Misplaced Pages

#529470

178-674: Ween is an American rock band from New Hope, Pennsylvania , formed in 1984 by Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo, better known by their respective stage names, Gene and Dean . Generally categorized as an alternative rock band, the band are known for their irreverent, highly eclectic catalog of songs inspired by funk , soul , country , gospel , prog , psychedelia , R&B , heavy metal , and punk rock . Ween self-released several cassette albums from their formation until 1989. Afterward, they put out three officially-released lo-fi albums: GodWeenSatan: The Oneness (1990); The Pod (1991); and Pure Guava (1992). For Pure Guava ,

356-482: A Pennington, New Jersey studio during the recording of Chocolate and Cheese . Ween turned to Nashville studio musicians and producer Ben Vaughn for the November 1995 recording of 12 Golden Country Greats (1996) which contained only ten tracks. There are two theories regarding the title of the album. The first claim is that it refers to the dozen veteran musicians, known as The Shit Creek Boys, who played on

534-632: A "best of" this era. Some of the songs, such as "You Fucked Up" and "Bumblebee", had already appeared on various Ween cassettes from the late '80s. "You Fucked Up", "Fat Lenny", "Nan", and the retitled Prince cover "L.M.L.Y.P." would become staples of the band's live show for years to come. Ween played their first overseas shows in support of the album, with a series of dates in the Netherlands in December/January 1990–91. The band released their second full-length album, The Pod , in 1991 on

712-506: A 28-year run, Freeman quit the band in 2012, citing the need to focus on his alcohol and drug addiction issues. Ween reformed in late 2015 and toured extensively without plans to record new material, but later entered an indefinite hiatus in 2024 citing Melchiondo's mental health as a reason. For their first ten years of existence, Ween performed live as a duo backed by a Digital Audio Tape , sometimes playing with on and off bassist Chris Williams, better known by his stage name Mean Ween. With

890-561: A CD-DVD combo before Christmas of that year. He stated, "This time we're going to be going all the way back to the days when we were still a duo with a cassette deck in the early 90s. It's probably the brownest CD on the Chocodog label yet." That CD was titled At the Cat's Cradle and was recorded live at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina on December 9, 1992. The package also included

1068-543: A DVD featuring some video of performances from the same era. Although Freeman had occasionally played solo acoustic shows before 2008, he turned his focus towards these shows—billed as "Gene Ween"—following the La Cucaracha tour. In December 2008, he began performing with "The Gene Ween Band", which featured Dreiwitz on bass along with Joe Russo on drums and Scott Metzger on guitar. The set-lists of these shows featured more obscure Ween songs rarely played at Ween shows,

1246-565: A February 1990 City Gardens performance where Ween's reception was lukewarm, Rollins got on stage and warned the crowd to "start liking them now", for one day, "you will get down on your filthy knees and crawl to the altar that is Ween". Dave Ayers, working in A&;R for Minneapolis -based record label Twin/Tone , went to see a live performance by alt-rock band Skunk in the late '80s in Maplewood, New Jersey in anticipation of signing them to

1424-643: A brief West Coast tour at the beginning of 2011. The first show of the tour, January 24 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia , was a turning point in Ween's history. It was noticeable from the start that something was off with Freeman, who played the tambourine off-beat on the first song, "Fiesta". His vocals were off-key throughout the night, and he appeared to be heavily intoxicated. Eventually, Freeman lay down on stage while

1602-580: A broken back and pelvis. Ween quickly organized a couple of benefit shows at New York City 's Bowery Ballroom in October to help cover his medical bills. Ween recruited Vandals drummer Josh Freese to perform at these gigs as well as on the band's next album, Quebec . Coleman would make his comeback in December, backing up Freeman at an acoustic show in Brooklyn . Also in December, Ween would release

1780-514: A certain degree doesn't care if it's popular. — Bill Wyman in Vulture (2016) The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was also greatly influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists. The sound of an electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered jazz music in

1958-571: A couple shows in Missoula and Spokane. However, on August 6th, just hours before they were supposed to take the stage in Seattle, they canceled the remaining dates in the northwest, leaving only the Mann Center show on their schedule. 3 weeks later, on August 29, 2024, that show was canceled as well, with the band announcing via their social media that they would be ceasing live performances "for

SECTION 10

#1732802241530

2136-780: A cover of Jimi Hendrix 's " Purple Haze " with Chris Williams (a.k.a. Mean Ween) on bass and Karl Weimer on drums. Although this era was mostly just Freeman, Melchiondo and the DAT machine, they did play a few shows in the '80s as "The Ween" backed by the Rollins Band rhythm section, Andrew Weiss and Sim Cain . By 1988, Ween had become regulars at John and Peter's in New Hope and City Gardens in Trenton, New Jersey . At City Gardens, they opened for acts such as They Might Be Giants , GWAR , Butthole Surfers , and Henry Rollins . Following

2314-437: A divorce: "I wrote most of these songs right before the end [of the relationship]. A lot of these songs are about that. Even if it's not direct, you can feel the beginning of the end of the breakup in these songs." Melchiondo would add, "I like it as a record, but it's very negative. It's one of our darker records, I think. I don't listen to any of our records, but I have never listened to that one." On September 3, Ween performed

