Fuck yeah first Qotsa album + Rated R...

I have to admit, I kinda fell off with Songs for the Deaf. Dave Grohl started turning up... things got really "alternative rawk" really fast. The craziness that I loved about the first two records was replaced by all this pretty basic rock stuff.

I mean, Them Crooked Vultures was a supergroup with Jimmy Page. It doesn't really get more trad rock than that.

I still think they're better than most modern rock-type-stuff bands (ugh.. Wolfmother is celebrating some 10th anniversary of why I'm certain is their only hit... Why?), and I still love Kyuss, but at this point I don't even read Qotsa articles. The name doesn't register as something I consider read-worthy.

But those first two albums... God damn man! Stooges worthy is right. "Regular John" is one of the great opening tracks, fuck it all.

The Mollusk is a goddamn masterpiece. I used to think Chocolate & Cheese was the best, but Mollusk is like the fucking White Album of Ween. If I were in charge of things, that fucker would have won so many Grammys.

Ween is of course a definitive and essential band, and they didn't really fuck around much with "not great" music. Every album has its own special awesomeness. Even La Cucaracha. But the Mollusk is just motherfucking insanity. Horrifying and ear splitting and violent but I swear "It's Gonna Be Alright Baby" would be a #1 if Coldplay or U2 recorded it.

Sebadoh... Ween... Qotsa ... They all kind of part of a very similar tradition aren't they?

I love back in the day shit-shootin' sessions.

Kyuss is so great and the only stoner band I really love! My fav is Sky Valley, but really love also Blues for the red sun and Circus (it´s really odd album in a good way). Desert Sessions 9 & 10 is just great, never get into QOTSA maybe just because they´re too produced, but I think I should listen some some their albums where are the "real" versions of that desert sessions songs.

One of these days I am going to listen much more Ween than I have listened.

Do it.

You value musicianship, I know, and the Ween "brothers" are actually incredible players, pretty much capable of playing anything. The fact that they chose to play such weird and crazy shit and curse like sailors and be generally preposterous in every way can sometimes make people think they're not serious about music, but nothing could be further from the truth.

They're totally serious about music. It's lyrics, concepts, thematic content, imagery, genre norms and pretty much everything else that they're not serious about ;)

White pepper is weens white album haha.

Aw I see what you did there!

That little I listened showed me I will like this band. Just haven´t yet have time to it. What album you recommend to start?

oh, and fuck Ween.

A guy I ended up despising played Ween all the time. He'd wake me by blasting "Push the Little Daisies," my vote for Most Annoying Song Ever. I loath them, although this might not be fair. Whatever. Double fuck them.

I'm sensing that you've never been awakened by Primus's "My Name is Mud" at obscenely high volumes.

Because that shit... That soulless shit.. is fucking next generation "annoying" - I hate asshole band.

To start? Probably Chocolate & Cheese. It goes down pretty easy.

GodWeenSatan: The Oneness is a fantastic debut, and the Pod is probably their first "classic", but it's hard for me to imagine someone who's not already into Ween being into those records.

But like I said, I think the Mollusk was their greatest achievement as a band. So if you're relatively new to their sound, I would say Chocolate & Cheese and the Mollusk are the best ones to start with.

But I fully recommend digging in completely if you like what you hear.

My Name is Mud is very repetitive and boring, but Jerry was a racecra driver, Frizzle Fry, and Too Many Puppies rule

Chocolate and cheese
Mollusk
White pepper

Great intros before getting into the truly weird shit

Most of their later albums sound like compilations of a dozen unrelated bands. Its incredible

Maybe I'll give Songs for the Dead another listen.
I did enjoy the songs, but nothing absolutely pummeled my brain like "Give the Mule What He Wants" or "Reg John" or "Quick and to the Pointless" and there also seemed to be no real revelatory moments, like "I was a Teenage Handmodel" or "In the Fade" those songs that just kind of linger in the tenements of your subconscious...

Dave Grohl will play with fucking anyone, and I haven't cared for anything he's written since 97. So he's not a selling point for me. But maybe I should fuck with that album again after all these years.

Agreed all around. Don't forget "Zoloft", one of their most perfect moments, and a great tune for the uninitiated.

Yeah, totally sick. That's true. I picked up on the oft-referred to "scariness" of Ween long before I actually got into them. Someone told me they were basically the most disturbing, fucked up band ever, and I didn't need to be convinced. All I needed to do was look at the cover of the Pod, which despite being based on the 1975 Best of Leonard Cohen cover, with almost nothing added to it, still manages to give me the fucking chills for some reason.

Also song titles, the apparent NEED for obscenity, these were the things that stuck in my mind about Ween, the things that made me totally believe that their music was going to be fucked.

And yeah, a lot of it is. They are scary. One of my favorite songs of theirs, "Spinal Meningitis" (which coincidentally has a very proto-QOTSA chorus) is so goddamn fucked up man... the distorted voice of a "child" with a terrible illness whining "it really hurts mommy/ am I gonna die?" is no less disturbing for the gitty retarded Ren & Stimpy chimes that enfold the skeletal verse.... If the chorus didn't bring the rock I'd have a hard time listening to it.

But the truth is that they're also a benevolent force in music. They're not *truly* scary like Idaho backwoods KKK hardcore bands or Billy Joel. They're like the perfect model of art imitating life imitating art, and everything they did they did with the intention of challenging and expanding our ideas of what music should be. They were true experimentalists, like Sonic Youth, like Aphex Twin, like Zappa and Beefheart and Brian Eno and Lou Reed.

I hate having to explain why I like Ween, because to me it feels as natural as liking Sonic Youth or the Flaming Lips or any of the other artists I mentioned. I like them because I like fucked up music, and I like pop music, and I like it when the two meet and shake hands and do a little dance and then chop one another's heads off. I love experimentation and unexpected sounds and inimitable artists, and that's what Ween's about.

Duh.

Sorry man I just really like the White Stripes. They're not a favorite, but I am glad they were around to be the biggest thing in the music world for a while because they were good at it, and they were well branded and they put on a ripping good show, and they kinda reminded me of the Beatles in some weird ways I can't defend. Yeah early Qotsa is better, but I do love every white stripes album. I loved hearing Citizen Kane quotes on mainstream radio in 2001 (whaaat?), and I loved how weird some of the songs that filled their run of #1 albums were. Why is "Girl You Have no faith in medicine" on a Grammy winning album? Or "Black Math"? I don't know. The hardest fucking button to button? What? Awesome.

They did their thing and now Jack White is a freaking massive celebrity and I don't care, because the white stripes kicked some serious shit out when they were together.

Songs For Deaf is really good.

Also, I really like Foo Fighters (still) so what the fuck do I know?