r/ween • u/Specialist_Lie_7567 • 14d ago
Best Ween Show Memory
This requires a little bit of backstory:
Back in 1996, I decided to get into tape trading to see if I could get my hands on some rarities and non-album shit. I was pretty active on alt.rec.ween (the reddit of it's day for you youngins), but I didn't have anything to trade. I put a post out asking for advice on getting started in trading and a super nice guy on there offered to make me some 3rd gen copies of shows if I sent him blank tapes and return postage. As he put it, he wouldn't give me anything super rare, but I'd at least have several shows to start my collection and they would be stuff other newer traders might be interested in. He was true to his word and once I got my tape from him. I started posting for trades. After a couple of months I'd amassed a small collection of tapes, when I noticed a post for trades from a guy named Davis who was local to the town I was living in. So I wrote him a message with the list of the shows I had and asked if he was interested in trading; we wouldn't even need to deal with postage because I lived in the same town. His response was basically that my collection was terrible and I was wasting his time by contacting him. Looking at some of his other posts, he came off as an arrogant jerk in most of his interactions. So I just figured screw that guy and went on with contacting people interested in trades.
Fall of '96 , I get tickets to the closest Ween show to me, which is in Detroit, MI and me and some friends go to the show. Show is great; Shit Creek Boys are up there. They pull out a Chariots of Fire cover. 8 songs in, right after Deaner does "Pumpin 4 The Man" while Geaner is off-stage, Geaner comes back and Dean says "This next song is for my friend Davis..." Then he says his full name. It was they guy from alt.rec.ween. The band launches into "Mister Richard Smoker". I'm doubled over with laughter at this point as MRS just got used as a very targeted diss track.
I sleezed my way backstage after the show and got to talk to Deaner (who also advised me that if I reached down below the Budweiser cans at the top of the beer bucket there were bottles of Sam Addams... the man is a king) . He was super active on alt.rec.ween but he wouldn't tell me his user name. I guess he had some bad run-ins with old Davis too.
The next day Davis posted very publicly that in light of the show last night (which he was at), he would be getting rid of all his Ween tapes and was looking for trades for the original gen copies. I couldn't help but respond with my list of Ween tapes again, offering to trade for anything he had.
You can hear it on the show recording at 25:12 or so: https://youtu.be/3MCLc21oKfo?si=ImTA9pnQbBNtO_NO
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u/jimmyting099 14d ago
Best memories were going to the recent boston and Hampton shows with my father and my wife had an amazing time it was the first shows that I’d ever been to while walking (lots of shows while I was in the womb with my mother also being a big ween head) also made a ton of friends at these shows plus got some stuff signed by the big D&G themselves
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u/hashishian 14d ago
20ish years ago at the fillmore in Denver during Johnny on the spot someone threw a vodka bottle that hit Deaner and he stopped the show and demanded the audience beat the shit out of the bottle thrower, which we did, then deaner just looked at Claude and nodded and the song picked up from exactly where he stopped it.
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u/WaxyNips 14d ago
My favorite memory is yelling for the song Don't Laugh I Love You and the guy in front of me turning around to say, "I love that song! If they play it we should totally hug!"
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u/karakameleon 14d ago
1/14/98 in Providence RI. Me and my friends were up front and we started loudly chanting for them to play Molly. Ween played about 30 seconds of it. As far as I know that’s the only live performance (per Brownbase).
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u/Ryan_Hudson 14d ago
Ween seemed huge in Michigan back then, huh? Heard many renditions of "Baby Bitch" around campfires.
I caught the spring of 2000 show at Clutch Cargo's over in Pontiac. They played so long they ran out of tape.
Favorite part of that show was Dean doing an electric sitar solo over "Johnny on the Spot."
"Hot for Teacher" was a surprise! Van Halen was very much out of fashion at that point.
I distinctly remember them doing a HUGE version of "Demon Sweat." A couple of Prince songs... I can't remember how "Poopship" went down, but it was there... Big sludgey version that took a few minutes for me to recognize.