2492-500: A few covers, as well as numerous Freeman-penned songs being performed for the first time. Freeman would perform dozens of shows both solo and with the Gene Ween Band from 2008 to 2011. His first solo record, Marvelous Clouds , an album of Rod McKuen covers, would be released three weeks before Ween's breakup. While Freeman was working on non-Ween musical projects, Melchiondo turned his focus to fishing . Melchiondo, who spent

2670-519: A fondness for a good beat, a meaningful lyric with some wit, and the theme of youth, which holds an "eternal attraction" so objective "that all youth music partakes of sociology and the field report ." Writing in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), he said this sensibility is evident in the music of folk singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked , rapper LL Cool J , and synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys —"all kids working out their identities"—as much as it

2848-481: A foundation of simple syncopated rhythms in a 4 meter , with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies often originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian , as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s, and particularly from

3026-628: A frequent addition to the established rock format of guitars, bass, and drums in subsequent progressive rock. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction. The Pretty Things ' SF Sorrow (1968), the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), and the Who 's Tommy (1969) introduced

3204-630: A key feature of psychedelia. Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the last years of the decade. 1967 saw the Beatles release their definitive psychedelic statement in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , including the controversial track " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ", the Rolling Stones responded later that year with Their Satanic Majesties Request , and Pink Floyd debuted with The Piper at

3382-401: A large, devoted cult following and garnered critical acclaim. Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo met in a junior high school typing class in 1984. Freeman recalled, "We didn't like each other. He was a jock, and I was more of a trench-coat guy. But we sat next to each other in typing class and both realized we were into music." The name Ween was a word made up by the duo, a combination of

3560-463: A lot of time in his youth at his parents' beach house in Beach Haven, New Jersey , became a licensed fishing boat captain and hosted a web series, "Brownie Troop Fishing Show", from 2008 to 2011. As of 2015, he still offers trips on his website, "Mickey's Guide Service", running them out of New Hope as well as Belmar, NJ . In 2013, it was announced that Trey Parker and Matt Stone would be producing

3738-573: A loud amplified sound, often centered on the electric guitar, based on the Chicago blues , particularly after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters in 1958, which prompted Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated . The band involved and inspired many of the figures of the subsequent British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream , combining blues standards and forms with rock instrumentation and emphasis. The other key focus for British blues

SECTION 20

#1732802241530

3916-587: A mainstream audience with hits including " Blowin' in the Wind " (1963) and " Masters of War " (1963), which brought " protest songs " to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences. Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' " House of the Rising Sun " (1964), which

4094-495: A major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had moved away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia . By the 1970s, blues rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple , and the lines between blues rock and hard rock "were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre

4272-429: A major influence on subsequent electronic rock . With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours. Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and

4450-410: A more basic form of rock and roll that incorporated its original influences, particularly blues, country and folk music, leading to the creation of country rock and Southern rock. In 1966 Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde . This, and subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, such as Nashville Skyline , have been seen as creating the genre of country folk ,

4628-486: A multibillion-dollar industry and doubling its market while, as Christgau noted, suffering a significant "loss of cultural prestige". "Maybe the Bee Gees became more popular than the Beatles, but they were never more popular than Jesus ", he said. "Insofar as the music retained any mythic power, the myth was self-referential – there were lots of songs about the rock and roll life but very few about how rock could change

4806-589: A national phenomenon. It is often argued that the surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts was effectively ended by the arrival of the British Invasion from 1964, because most surf music hits were recorded and released between 1960 and 1965. By the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles , Gerry & the Pacemakers and

4984-452: A person, but as far as the music goes, all that jam band shit makes me want to puke". In 2011, Chocolate and Cheese would have a book written about it by Hank Shteamer, as a part of the 33⅓ book series about music albums. Of recording the album, Dean Ween said, "I saw someone wrote a book about Chocolate and Cheese, and my son put it in the bathroom. I was reading through it. What people were saying about me and Aaron [Freeman, aka Gene Ween]

5162-551: A pilot for a reality television show about fishing, starring Melchiondo and Les Claypool . On February 3, 2010, Ween released a new song, "DC Won't Do You No Good", that became available through a Target Cancer website. On July 28, 2010, the National Post featured an article, with an interview with Melchiondo, in which it was stated that the band was due in the studio the following winter to start work on their tenth album. However, that album never came out. Ween embarked on

5340-459: A preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end. Rock quickly spread out from its origins in the US, associated with the rapid Americanization that

5518-444: A prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, heralding the era of pomp or arena rock , which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s. The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield 's Tubular Bells (1973),

Ween - Misplaced Pages Continue

5696-512: A record deal. Ween, friends of Skunk, were the opening act that night. Ayers signed Ween to Twin/Tone that night, and would soon become the band's manager. Skunk would break up in 1991 and their drummer, Claude Coleman, Jr. , would play a few shows with Ween in 1992 before joining the band full-time in 1994. Ween's debut album for Twin/Tone, GodWeenSatan: The Oneness , was released on November 16, 1990. It consisted of 26 tracks that were written during their first six years, and can be thought of as

5874-452: A rendition of a conversation he had with a customer while he worked at New Hope's El Taco Loco. The liner notes of GodWeenSatan: The Oneness instructed Ween fans to bring food for the band to their concerts, with the request updated in the liner notes of Pure Guava to "bring us hot meals. No more junk food, thanks". Current members Rock music Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll " in

6052-446: A rigidly delineated musical definition." In the opinion of music journalist Robert Christgau , "the best rock jolts folk-art virtues—directness, utility, natural audience—into the present with shots of modern technology and modernist dissociation ". Rock and roll was conceived as an outlet for adolescent yearnings ... To make rock and roll is also an ideal way to explore intersections of sex, love, violence, and fun, to broadcast

6230-625: A rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s " classic rock " period, a few distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock , folk rock , country rock , Southern rock , raga rock , and jazz rock , which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock , influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene . New genres that emerged included progressive rock , which extended artistic elements, heavy metal , which emphasized an aggressive thick sound, and glam rock , which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In

6408-721: A route pursued by a number of largely acoustic folk musicians. Other acts that followed the back-to-basics trend were the Canadian group the Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival , both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s. The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder , Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George , and influenced

6586-808: A selection of student clubs and extracurricular activities, notable examples including Model United Nations , Future Business Leaders of America , and National Honors Society . New Hope-Solebury High School sports are governed by the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA). In 2019, the school joined the localized Suburban One League . The school competes in varsity and junior varsity cross country, golf, field hockey, volleyball, soccer, basketball, wrestling, baseball, football, softball, lacrosse, tennis, bocce, and track. The school also competes in PIAA-affiliated esports . In 2010,

6764-550: A six-year hiatus, and also started a new band, The Dean Ween Group. Freeman played solo shows until 2014, when he began touring and recording with his new band, " Freeman ". In 2015, Freeman began using the Gene Ween moniker again for live performances. On November 16, 2015, Ween announced that they would reunite for two concerts at the 1stBank Center in Broomfield, Colorado on February 12 and 13, 2016. During ticket presale,

6942-481: A slogan one only began to hear in 1972 or so, mobilized all those eager to believe that idealism had become passe, and once they were mobilized, it had. In popular music, embracing the '70s meant both an elitist withdrawal from the messy concert and counterculture scene and a profiteering pursuit of the lowest common denominator in FM radio and album rock . Rock saw greater commodification during this decade, turning into

7120-519: A third show was added on February 14, 2016 due to demand. Throughout 2016, Ween played sporadic reunion shows in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and San Francisco. The band also made festival appearances in Toronto, Chicago, Portland, Arrington, Virginia , Okeechobee, Florida , and Manchester, Tennessee , for Bonnaroo, which was streamed online via Red Bull TV. The band

7298-464: A variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock . However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song, and concepts of "authenticity". Psychedelic music's LSD -inspired vibe began in

Ween - Misplaced Pages Continue

7476-529: A variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music , and rhythm and blues . Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, and asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more generally, noise ." The predominance of white, male, and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted, and rock has been seen as an appropriation of Black musical forms for

7654-501: A young, white and largely male audience. As a result, it has also been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has usually been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it

7832-510: Is There's a Riot Goin' On by Sly and The Family Stone . Because of Ween's wide variety of styles and humorous lyrics, they have often been compared to Frank Zappa . Both members have denied Zappa's influence, and in a 2011 interview, Freeman stated that although he was influenced by The Mothers of Invention , he was never a fan of Zappa's post-Mothers work. Melchiondo says he is not a fan of Zappa because Zappa's take on different genres of music seems sarcastic and insincere. Freeman performed

8010-423: Is centered on the electric guitar , usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar , drums , and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4 time signature using a verse–chorus form , but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music , lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock

8188-540: Is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Four years later, Bill Haley 's " Rock Around the Clock " (1954) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry , Bo Diddley , Fats Domino , Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis , and Gene Vincent . Soon rock and roll

8366-472: Is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966. By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level as amateur musicians faced college, work or the draft . New styles had evolved to replace garage rock. Although the first impact of the British Invasion on American popular music was through beat and R&B based acts,

8544-618: Is in the music of Chuck Berry , the Ramones , and the Replacements . The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music , with country and western . Debate surrounds

8722-411: Is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development. According to Simon Frith , rock was "something more than pop, something more than rock and roll" and "[r]ock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with

8900-463: Is still together. We've never broken up. The idea of quitting is just laughable. This isn't something you can quit. This is a life sentence." Although no one knew it at the time, Ween's final performances for more than four years were a three-night run at Denver 's Fillmore Auditorium December 29–31, 2011, with "The Blarney Stone" being the final song performed by the band until their 2016 reunion. Melchiondo quickly re-formed Moistboyz, which had been on

9078-399: Is termed as a rock band or a rock group. Furthermore, it typically consists of between three (the power trio ) and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer, and often keyboard player or another instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on

SECTION 50

#1732802241530

9256-713: Is the Band." New Hope-Solebury High School As of the 2022-23 school year, 13.7% of students are considered economically disadvantaged , 10.8% are in special education , and 9.4% are in gifted education . A total of 43 students are free or reduced lunch price eligible. The student teacher ratio is 10.87. New Hope-Solebury High School is divided into departments for mathematics, science, social studies/history, foreign languages (Spanish and French), English, fine arts, business education, gifted students, health and physical education, information technology, and practical arts technology. As of 2024, Advanced Placement (AP) Courses are offered in at least nineteen subjects. For

9434-627: Is used to describe performances, songs, etc. that are "fucked up, in a good way". The word "brown" is also featured in the lyrics of the songs "Can't Put My Finger on It", "Mutilated Lips", "If You Could Save Yourself (You'd Save Us All)", and "Chocolate Town", as well as the title of the band's live album Paintin' the Town Brown . Another commonly used word is "waste" ("Can U Taste the Waste?", "Tender Situation", "Chocolate Town", and "Back to Basom"). The band's lyrics also commonly contain references to

