LA CUCARACHA

I'm gonna do something I've never done here: take a closer look at an entire album, song by song. I'm not going to pretend this is a professional review, none of the thoughts here on this blog have anything to do with professionalism. You don't listen to music through a stethoscope.

The album is La Cucaracha, by, yes yes yes, Ween. Why? Because I had thought it was a bad album (by Ween standards) when in fact it is a great one. The chasm between the two concepts is vast enough to make me feel quite silly indeed.

Two keep this short - pfff! - I'm gonna plunge right into it.

1. Fiesta

This song kicks off the album right into the deepest brownness. It's so idiotically enthusiastic with those trumpets buzzing like drunken flies around the purest Spaniard turd, you can't help going "Ole!" every time it finishes (it's on repeat, cause it's kinda short.) I love it that at some point it has a very electronic DJ-ish sort of drone for about a split second that always makes me fantasize about what would Trent Reznor be like if he were ever in a good mood. It's not my favorite song on the album - to say nothing of the entire Ween discography - but it is the kind of song Ween would choose for an appetizer, to set the mood of the album, only to change it 2 minutes later...

2. Blue balloon

...with "Blue Balloon". This little song is nothing less than charming. When I listen to it, the phrase "a stroll in the park" comes to mind. But it's Ween, so it's more like a "a stroll in the pork" (which incidentally is an album by Pig, but he's a meanie, he wouldn't even know how to spell "park".) The great thing about Ween is that they have a knack for taking the dreariest and most banal themes and turn them into pure gold. This one sounds like a casual, uncomplicated song. A devil-may-care tune, the dandy song. But the little details glow in the dark like those weird fluorescent algae on the seaside and adorn this childish, playful tune with perfectly choreographed sparks of brilliance. The bass line - so melancholic. Those percussion (?) sounds (I don't even know what that is) - they sound like a fairy bouncing off the walls. And those mewing balloon sounds, albeit fart-sounding too, make the whole thing float right off into the brown dimension

3. Friends

Now, remember kids, you've gotta have a sense of humor to appreciate these boys. And a weird one at that. "Friends" may sound like Technotronic to you - and this is exactly the point where most people recoil with horror and dismiss Ween: a joke band, and a bad one - but think about it: would Technotronic ever come up with a lyric like "scary to think that I could be happy"? No. To be fair, they might have come up with "a friend's a friend who knows what being a friend is", but Ween's tongue bursts through the cheek like an alien on this one, I feel. Ween have been known to tinker and tamper with musical genres like a cat on acid with imaginary mice. This is a funny joke, but you need some of their weed to get it.

4. Object

OMG! No really: OMFG! Forget the mood swings on this album (and all others), but after "Friends" this one hits you in the kidney like a soap in a wet sock. This is one of THE Ween songs. It's Spinal Meningitis, it's Don't Get 2 Close, it's Happy Colored Marbles, it's Mutilated Lips. Sick & sweet. It's brown sugar-coated gangrene, Ween special recipe. Gene delivers, as usual, the ugliest images in his most tender, loving voice. It's like that torture scene in Audition, he's a sadist, but he kills you with a piano string. And he toys with you. Again! Oh, the lyrics on this one! This song is immaculately demented. And the ending: "I'm gonna do something wrong. Nobody's gonna like it. [...] I feel a little better. They found your sweater. You're just an object to me." Murder! Sister Dew! This song is like the creepy, soulless, empty child who's just stabbed his little sister, puts make up on her and uses her for a Barbie doll at his pretend tea party, while the other guests are his stuffed chihuahua and a piece of string. Jesus. I love this song. I'd like to paint like this song.

5. Learnin to love

After "Object", this is brutal. This feels like a leftover from 12 Golden Country Greats. Redneck extravaganza, clap yo' greasy hands and stomp your raggedy boots, it's hee-haw time.

Not a favorite. Musically it's fine, the boys do know their instruments, we know that. The easiness with which they jump from techno to country is, as always, mind blowing. It's just that...spitting tobacco through empty purple gums isn't really my thing. But I will say this: I would love to watch Christopher Walken dance to this, especially that interlude which...I don't know what it reminds me of. Broadway musical? Burlesque show? A cover of "Feeling good" done by Rednex? Banjo hero? I don't know, but it sounds awfully (and I do mean awfully) familiar. You know what? What the hell, throw some Fred Astaire in there too, let's see what happens.

6. With my own bare hands

This must be Mickey's baby, it's too macho for Aaron. It's a moistboy holler. It's the kind of song Tenacious D would listen to and think 'Hey, we can do this, too!" To bad they lack the subtlety and brilliance. This is pure rock stripped of all the glamor, but not necessarily a masterpiece. Not one of my favorites either, but - and I can't stress this enough - with Ween it's different. Since they so bravely, candidly and systematically satirize each and every musical style on this planet, and since it's so hard to tell where the caricature ends and the tribute begins, I am and will always accept everything these guys have to offer and enjoy it for what it is, nothing less and nothing more. Ween, to me, is the very definition of creative freedom and freedom in general. Do whatever the fuck you want to do, enjoy it and chill. If they would ever do a Celine Dion type of song, I would damn well cherish it. They manage to paste a Ween layer on everything they touch and that makes even the lamest song sound, not bearable, but good. And those are the bad Ween songs. The rest are great.

7. The fruit man

Like I said, any genre. This is Ween dreaming in green, yellow and black. It's reggae even Bob Marley would wake up and say "what the fuck was in that spliff, man?"

My background: I loathe reggae. Fact: I love this song. It's like fishing for golden fish in a honey jar. While your ass floats above your head. My god, these guys must smoke good stuff. "King Billy" on the Friends EP must have been a draft for this song. It must have come out of the same joint, anyway. And I'm glad they fished even further, because "King Billy" is a great song (the voice, oh the voice), but this one is holiday all the way. Listen to those sounds hanging to the tune like ornaments in a fucked up Christmas tree. The clicks and clangs and whistles, it's the exact image of the perforated sense of memory you have when you've just smoked your brains out. It's like stubs and splinters of memories are raining from the sky all around you and you can't focus on any of it if your life depended on it. You don't need a joint for this song, the song is the joint.

8. Spirit walker

Now...this one's too weird for words. This song could only be possible if Cher was a mermaid (which, despite what she thinks, she is not) and would bang her head on a coral reef and the blood bubbles surfacing the water would pop and be filled with random, strange lyrics. I'm not even gonna touch this one, this song is not on this album. But in a good way.

9. Shamemaker

If not for the lyrics, this song would be the perfect soundtrack for a Pacman game, if that game ever needed a soundtrack. It's like a three little piggies cartoon, working working working, till the big bad wolf comes and shames them with a blow. It's probably a great karaoke choice, there not much singing involved. I could have done without this one, but I'm not complaining. And what's that voice he's doing? it sounds like something from somewhere.

10. Sweetheart

If my memory wouldn't be so, ahem, selective, I could probably be able to tell what or whom this song sounds like. It sounds like a goldie oldie, doesn't it? The kind of tune our parents used to dance to on that cliff before jumping... If I were to do a video for this song, that's how I would do it. Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn would drive around in a convertible, her scarf would be blowing in the wind, his glasses would be black and his cigarette would be almost out. They would be in love and be looking for a place to picnic. They would kiss like they did in the 60s, miss a curve and fly off a cliff. The lovey-dovey part of the story would last 30 seconds tops, while the flying off a cliff part would last the remaining 2.45 min, in slow motion. With details such as pancakes flying around, lipstick smeared, muted horrified screams, scarf getting caught in a tree branch somehow with her left brutally strangled in that tree while Humphrey continues to fall towards his rocky doom. Then, right before the explosion, we cut to them having a perfect picnic and the same gesture repeats itself like a broken record: she wiping a bit of jam from the corner of his mouth and licking it off her finger like cat. Over and over again. Ad lib to fade. It's in the lyrics, I'm telling you.

11. Lullaby

Finally a genuinely tender one. I think. This doesn't sound like a cruel joke, this could actually be sung by a mum to her sleepy baby. It's beautiful. It's hard to believe that the same guys who wrote "With my own bare hands" wrote this one as well, but there's Ween for you. It reminds me of Radiohead's "I will", it's very gentle. There's a regretful, sorrowful tone to it, but the baby doesn't know that. Actually, I don't think it's about sleeping babies at all. It may be a lullaby for the dying, gently placing them onto the other side of existence, who the hell knows. Look at me all deep. I don't know, man, it's very soothing. It's the warm glass of milk of the album, makes you go all fetal.

12. Woman and man

They recorded, what was it, 500 minutes of this song or something, because their producer and long time friend, Andrew Weiss, insisted that it should be done in one take. But the result is flaming, man, it kicks tons of ass. It's like riding a wild horse. Makes you wanna watch westerns 24 hours straight. If you are so inclined. I'm not. However, I do like this song. It's out there, whipping the winds, throwing fire bolts, summoning weird looking gods and all sorts of other antics like that. Mickey must have slept a week after this one. Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and Eric Burdon would be proud. Bold Geronimo stuff. I don't know what those porn-party samples at the end have to do with anything, but a good sample should be used, always.

13. Your party

Oh wow. Another deceiving, seemingly lame song, but in all actuality a pretty great one indeed. Perfect closer. That saxophone reminds me of Scorsese films from the 70s. Okay, maybe a Scorsese film starring Candy Dulfer and no machine guns. There's a very cheesy note to this song, Lily is indeed here, all over the place. But! The last verse pretty much floors me:

Later on when we were under the covers

I closed my eyes, then I drifted to sleep

I dreamt about me maybe throwing a party

And just how great that would be.

I don't know, maybe's just me, but this crude, child-like honesty, this humble admission of entertaining a dream, the smallest dream ever, it's just disarming. Even asleep, in a dream, a place where everything and anything is permitted, he says "maybe." All this in contrast with the opulence of the party they've just returned from, golden plates and everything. This song says so much, just like its brother "If you could save yourself (you'd save us all)". If you've got ears and a trace of soul. I retract the "no machine guns" thing, this song kills.

So there you go. Not as short as you might have hoped.

Of course there are better Ween albums I could have picked. By all accounts that I am aware of, Chocolate & Cheese is their perfect album, their Abbey Road, their Trout Mask Replica, their Dark Side Of The Moon and their, yes, Thriller. I can't be so sure. It's really hard to choose between Chocolate & Cheese and The Mollusk. Thank God I don't have to. You tell me the difference between greatness and excellence. And "The Argus" isn't even on any of those two. I mean it's really hard. But I felt I really didn't do justice to this one, I let it feel like the ugly duckling and that wasn't fair.

You know what? It takes guts to like Ween, I mean really like and really understand. Sometimes it feels like coming out of the closet and admitting you enjoy wearing a bra under your Rammstein T-shirt. Sometimes you can feel quite stupid laughing at a joke no one else seems to get, you start thinking maybe there's something wrong with you. But music and artists should be free, the freest. And, as an artist, if you don't allow yourself the freedom to do anything that goes through your head, no matter how silly it may seem, you're dead. Which goes just as well for the fans. If you don't allow yourself to take pleasure from something as silly, but humorous and good, as "Don't laugh (I love you)" or "Pollo Asado", for instance, then you're nothing but an elitist, stiff, arrogant, frustrated, self-conscious prick who should listen to The Killers (and why not, Porcupine Tree) all day long and never get out. You know who you are.