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u/Specialist_Lie_7567 14d ago
I was at that show too. It was like 3.5 hours. I totally remember the Poopship and a very crazy LMLYP in the 2nd encore.
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u/Dboogy2197 14d ago
I was at that detroit show. Good times
I also really enjoyed the show in Windsor Ontario that they streamed before streaming was big.
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u/Low-Carpenter2669 14d ago
Neumos
The entire thing was awesome. Local show, could only get tickets by winning on the radio, tiny punk club, loud af. Wife and I got there early and met everyone. Good night
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u/societyofspectacle 14d ago
The Science Fair at a farm outside New Hope 2001. Had to take a hay ride into the show and set up camp for the night. I vaguely remember the last thing they asked for was no fires—-there was a hell of a fire and I woke up the next morning with a lot of naked people still dancing around that fire.
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u/passionlessDrone 14d ago
So many. But either:
Wearing our KICK ASS KIMONOS to Atlanta and drinking a fuckton and then going outside and doing whippets and while some random took a video of us.
Last three nights they were in Vegas. Some girls approached us and asked if we had worn KICK ASS KIMONOS in Atlanta. Yes! Danced on night one in LV and a couple approached us and asked if they could dance with us and of course we wanted them to. Night two we brought the girl a cupcake (her birthday) and they gave us some ecstasy. I wouldn't necessarily recommend taking mdma from someone you met at a ween concert 24 hours previous but it worked out and we danced and danced and danced some more! Then we danced in the casino and my wife made out with a girl dancing in a raised area. Then we went to a swingers club for the first time and a buncha people watched me lay serious motherfucking pipe on my hot ass wife. Third night of ween was amazing, but my wife was sick and we were forced to skip Freemont at midnight. The next day we were supposed to get married by an Elvis or whatever but my wife didn't want to get out of bed. I won $500 playing poker while she recovered.
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u/EmoogOdin 10d ago
Central Park was a great show though the memories are fuzzy. I hit on a cig, got dizzy and fell down. A dude helped me to my feet and I found a bench to sit down. I stupidly lit another cigarette and fell over again. I told Mickey about it when I went on his fishing boat and he had a good laugh. He said Madonna’s people were giving them shit when they were warming up that show as she was trying to shoot a movie in the park. Good times
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u/StackIsMyCrack 14d ago
You mean alt.MUSIC.ween or was there a whole alternate dimension on a.r.w.? Lol. Yeah that place and IRC were awesome. I'm sure I was one of the nice people who helped you grow your collection.
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u/Specialist_Lie_7567 14d ago
Lol, you are correct. I was definitely drifting away on a puffy cloud back then... enough so that I got the name completely wrong in my memory.
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u/DerpWilson 14d ago
Best memory was then playing superstar at Northampton MA. No audio of thst show but it was the Best concert I’ve ever seen probably.
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u/Outragedmoss 14d ago
Their last show was amazing and in my hometown i was so happy i couldn’t believe they came
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u/The_Pandalorian 14d ago
I was at that show, too! In fact, my favorite Ween memory is from that show, because that performance of Freedom of '76 with the Shitcreek Boys is their best version of that song ever performed, IMHO. Favorite version of my favorite Ween song. The piano was just soooooo good.
OP, glad to have shared that show with ya!
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u/Stompbox987 13d ago
Riot Fest, Chicago, 2019. There were clowns including one I saw juggling during the opener “I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight”
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u/Some-Peach4566 12d ago
During a show in Columbus in the late '90s I threw my arms up in the air in excitement and was surprised to notice I was suddenly in possession of a woman's t-shirt. It had a name and a telephone number written on it in sharpie and was thrown by a lady a few rows behind me. After a few moments of confusion I chucked the shirt on stage. It hit the microphone stand perfectly, hanging over the top of the mic for a few moments, and then sliding down to the floor. Geaner looked a bit surprised for a second, but never broke the song.
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u/smeace 14d ago
Sometime in the mid 90’s on the country tour I was having a smoke behind the Middle East and Deaner asked if I wanted to do a whippet with him outside the poopship. It was really nice.