After over 25 years of quirky musical strangeness it seems the Ween boys are calling it a day – or at least one of them is.
Yesterday Aaron Freeman (aka Gene Ween) told Rolling Stone that, “It’s time to move on – I’m retiring Gene Ween… It’s been a long time, 25 years. It was a good run.”
Rumours of problems in the Ween camp first surfaced in Vancouver last year when Freeman had a drug and alcohol-fueled meltdown on stage. But according to Freeman, (who’s currently touring and promoting his new solo album, Marvelous Clouds) he’s been considering calling time on Ween for the past eight years, even though rumours of a twelfth album have been stuttering around for the past two years.
It seems all this ‘break-up’ talk is news to Freeman’s longtime bandmate Mickey Melchiondo (aka Dean Ween) though. Melchiondo was clearly surprised by Freeman‘s statement. The breakup “is news to me, all I can say for now I guess,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Ween’s publicist also seemed to be caught offguard by Freeman, telling The A.V. Club, “I actually don’t have any further info at the moment but will alert you once I do.”
So, when will the truth finally emerge? And is this really the end for Ween, a band known by those ‘in the know’ as probably the ‘ultimate stoner cult band’? If it is then it’s sad news indeed.
Here’s hoping those who’ve not heard Ween before, give their back catalogue a thorough rifle. In our book (possibly titled ‘The Beautiful Sneer Of Musical Snobbery’) any record collection that doesn’t feature at least three of the following – GodWeenSatan : The Oneness, The Pod, Pure Guava, Chocolate and Cheese, 12 Golden Country Great and The Mollusk – doesn’t deserve the right to rotate and make sounds.
Slacker Shack 