Ween

After three nips of Jameson on the T platform and a stiffy at the Beantown Pub, Mussolini, who's apparently launched a campaign to become the coolest dictator girlfriend around, met me out front between the pub and the Orpheum. Ween went on shortly after 8:00. Having arrived at 8:00 on the nose, doors having opened at 7:30, we split a $9 beer under the presumption we had at least enough time for one between the two of us. As my date handed me the IPA for my first sip, applause indicated the inevitable. For my second consecutive Orpheum jaunt I could be found hurriedly chugging beer with Mussolini in the lobby for the duration of the first song. (You can't drink in the seats at the Orpheum. Them's the rules). Par for the course.

I picked up the pace, drinking more than my fair share, determined to limit our losses to one song. As we were guided to the wrong seats by a coincidentally female usher, the opening chords of "Transdermal Celebration" made me downright giddy. Our seats weren't bad. Neither were our real seats, to which we were forcibly moved at the song's conclusion. Dead center, five rows up on the balcony. I'm sure, if I had a bag of cherries and a little tail wind, I could have spit a pit right between Gene's bulging bug eyes.

I'm admittedly unfamiliar with substantial portions of Ween's vast catalogue, but I can say with confidence that I knew 95% of the songs they played. "Object", a song I actually sang to myself pretty much all day today, was a highlight. It's a gentle tune. A pretty tune. Could be a love song.... if it weren't deliberately written with the skewed sensibilities of a sociopath. "Learning to Love", a Ween flavored honky-tonk I actually didn't like upon first listen, had everybody bouncing. Moose was no exception (she kneels at the alter of Boognish).  My mouth hung open during Dean's extended noodling through the jam that is the second half of "Woman and Man". Much of what draws me to a band like Ween is their schizoid nature: their propensity to genre hop with a sense of humor that can hit you over the head or be found between the lines, unabashed crudeness and ernest sensitivity that reveal themselves over the course of adjacent songs.  

We screamed when Dean chopped into "Your Party".  An initial favorite of ours on the new album "Party" is a satirical play on aging yuppies and their collectively deteriorating sense of fun, even when explicitly trying to have it, their ever "developing" sense of propriety and etiquette, sprinkled with remnants of youthful "indiscretion".  I can't help but wonder if the song was written under the same pretense I find it. Ultimately immaterial, but I can't help but wonder.

When they came back out for an encore I was hoping for "The Argus".  This sentiment was soon forgotten and surely didn't impede the juvenile glee I found in screaming along to "AIDS".  At 10:30, when all was screamed, sung, strummed, struck, and done, I was extremely thankful Mussolini recommended we get Ween tickets.    

9.5/10