weiss made a conscious decision to step up their approach on many fronts: by re-recording their initial home demos, by embracing state-of-the-art multitrack recording, by replacing drum machine with live drums and by roping in seasoned auxiliary musicians. These changes amounted to a major facelift. The eclecticism and irreverence of early Ween were still present on
Chocolate and Cheese
, but the songs no longer sounded like the work of a band that recorded on their living-room floor. This initial shift would pave the way for Ween’s formidably lush late work and for the band to gain a lasting foothold in pop culture.

C
hocolate and Cheese
might be a far cry from the enveloping psychedelia that characterizes later Ween efforts such as
White Pepper
or
Quebec
, but the album still represents a major step forward from its predecessors. Yet the record’s fuller, warmer pieces — more ambitious than anything Ween had previously attempted — sit alongside songs that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on
Pure Guava
. In that sense
Chocolate and Cheese
is a textbook transitional record. This chapter examines the album song-by-song, explicating how
Chocolate and Cheese
retained the quirky charm of Ween’s early work while pointing the way to the depth of the later albums, and also — with help from Melchiondo, Freeman, Weiss and others — delving deep into the music itself, both its creation and its reception. Rather than discuss the songs in their actual running order, I’ve chosen a sequence that seemed most relevant to the themes dealt with in this book.

Since its release on
Chocolate and Cheese
, “Freedom of ’76” — a silky-smooth soul number — has become one of Ween’s most beloved songs. But at the time, a fan of the band’s prior work would’ve had a tough time even identifying it as a Ween track. In stark contrast to the drum-machine-driven material on
The Pod
and
Pure Guava
, “Freedom” sounds like it was performed by a live band.

It features an impressively laid-back, expertly recorded drum-set performance from Claude Coleman. According to Melchiondo, he overdubbed the final guitar track, but he did originally play along with Coleman in the studio as a guide. The vocal performance is similarly natural-sounding, with Freeman busting out a deadly falsetto. On an earlier record, he might’ve sped up his voice by simply tinkering with the tape, but here he’s genuinely craning for the high notes in the manner of one of his major vocal influences, Prince. Luminous “oohs” and “aahs” drift up from the background to buoy Freeman’s lead part. The lyrics indulge in some classic Ween absurdity (“
Mannequin
was filmed at Woolworth’s / Boyz II Men still keepin’ up the beat”), but otherwise the performance sounds remarkably straightforward.

A demo version of the song, dating from the summer of 1992, gives a glimpse at what “Freedom of ’76” would’ve sounded like had it ended up on an earlier Ween record. The composition itself is identical, but here, the drums are synthesized and tinny-sounding, and a slight yet
trippy distortion muddies the vocal. On this first version, you can still hear the middle-school Ween: two teenage music fans offering a loving yet markedly homegrown tribute to a beloved genre. But on the final version, you hear the genre itself. As it appears on
Chocolate and Cheese
, “Freedom of ’76” is a bona fide soul song.

It wasn’t just a sonic makeover that allowed Ween to sound so authentically soulful. As Melchiondo explains, the track was a showcase for his newly broadened palette of guitar techniques:

We had a friend — I’m still friends with him — this guy named Ed Wilson, who’s probably in his fifties now. Ed was a local guitar player and he worked at the taco joint with Aaron as a short-order cook. And Ed is like the local shit-hot guitar player, a legend in the Trenton area. And we hung out with Eddie a lot, and I played a ton of guitar with him and he was always showing me new things. He was a pretty big influence on that record. He’s credited on ‘Freedom of ’76.’ And he started showing me all those fancy-schmancy chords that are on that record and on that song and on all of our records after that. More jazzy type of stuff: major 7th chords, and all sorts of fancy shit. And Ed taught me those chords by teaching me that pattern in “Freedom of ’76.” And it started as something else. It was like “Use Me,” Bill Withers. It kind of started like we were playing a Bill Withers thing and then we changed it all around and bastardized it. Anyway, that became “Freedom of ’76.” Aaron wrote words to it, but Ed is the one who
taught me all those chords that are in all those songs: “Freedom of ’76” and “Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?” and then on all the records after that. He kind of taught me to play more standards, like jazz standards or something.

Ed Wilson recalls using the guitar-teaching platform to expose Freeman and Melchiondo to some of his original tunes, one of which unexpectedly morphed into “Freedom of ’76”: