Posts Tagged ‘ Ween ’

Ween: June 6, 2017 Brooklyn Steel

June 11, 2017
By

Our friend Chris Davis from “Team Dirty South” came north to capture this show for NYCTaper, and he reports:

Ween @ Brooklyn Steel on June 6, 2017 – A Team Dirty South/NYCTaper Joint

After some mild subway misdirection, an uber dropped me off at Brooklyn Steel exactly at 7:00. I was surprised to find a long line well around the corner. In Charleston, music fans show up an hour late for everything. This was my first indication that this Brooklyn Ween crowd was hungry and eagerly anticipating this two-night run following the band’s reuniting just last year. Conversation around me in line was entirely Ween focused: a spirited Brooklyn Bowl-Las Vegas February run discussion, Sunday’s Baltimore setlist review and expectations for the evening. Clearly, this crowd was excited and ready for a rock show.

The line moved quickly and in about 10 minutes I was getting patted down at the entrance. My recording gear seemed to be understood; however the microphone stand was a source of confusion. Luckily, the NYCTaper crew had rolled out the red carpet and I knew exactly who to ask for. Another taper and I waited patiently until Anthony, the venue manager came over. Anthony had seen the likes of us before; and quickly instructed us on how Brooklyn Steel wants it done. No worries, Anthony was very accommodating and friendly, and instantly we were inside hoisting mics and pressing buttons.

Wow. This crowd was ravenous. Fans started screaming around 8:00 and didn’t stop. The place erupted when Ween took the stage around 8:30. Meandering slowly into “The Stallion”, then launching into “You Fucked Up”; this crowd knew the gloves were off and we were all in for a serious “all ages” Ween show! The set was richly scattered with Ween favorites (or classics if you can say that about the Ween catalog): “Transdermal”, “Push the Daisies”, “Roses are Free”, things were moving on and the Ween crowd was fully engaged. I heard very little crowd chatter and the recording reflects it. The band continued on through a twisty “HIV Song” and a rocking “Spinal Meningitis”. About halfway through the set, Gene pulled out the acoustic and announced “this is the first time we’ve ever played this”, and tuned into the opening chords of “Among His Tribe” off the 2003 Quebec album. What a surprise! As if not to take themselves or the moment too seriously, Ween followed quickly with “Piss Up a Rope”. The room would erupt again when the band announced a “nice party jam” and led us through David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”; a cover recently performed in Baltimore after a 6 year absence since New Years 2011. Immediately following, we were treated to the first live version of “Seconds” since summer 2002. The band lit the room up again with a super-funky “Going Gets Tough”, then winded things down with “Someday”. After a nearly 5-minute encore break; Ween gave us a Gene-less “Fiesta”, with Gene returning to the stage to shut things down with “The Mollusk”. The band left the stage at 10:42, following a few mentions of “tomorrow night”. Ween certainly left this crowd engaged and primed for another show!

I was a quick Uber back to Manhattan by 11:15, with a Shake Shack burger and a bottle of cabernet delivered to my hotel room, only in NYC for this Team Dirty South taper!

Download this Recording from Archive.org [MP3] / [FLAC-24] [FLAC-16] and stream below:

Ween
Brooklyn Steel
Brooklyn, NY
June 6, 2017 [Tuesday]

****Team Dirty South Recording****

source: Peluso cecm6/ck41 [pas] -> Sound Devices MP-2 -> Tascam DR-680 [24/48]
location: dfc / light booth railing / stand @ 9′
transfer: DR-680 -> Wavelab 6.1 [matrix/fades] -> CD Wave 1.98 -> Wavelab 6.1 [Crystal/UV22HR] -> TLH [flac/8] -> FooBar

One Set:
01 – intro
02 – The Stallion Pt 1
03 – You Fucked Up
04 – Transdermal Celebration
05 – I Gots A Weasel
06 – Golden Eel
07 – The Argus
08 – Push th’ Little Daisies
09 – Big Jilm
10 – Roses are Free
11 – Did You See Me?
12 – Exactly Where I’m At
13 – Mutilated Lips
14 – The HIV Song
15 – Spinal Meningitis
16 – Among His Tribe*
17 – Piss Up A Rope
18 – Pork Roll Egg And Cheese
19 – Dr. Rock
20 – Object
21 – Buckingham Green
22 – Happy Colored Marbles
23 – Mister Richard Smoker
24 – Let’s Dance
25 – Seconds**
26 – The Goin’ Gets Tough From The Getgo
27 – It’s Gonna Be A Long Night
28 – Someday
29 – crowd

Encore:
30 – Fiesta
31 – The Mollusk

*first time played
**first time since 8/22/2002

#descorchados2017!

