Thus spake the Boognish: 8 kooky Ween songs with greater meanings
Ween isn’t a band most people take seriously—hell, rumor has it that “brothers” Gene and Dean Ween themselves don’t even know what most of their songs are about. It’s easy enough to brush off songs like “Flies On My Dick” and “Help Me Scrape The Mucus Off My Brain” as drug-addled wanks and nothing more. But if Ween’s a joke band, it's probably one of the most successful joke bands of all time, having recorded enough albums since 1990 to earn a rabid following able to sustain another U.S. tour this month—an audacious three years since the group’s last studio release. That in mind, before Ween plays the Aragon tonight, The A.V. Club took a machete to the Ween catalog’s rainforest of synths, axe solos, and nasal whining to suss out which songs you don’t have to be stoned to see the deeper meaning in.
“Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?” Chocolate & Cheese, 1994
The Meaning: Loss of innocence. This song is sung from the perspective of a child asking a stranger to help his pony, who is apparently dying of some weird disease that the kid—being a mere kid—can’t diagnose. “Pony” zooms in and examines that horrible and precise moment when you realize that not only are there dangers in the world, but they have no rhyme or reason. Even worse: You’re powerless to do anything about it.
Key Lyric: “He's over there lookin' at me / He can't talk because he's a pony / I think it's his lung.”
“Never Squeal,” GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, 1990
The Meaning: Take the middle path. The supposedly anti-dogma Ween approaches preachiness here, in a beatnik-like jazz-jam of philosophical tenets. The message: Don’t screw other people over, just worry about yourself, and everything will sort itself out. Which is not to say life will be great, but it’ll be good enough not to want to kill yourself.
Key Lyric: “Never smuggle no candy / Can't be whatcha wanna / When you haffa go down to the darkest places / Yeah, it’ll be okay.”
"Push Th’ Little Daisies,” Pure Guava, 1992
The Meaning: Death... of one kind or another. As one of Ween’s happier songs, it seems, on the surface, to be about having a crush on a girl. But what about the chorus?: “Push th’ little daisies and make ’em come up?” In the minds of Gene and Dean, the song’s main character can only find true love when he and his mate are both six feet under.
Key Lyric: “When you lie, kiss your baby bye bye bye / And if you're true, the whole wide world will laugh with you.”
"The Golden Eel,” The Mollusk, 1997
The Meaning: The meaning of life—why we’re all on this earth. This song takes a bit more of a straight-on approach by using a flat-out metaphor: Life is as beautiful and elusive as a golden eel, which we can’t capture, share it with anyone, or even understand until we’re dead. Depressing as that is, imagine how the eel feels: He can’t even talk about it. And although we can, we’re all probably wrong. At least our human ears can get distracted with “The Golden Eel”’s gritty and industrial chorus while thrashing along.
Key Lyric: “The eel offered his help I can't understand / Speaking its truth from the bank / Now I can see / I can not repeal the words of the golden eel.”
“Sorry Charlie,” The Pod, 1991
The Meaning: Shit happens. This song is an adieu to an imaginary friend, Charlie, a sad sack whose life seems to be falling apart on every front. He’s dropping out of college, he doesn’t have a job, his girlfriend isn’t right for him, and to top it all off, none of his friends have the time or interest to help him deal with his crap. Ween’s message for Charlie: Life doesn’t always or ever turn out the way you planned, but you have to keep going because you’re the only one who can take care of yourself. In short: too fucking bad, Charlie.
Key Lyric: “You did nothing to deserve this / God didn't treat you swell / Oh it all slipped through your fingers / and it all seems so unfair.”
“Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy),” Pure Guava, 1992
The Meaning: Overdosing on heroin is bad. Fans speculate that this song is about child molestation (“Don’t quiver little boy / Your daddy’s with you now”) which—knowing the Weens—is just as likely as anything else. But The A.V. Club thinks the dreamy, Zeppelin-esque track is more a cautionary tale: The lyrics mention “drifting off into dreams” and “the gentle kiss of night,” which, like opiates, sounds nice and relaxing—until you do too much. The desperate titular message intensifies as the track goes on, culminating in an epic vocals-only breakdown at the end of the song, hammering it home: Be careful not to have too much “candy,” or you’ll wind up meeting your maker.
Key Lyric: “Don't be afraid to clutch the hand of your creator / Stare into the lion's eyes / And if you taste the candy / You'll get to the surprise.”
“I’m Holding You,” 12 Golden Country Greats, 1996
The Meaning: Finding hope in the void. True to the album’s country theme, this song is about love, and trying to keep it from dying out. But it’s also an exercise in existentialism: The cowboy narrator is so intent on clinging to his darling because he’s found nothing else to live for in his barren, “pewky” cowboy life. So he keeps scoping, tripping, writhing, hoping, and above all, holding on to what little good he can get.
Key lyrics: “I'm flyin' (flyin') / In a frame of my mind / That time cannot erase / I'm seein' (seein') / The future, the past / As I lay the present to waste.”
“Flutes Of Chi,” White Pepper, 2000
The Meaning: Reincarnation. On “Flutes Of Chi,” the Weens channel George Harrison, with plenty of hippie-dippy past-life references to “things coming in threes” and “fruits of the old.” Originally rejected from The Mollusk, this song perhaps seemed more appetizing to Gene and Dean after a few years and another go-around—which would be appropriate, given how the song gets a second life here. Apparently this is the sort of stuff you start to think about when you hit 30.
Key lyric: “For, it's not what you are / How you've come to be / All this will end and begin again.”