9612-535: The Billboard Hot 100 . The British Invasion greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging many more groups to form. Thousands of garage bands were extant in the United States and Canada during the era and hundreds produced regional hits. Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. It

9790-524: The American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, using traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics . In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach

9968-447: The BBC studio. The February 1992 U.K. tour would be Ween's first performances with Claude Coleman Jr., and also featured Shimmy-Disc founder Kramer on bass. Ween signed with Elektra Records and released their major label debut Pure Guava on November 10, 1992. Pure Guava featured their highest charting single, " Push th' Little Daisies " which gained them media and MTV attention, as

10146-622: The MP3 -only release Craters of the Sac (1999), presented by Melchiondo for online download and free trade. Elektra Records released a live compilation titled Paintin' the Town Brown: Ween Live 1990-1998 in 1999. Ween's sixth studio album, White Pepper , was the band's final studio release for Elektra and was released May 2, 2000. The pop -themed, Lennon-McCartney –inspired album produced two singles: " Even If You Don't ", which

10324-864: The Pure Guava tracks "Pumpin' 4 the Man" and "Push th' Little Daisies" and the Chocolate and Cheese tracks "What Deaner Was Talkin' About" and "Buenas Tardes Amigo". Parts of the show of October 23 at Toronto 's Phoenix Concert Theatre would later be released as the album, Live in Toronto Canada (2001). The nautically themed album The Mollusk followed in 1997. The album was another eclectic set showing Ween's penchant for satire, deconstruction, and pastiche , including 1960s Brit-pop, sea shanties , Broadway show tunes , and especially progressive rock . Months prior to its release, Freeman would describe

10502-465: The Quebec track "Happy Colored Marbles" on Last Call with Carson Daly . Later that year, the band held a poll on their official message boards to select songs for the band to play on their forthcoming live-in-studio album All Request Live . Released on November 22, the album would feature a performance of all five parts of "The Stallion" (Parts 1 & 2 from The Pod , Part 3 from Pure Guava ,

10680-517: The Saturday Night Live film It's Pat , starring Julia Sweeney . The band (which in the film consisted of Freeman, Melchiondo, Weiss, and Weiss' brother John Weiss as the drummer) was featured in a supporting role and performed the Pod track "Pork Roll, Egg & Cheese" and the Pure Guava track "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)". The film was both a critical and box office failure, and

10858-585: The Shimmy-Disc label. It was recorded on a four-track cassette recorder from January to October 1990. The album borrows its title from the Solebury Township, Pennsylvania apartment in which it was recorded. The duo's use of drum machines , pitch-shifted guitars/vocals and drug-laced humor became a trademark part of their sound. The cover of The Pod was a parody of the cover of the 1975 Leonard Cohen album, The Best of Leonard Cohen , but with

SECTION 60

#1732802241530

11036-422: The garage rock / post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. Rock has also embodied and served as

11214-417: The protest song , rock music has been associated with political activism , as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity . At the same time, it has been commercially highly successful, leading to accusations of selling out . A good definition of rock, in fact, is that it's popular music that to

11392-907: The 15th-best high school in Pennsylvania, the highest out of all public high schools in Bucks County. Students also may take courses at Middle Bucks Institute of Technology , offering them more vocational based educations. New Hope-Solebury High School's band, orchestra, and choir programs are open to students in all grade levels. The programs give concerts several times every year. Select groups have performed in San Francisco , Toronto , Hersheypark , Chicago , Nashville , London , Paris , Philadelphia , Disney World , Disney Land , and Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom . At several of these locations, they played in competitions, and their performances resulted in several awards. In 2012,

11570-454: The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray , and Scotty Moore . The use of distortion , pioneered by Western swing guitarists such as Junior Barnard and Eldon Shamblin was popularized by Chuck Berry in the mid-1950s. The use of power chords , pioneered by Francisco Tárrega and Heitor Villa-Lobos in

11748-467: The 19th century and later on by Willie Johnson and Pat Hare in the early 1950s, was popularized by Link Wray in the late 1950s. Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become

11926-528: The 2022-23 school year, the average SAT score for New Hope-Solebury students was 613 for reading and 616 for math. The average ACT score for the 2022-23 school year was 25. New Hope-Solebury High School weighs Honors and AP classes above their unweighted 4.0 GPA scale. The 50th percentile unweighted GPA for the graduating class of 2023 was 3.737. New Hope-Solebury High School was rated the second-best high school in Pennsylvania by U.S. News & World Report in 2015, 2016, and 2017. In 2024, they were ranked

12104-477: The Banshees , Ultravox , and Simple Minds , showed the influence of progressive rock, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences. In the late 1960s, jazz-rock emerged as a distinct subgenre out of the blues-rock, psychedelic, and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. AllMusic states that the term jazz-rock "may refer to

12282-628: The Beatles, demonstrating "to the rock generation in general that an album could be a major standalone statement without hit singles", such as on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like the Mamas & the Papas and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New York, where it spawned performers including

12460-617: The Byrds ' shift from folk to folk rock from 1965. The psychedelic lifestyle, which revolved around hallucinogenic drugs, had already developed in San Francisco and particularly prominent products of the scene were Big Brother and the Holding Company , the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane . The Jimi Hendrix Experience 's lead guitarist, Jimi Hendrix did extended distorted, feedback-filled jams which became

12638-431: The Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre. Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with his " Like a Rolling Stone " becoming a US hit single. According to Ritchie Unterberger , Dylan (even before his adoption of electric instruments) influenced rock musicians like

12816-518: The CD/DVD package At the Cat's Cradle, 1992 in 2008. Also in support of Pure Guava , Ween performed at MTV 's Spring Break in Daytona Beach, FL as well as on The Jane Pratt Show . Following the release of Pure Guava , Ween began to expand their live and studio lineup, providing both a crisper production sound in the studio and an easier live setup. Claude Coleman Jr. officially joined

12994-641: The Cheese Go?". In 2004, Ween released Live in Chicago , a DVD and CD set that compiled tracks from two live performances from the Quebec tour at Chicago 's Vic Theatre in November 2003. After playing the festival circuit in the summer, Ween hit the road for a West Coast tour in October. Following the show of October 17 in San Diego , Ween's manager Greg Frey announced that the upcoming Midwest tour would be canceled so Freeman could enter alcohol rehab. In

13172-594: The Dominos , followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues rock into the mainstream. Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie , formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac , who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre. In the late 1960s Jeff Beck , also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band,

13350-507: The Gates of Dawn . Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and the Doors ' self-titled debut album . These trends peaked in the 1969 Woodstock festival , which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts. Sgt. Pepper was later regarded as the greatest album of all time and a starting point for the album era , during which rock music transitioned from

13528-471: The Jeff Beck Group . The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page , who went on to form The New Yardbirds which rapidly became Led Zeppelin . Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs. In America, blues rock had been pioneered in the early 1960s by guitarist Lonnie Mack , but the genre began to take off in

13706-506: The Joint " (1949), also covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952; and " Rocket 88 " by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band the Kings of Rhythm ), recorded by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed " race music ") for a multi-racial audience, and

13884-503: The Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and Garfunkel , with the latter's acoustic " The Sounds of Silence " (1965) being remixed with rock instruments to be the first of many hits. These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention . In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments. This British folk-rock

14062-825: The Mothers-era Zappa song " What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body? " at the Frank Zappa Day Festival in Baltimore in September 2011. From Ween's earliest days, they claimed to be "sprouted from the demon-god Boognish". The image of the Boognish is the band's logo. Boognish is also featured in the lyrics of several Ween songs, including "Up on th' Hill", "Young Chou Lin", and "The Stallion, pt. 4". The band coined their own term "brown", which

14240-476: The Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds , were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music. Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in

14418-427: The Sac . Melchiondo would later comment, "We called it Volume 1, but I don't know if I want to go through that again anytime soon". In February 2006, Ween rented an old farmhouse and converted it into a working studio. After writing over 50 songs and recording rough versions through 2006, they picked through them and, with Andrew Weiss as a producer, re-recorded album versions for what would become The Friends EP and

14596-588: The Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers , Herman's Hermits and the Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including 1950s rock and roll, soul, rhythm and blues, and surf music, initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like the Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast , and particularly those from London like

14774-672: The Seeds ) to near-studio musician quality (including the Knickerbockers , the Remains , and the Fifth Estate ). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with flourishing scenes particularly in California and Texas. The Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon had perhaps the most defined regional sound. The style had been evolving from regional scenes as early as 1958. "Tall Cool One" (1959) by

14952-676: The US was becoming dominated by lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances were developing a style more strongly influenced by blues-rock pioneers, and were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts; this influence would go on to shape the future of rock music through the British Invasion . The first four years of the 1960s has traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and roll. More recently some authors have emphasised important innovations and trends in this period without which future developments would not have been possible. While early rock and roll, particularly through

15130-619: The USSR and South Africa from 1955 to 1957, influencing the globalisation of rock. Johnny O'Keefe 's 1958 record " Wild One " was one of the earliest Australian rock and roll hits. By the late 1950s, as well as in the American-influenced Western world, rock was popular in communist states such as Yugoslavia, and the USSR, as well as in regions such as South America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American blues music and blues rock artists, who had been surpassed by

15308-534: The United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues , rhythm and blues , and country music . Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk , and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock

15486-751: The Wailers and " Louie Louie " by the Kingsmen (1963) are mainstream examples of the genre in its formative stages. By 1963, garage band singles were creeping into the national charts in greater numbers, including Paul Revere and the Raiders (Boise), the Trashmen (Minneapolis) and the Rivieras (South Bend, Indiana). Other influential garage bands, such as the Sonics (Tacoma, Washington), never reached

15664-527: The advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest commercial success for male and white performers, in this era, the genre was dominated by black and female artists. Rock and roll had not disappeared entirely from music at the end of the 1950s and some of its energy can be seen in the various dance crazes of the early 1960s, started by Chubby Checker 's record " The Twist " (1960). Some music historians have also pointed to important and innovative technical developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including

15842-408: The album as "our dark, acid rock record". In 2007, Melchiondo himself named The Mollusk his favorite among Ween's oeuvre. The Mollusk was the album to finally feature studio recordings of "Buckingham Green" and "The Blarney Stone", both of which had been performed regularly in concert for years. Although they did not play on the album, bassist Dave Dreiwitz and keyboardist Glenn McClelland joined

16020-530: The album. The second claim refers to the fact that the band did indeed record twelve songs during the demo sessions for the album. When it came time to record the actual album, the band chose not to use the songs "I Got No Darkside" and "So Long, Jerry" but kept the album title. "So Long, Jerry", a tribute to the then recently deceased Jerry Garcia , was featured as a B-Side on the "Piss Up a Rope" single. Sticking to Nashville tradition, Freeman and Melchiondo provided only vocals, allowing The Shit Creek Boys to play all