PLEASE Support Ween: Website | Store | Facebook

Ween: June 7, 2017 Brooklyn Steel

June 9, 2017
By

For the second night of Ween‘s run at shiny new venue Brooklyn Steel, the band continued to reiterate what has made them such a cult favorite. As a newcomer to the band, I can’t claim to be any kind of expert in the ins and outs of the setlists, but if you’re curious what has made them one of the more welcome “reunions” of recent years, I can offer some thoughts. First, the musical diversity of the band’s sound has long been well-known, mixing bar-room rock, punk, psychedelia, country, new wave, funk and more. Though the recent accumulation of Phish fans to their ranks has been talked about, the more logical touch points for understanding this band are willfully-weird bands like the Butthole Surfers and the Meat Puppets, who similarly can’t be pigeonholed into a genre so much as a vibe. Second, in Ween’s case, there’s a brand of outrageous humor at work in many of their songs, of a kind that prompts debate on the Internet over the funniest Ween songs. Whether or not songs like “Deez Nutz” or “Bananas and Blow” are your thing doesn’t necessarily determine whether you have to like or dislike the live show, just as some Phish get more turned on by the Gamehendge element than others. Personally, I was more fired up about songs like the sprawling 1994 jam “A Tear for Eddie,” or 1990’s Butthole Surfers-esque “Licking the Palm for Guava” (also dedicated here to Gibby Haynes).

Since I know fairly little about the band, I decided to consult a long time fan on the show to get his take. In his read, compared to the previous Brooklyn Steel show, this was a relatively sedate affair, focusing more on the band’s country sound and skipping some of what this fan deemed “essential” Ween songs such as a classic cover, or any of “Dr. Rock,” “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down),” “Push the Little Daisies,” “You Fucked Up,” “Golden Eel,” and “Buckinham Green” — all of which made it into the first night setlist.  Along with the “A Tear For Eddie” that I did, he pointed out that “Mushroom Festival In Hell” and “I’ll Be Your Johnny On the Spot” as highlights.

Wherever you are in your Ween fandom, you can’t deny that they’re as hard working a band as they come. When they promised “an evening” with them, we got one, a full two hours and ten minutes of mostly uninterrupted playing that fired up the slam-packed Brooklyn Steel floor. I have no doubt that the show was ten times more engaging for those better acquainted with the inside jokes and the general band lore, but based on this performance, I’d be up for finding out more.

Finally, if you haven’t been to Brooklyn Steel yet, know that longtime sufferers of its predecessor will finally have a mid-large venue for more popular bands that offers a full view of the stage from almost every place in the room. We’ve already enjoyed a few shows here so far, and look forward to many more. As always thanks to the professional staff of Bowery Presents for making our presence there feel both safe and welcome.

I recorded this set from the “taper’s section” with Schoeps MK41V microphones. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Night one was also recorded and will be posted soon.

Download the complete set from its home on the Live Music Archive: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Ween
2017-06-07
Brooklyn Steel
Brooklyn, NY USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK41V (at SBD, PAS)>KCY>Z-PFA>Zoom F8>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CC (fades, compression, limiter)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)
>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time: 2:10:07]
01 Chocolate Town
02 Tried and True
03 Birthday Boy
04 Help Me Scrape the Mucus off My Brain
05 [banter1]
06 Take Me Away
07 Fat Lenny
08 Cold & Wet
09 Boys Club
10 [banter2]
11 Nan
12 Gabrielle
13 Bananas and Blow
14 My Own Bare Hands
15 A Tear for Eddie
16 [banter3]
17 Licking the Palm for Guava
18 Mushroom Festival in Hell
19 I Can’t Put My Finger on It
20 [banter4]
21 Baby Bitch
22 Flutes of Chi
23 [banter5]
24 I Saw Gener Cryin’ in His Sleep
25 I’ll Be Your Jonny on the Spot
26 [banter6]
27 Learnin’ to Love
28 Deez Nutz
29 Polka Dot Tail
30 [tuning]
31 Drifter in the Dark
32 Powder Blue
33 Hey There Fancypants
34 [encore break]
35 Don’t Shit Where You Eat
36 What Deaner Was Talkin’ About