16198-508: The band as drummer in March 1994, while Ween's long-time producer Andrew Weiss picked up the bass duties. The Weiss-produced Chocolate and Cheese was released in 1994, featuring tracks influenced by '70s pop/rock and soul, such as " Freedom of '76 " and "Voodoo Lady", the latter of which appeared on the Road Trip and Dude, Where's My Car? soundtracks. The "Freedom of '76" music video

16376-586: The band in April 1997; their debut was a performance of the Mollusk track "The Golden Eel" on an episode of the Comedy Central show Viva Variety . The lineup of Freeman-Melchiondo-McClelland-Dreiwitz-Coleman would remain the same until Ween's hiatus in 2012. Following the release of The Mollusk , Ween contributed two songs to two different Trey Parker / Matt Stone projects. The song "Love" appeared in

16554-749: The band performed in Seattle, Washington , the following night with no issues. Freeman later wrote a song about the Vancouver incident, "Covert Discretion", which appeared as the opening track to the self-titled debut album by his new band, called Freeman, in 2014. That same year, he commented, "You don't blow it on stage, lying on your back, screaming nonsense in front of 5,000 people and not try to change something. Chances are when you're doing something like that, you've got to do something differently." On August 11, 2011, Melchiondo quietly released an MP3-only collection of songs called The Caesar Demos , named after

16732-529: The band signed with major label Elektra Records . The album spawned the single " Push th' Little Daisies ", which was a chart hit in Australia and the United States. Under Elektra, the band released four professionally-recorded albums: Chocolate and Cheese (1994); 12 Golden Country Greats (1996); The Mollusk (1997); and White Pepper (2000). They later returned to independent labels for their albums Quebec (2003) and La Cucaracha (2007). After

16910-447: The band's members, frequent collaborators, and friends, including Freeman ("I Saw Gener Cryin' In His Sleep", "Up on th' Hill", and "Puffy Cloud"), Melchiondo ("What Deaner Was Talkin' About", "The Goin' Get Tough From The Getgo", "Puffy Cloud", "The Stallion, pt. 2", and "Leave Deaner Alone"), Williams ("Booze Me Up and Get Me High" and "Sketches of Winkle"), and Weiss ("Young Chou Lin" and "Booze Me Up and Get Me High"). Coleman states that

17088-505: The band's original working title for Quebec , to friends on his Facebook page. In his comment, he stated the songs were all recorded between 2001 and 2003 while Claude Coleman was recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident, and that many of the tracks featured only himself and Freeman. In addition to a handful of tracks that eventually made Quebec , Caesar Demos would also feature several previously unreleased tracks. Freeman announced to Rolling Stone on May 29, 2012, that he

17266-585: The biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed into the US charts by numerous British bands. During the next two years British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon , the Animals, Manfred Mann , Petula Clark , Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders , Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs , and Donovan all having one or more number one singles. Other major acts that were part of

17444-545: The boys' soccer team won the PIAA State Finals, after beating the Mercyhurst Prep team with a score of 2-1. In 2011, the boys' soccer team won the PIAA State Finals again, beating Mercyhurst Prep 3-2. The boys' soccer team came 2nd in the PIAA State Finals in 2006 and 2019. The boys' golf team won the state golf finals in 2014 and came 2nd in the state finals in 2015. The boys' baseball team made it

17622-461: The chart. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964, drawing an estimated 73 million viewers (at the time a record for an American television program) is considered a milestone in American pop culture. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held 12 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the entire top five. The Beatles went on to become

17800-457: The compilation Shinola, Vol. 1 . The twelve tracks were all, according to Melchiondo, "songs we regretted not putting on other records". The tracks spanned the band's career, from "Tastes Good on th' Bun", a Pod outtake, to "Someday", a Quebec outtake. Different versions of three of the songs, "Big Fat Fuck", "How High Can You Fly?" and "Monique the Freak" had previously appeared on Craters of

17978-424: The delights and limitations of the regional , and to deal with the depredations and benefits of mass culture itself. — Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide (1981) Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, sex, rebellion against " The Establishment ", social concerns, and life styles. These themes were inherited from

18156-455: The early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts. The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan , Hatfield and the North , Gong , and National Health . The French group Magma around drummer Christian Vander almost single-handedly created

18334-460: The early 1970s, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): The decade is, of course, an arbitrary schema itself—time doesn't just execute a neat turn toward the future every ten years. But like a lot of artificial concepts—money, say—the category does take on a reality of its own once people figure out how to put it to work. "The '60s are over,"

18512-462: The early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies. By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts. " I Want to Hold Your Hand " was the Beatles' first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 , spending seven weeks at the top and a total of 15 weeks on

18690-519: The electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek , and the elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound pursued by Phil Spector . The instrumental rock and roll of performers such as Duane Eddy , Link Wray and the Ventures was further developed by Dick Dale , who added distinctive "wet" reverb , rapid alternate picking, and Middle Eastern and Mexican influences. He produced

18868-581: The example set by the Beatles ' 1965 LP Rubber Soul in particular, other British rock acts released rock albums intended as artistic statements in 1966, including the Rolling Stones ' Aftermath , the Beatles' own Revolver , and the Who 's A Quick One , as well as American acts in the Beach Boys ( Pet Sounds ) and Bob Dylan ( Blonde on Blonde ). Garage rock was a raw form of rock music, particularly prevalent in North America in

19046-495: The film Orgazmo in September 1997. The song "The Rainbow", as well as Freeman and Melchiondo themselves, appeared in a season 2 episode of South Park , titled " Chef Aid " in October 1998. It was later released on the compilation Chef Aid: The South Park Album . Parker & Stone later directed the music video for the White Pepper track " Even If You Don't ". The band's desire to pursue alternate forms of media led to

19224-498: The first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk , Tangerine Dream , Can , Focus (band) and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy " krautrock ", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music ), would be

19402-455: The folk scene. The first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock were the 13th Floor Elevators from Texas. The Beatles introduced many of the major elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this period, such as guitar feedback , the Indian sitar and backmasking sound effects . Psychedelic rock particularly took off in California's emerging music scene as groups followed

19580-403: The foreseeable future," citing Melchiondo's ongoing mental health issues related to the stress of touring. Ween is known for its far-reaching musical approach, which is influenced by many different genres of music. This style has been termed alternative rock and experimental rock by critics and journalists. Melchiondo once stated, "Each of us had different things in our record collections that

19758-513: The format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums , often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme. King Crimson 's 1969 début album, In the Court of the Crimson King , which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron , with jazz and symphonic music , is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in

19936-435: The full-length La Cucaracha which was released October 23, 2007, on Rounder Records . La Cucaracha , which would prove to be Ween's final album, would later be called a "big piece of shit" by Freeman, adding, "I think the songs on it were good, or a bunch of songs, but overall that was a big clue Mickey and I were finito". On September 21, 2008, Melchiondo announced on the official Ween website that they planned to release

20114-777: The greatest living guitarist in any genre is Prince Rogers Nelson. Prince does so many things well that it's easy to forget that he is also a world class shredder." Other stated influences include The Beatles , Parliament-Funkadelic , the Butthole Surfers , Pink Floyd , the Dead Kennedys , Laurie Anderson , The Allman Brothers Band , James Brown , Devo , The Residents and Earth, Wind and Fire . In concert, Ween has frequently covered songs by David Bowie , Led Zeppelin , Grateful Dead , Neil Young , Motörhead , Van Halen , The Doors , Frank Sinatra , and Billy Joel . Dean has stated that his favorite album of all time

20292-415: The head of Chris "Mean Ween" Williams (who played bass on the Pod track "Alone") in place of Cohen's. Although the liner notes claim the album was recorded under the influence of scotchgard , Freeman would later say that this was tongue-in-cheek. Following the release of The Pod , Ween embarked on their first extensive U.S. tour, as well as a week-long U.K. tour that included a recording with John Peel in

20470-458: The impetus was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their inspiration more directly from American blues , including the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds . British blues musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of figures such as Lead Belly , who was a major influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert Johnson . Increasingly they adopted

20648-623: The instruments. Elvis Presley 's former backing vocal quartet The Jordanaires appeared on the tracks "I'm Holding You" and "Powder Blue". After a brief return to the original lineup of Freeman, Melchiondo and the DAT machine for a series of dates opening for the Foo Fighters , Ween toured with the Shit Creek Boys in October 1996. This lineup performed not only 12 Golden Country Greats material, but also played Ween songs from previous eras with added country instrumentation, including

20826-467: The invasion included the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five . The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols , that had dominated the American charts in

21004-517: The label were R&B oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag , Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago , to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and the early 1970s. British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum . From

21182-446: The late 1950s and 1960s. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters. Following

21360-577: The late eighties: Mrs. Slack (1985), Erica Peterson's Flaming Crib Death (1986), Axis: Bold as Boognish (1987), The Crucial Squeegie Lip (1987), The Live Brain Wedgie/WAD (1988), and Prime 5 (1989). In 1987, Freeman also released his own tape, Synthetic Socks , which featured Melchiondo on a few tracks. Ween's public debut was at the New Hope-Solebury High School talent show in 1986, where they performed

21538-410: The loudest, wildest, most electrified fusion bands from the jazz camp, but most often it describes performers coming from the rock side of the equation." Jazz-rock "...generally grew out of the most artistically ambitious rock subgenres of the late '60s and early '70s", including the singer-songwriter movement. Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into

21716-476: The many recordings which have been suggested as "the first rock and roll record ". Contenders include " Strange Things Happening Every Day " by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1944); " That's All Right " by Arthur Crudup (1946), which was later covered by Elvis Presley in 1954; " The House of Blue Lights " by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack (1946); Wynonie Harris ' " Good Rocking Tonight " (1948); Goree Carter 's "Rock Awhile" (1949); Jimmy Preston 's " Rock

21894-674: The mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley . Hispanic and Latino American movements in rock and roll, which would eventually lead to the success of Latin rock and Chicano rock within the US, began to rise in the Southwest ; with rock and roll standard musician Ritchie Valens and even those within other heritage genres, such as Al Hurricane along with his brothers Tiny Morrie and Baby Gaby as they began combining rock and roll with country- western within traditional New Mexico music . In addition,

22072-609: The mid-1960s the Left Banke , the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords , wind , and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum 's " A Whiter Shade of Pale " (1967), with its Bach -inspired introduction. The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album Days of Future Passed (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesizers. Classical orchestration, keyboards, and synthesizers were