Support Ween: Website | Store

Freeman: July 23, 2014 Baby’s All Right – Flac/MP3/Streaming

July 28, 2014
By

Freeman Babys
[photo from This Is Ween tumblr]

For better and for worse, rock music and drugs will forever be inextricably intertwined. Bill Maher once joked “I wouldn’t recommend heroin. But it hasn’t hurt my record collection”. But on the dark side, drugs have been responsible for the premature demise of far too many rock musicians and fans. In early 2011, Gene Ween was seriously in danger in becoming the next casualty in the rock world. Gener was losing his fight with alcohol and drug addiction and it all came to a boil one sad and ugly night on stage in Vancouver when his condition was so bad that he was incapable of performing the material and the rest of the band walked off the stage on him. After the tour, Gene Ween went into rehab in Arizona and stopped touring with the band. After his first solo album was released, Gene Ween officially broke up Ween in 2012 and began to perform under his birth name Aaron Freeman. Its four years later and Freeman is still sober and ready to talk about the dark years. The new album Freeman was released last week on Partisan Records and its an honest and frank discussion of the journey to sobriety.

The band is also called Freeman and they played two album-release shows last week at Mercury Lounge and Baby’s All Right. At the Baby’s show, Freeman opened the set with three straight songs from the new album, the third of which is perhaps the most poignant song “Covert Discretion” which essentially tells the story of the Vancouver meltdown. But for the packed house of Ween fans, the old Gener didn’t disappoint as the band whipped out plenty of Ween material, including some deep cuts. We are streaming “Transdermal Celebration” from Ween’s 2003 album Quebec. But ultimately this show was all about the new material, and Freeman closed the set with a run of songs from the album including the confessional “(For a While) I Couldn’t Play My Guitar Like a Man” which closed the main set and that we are streaming below. Freeman closed the show with two eclectic covers and from the crowd reaction, the fans seemed pleased. But make no mistake, there is some animosity among the Ween uberfans over the fact that “Gener” broke up the band. But as the album Freeman makes clear, without the breakup of Ween, Aaron Freeman would likely have died. Or as he sings on “Covert Discretion”, “be grateful I saved me from myself”.

Freeman will return to shows in the Fall with an extensive tour of the East and Midwest. The next local show is October 4 at Bowery Ballroom.

This set was recorded by House FOH Devin, who provided a superb live mix of the multitrack. There are also cardioid microphones installed on the lighting rig about 15 feet in front of the stage. In post-production, I mixed the two sources and the results are quite excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Transdermal Celebration”:

Stream “(For a While) I Couldn’t Play My Guitar Like a Man”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request

Freeman
2014-07-23
Babys All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Soundboard Multitrack Recording

Multitrack Soundboard (engineered and recorded by Devin Foley) > Devin mix Wav + Room mic wav > Soundforge (level adjustments, setfades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:38:26]
01 El Shaddai
02 Gimme One More
03 Covert Discretion
04 All The Way To China
05 Transitions
06 The Grobe
07 The English and Western Stallion
08 Happy Colored Marbles
09 Molly
10 Pollo Asado
11 The Stallion Pt 1
12 Transdermal Celebration
13 Your Party
14 More Than The World
15 [crowd]
16 (For a While) I Couldn’t Play My Guitar Like a Man
17 [encore break]
18 Black Bush
19 Golden Monkey
20 Jailbreak [Thin Lizzy]
21 [second encore break]
22 I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man [Pr1nce]

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Freeman, visit his page at the Partisan Records site, and purchase Freeman from the Partisan’s site [HERE].

SUPPORT NYCTaper




Email

Email nyctaper

DISCLAIMER and LEGAL NOTICE

nyctaper.com is a live music blog that offers a new paradigm of music distribution on the web. The recordings are offered for free on this site as are the music posts, reviews and links to artist sites. All recordings are posted with artist permission or artists with an existing pro-taping policy.

All recordings and original content posted on this site are @nyctaper.com as live recordings pursuant to 17 U.S.C. Section 106, et. seq. Redistribution of nyctaper recordings without consent of nyctaper.com is strictly prohibited.

nyctaper.com hereby waives all copyright claims to any and all recordings posted on this site to THE PERFORMERS ONLY. If any artist posted on this site requests that recordings be removed, those recordings will be removed forthwith.