22250-479: The mid-1960s and so called because of the perception that it was rehearsed in the suburban family garage. Garage rock songs often revolved around the traumas of high school life, with songs about "lying girls" and unfair social circumstances being particularly common. The lyrics and delivery tended to be more aggressive than was common at the time, often with growled or shouted vocals that dissolved into incoherent screaming. They ranged from crude one-chord music (like

22428-435: The mid-1960s as acts developed a sound similar to British blues musicians. Key acts included Paul Butterfield (whose band acted like Mayall's Bluesbreakers in Britain as a starting point for many successful musicians), Canned Heat , the early Jefferson Airplane , Janis Joplin , Johnny Winter , the J. Geils Band and Jimi Hendrix with his power trios , the Jimi Hendrix Experience (which included two British members, and

22606-401: The mid-1960s onwards, rock music often used the verse–chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to

22784-465: The new music genre zeuhl with their first albums in the early 1970s. Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing

22962-608: The new music. In Britain the subgenre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of the Eric Clapton -fronted band Cream , had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York–based the Free Spirits with Out of Sight and Sound (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use

23140-840: The orchestra played at the White House in Washington, D.C. In 2018, the orchestra played at Carnegie Hall in New York City . In 2019, they played in Italy at several locations. In December 2021, the orchestra, band, and choir traveled to Hawaii to participate in the Pearl Harbor Memorial Parade. The Stephen J. Buck auditorium houses roughly 500 people and is used for theater productions; band, choir, and orchestra concerts; assemblies, community town halls, club meetings, and class meetings. The school has

23318-446: The original lineup of Freeman, Melchiondo, and the DAT to perform the album in its entirety on September 14, 2001, at John and Peter's in New Hope. Taping was not permitted at this show; not for long was it "the ultimate unreleased bootleg" as Melchiondo called it; it was released in 2016 as GodWeenSatan Live . On August 7, 2002, Claude Coleman Jr. was seriously injured in a car accident on Route 78 near Newark, New Jersey , suffering

23496-413: The other one didn't have. Aaron's dad had a lot of psychedelic records, I was really into punk rock, and we would just turn each other on to music." Freeman remarked in 2011, "I think when Ween formed I was really into the synthesizer new wave thing of the mid-'80s and Mickey was more into the punk rock thing". Both Freeman and Melchiondo have stated several times that one of the band's biggest influences

23674-471: The psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis , particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It

23852-521: The record through that year and into 2018. In 2018, Dean Ween released the second studio album by The Dean Ween Group, "rock2", and toured solo behind it. In 2019, both Dean and Glenn McClelland assisted with the making of funk band Solid Bronze's debut album The Fruit Basket . Dean co-produced the album along with Chris Harford , the album was recorded in his personal studio, and both Dean and McClelland appeared on several tracks as performers. Like most concert tours by music artists in 2020, Ween's touring

24030-653: The regional hit " Let's Go Trippin ' " in 1961 and launched the surf music craze, following up with songs like " Misirlou " (1962). Like Dale and his Del-Tones , most early surf bands were formed in Southern California, including the Bel-Airs , the Challengers , and Eddie & the Showmen . The Chantays scored a top ten national hit with " Pipeline " in 1963 and probably the best-known surf tune

24208-492: The release of Chocolate and Cheese , they stopped playing with on and off bassist Chris Williams, and expanded to a four-piece act for every show, later adding a fifth member as well. Their live members include Claude Coleman Jr. , Dave Dreiwitz , and Glenn McClelland . Ween also collaborated extensively with Andrew Weiss , who joined the band as a bassist in 1989 and also produced five of their nine studio albums. Despite never receiving much mainstream recognition, Ween developed

24386-477: The rest of the band played an instrumental, jam version of the Carpenters song " Superstar ". As Freeman began tuning his guitar in preparation for "Birthday Boy", Melchiondo and Dreiwitz walked off the stage, while Coleman and McClelland switched instruments. After "Birthday Boy" was finished, Coleman and McClelland left Freeman to play the final four songs by himself and horribly off-key. Despite this disaster,

24564-448: The rise of rock and roll in the US, found new popularity in the UK, visiting with successful tours. Lonnie Donegan 's 1955 hit " Rock Island Line " was a major influence and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, many of which, including John Lennon 's Quarrymen (later the Beatles ), moved on to play rock and roll. While former rock and roll market in

24742-475: The romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere". In the new millennium, the term rock has occasionally been used as a blanket term including forms like pop music, reggae music , soul music , and even hip hop , which it has been influenced with but often contrasted through much of its history. Christgau has used the term broadly to refer to popular and semipopular music that caters to his sensibility as "a rock-and-roller", including

24920-498: The sales potential of the CD and denied Ween the right to release it through Chocodog. Later, Ween released the first official Chocodog album, Live in Toronto . The limited-pressing CD, available exclusively through the band website, became an instant collector's item. Subsequent Chocodog releases were produced in higher volumes to meet demand. To celebrate the re-release of the band's debut album GodWeenSatan: The Oneness , Ween returned to

25098-522: The same era, and by percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ , and the synthesizer. The basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation (prominent lead guitar, second chordal instrument, bass, and drums). A group of musicians performing rock music

25276-555: The second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave , post-punk and eventually alternative rock . From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge , Britpop , and indie rock . Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk , electronic rock , rap rock , and rap metal . Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including

25454-546: The singles format to albums and achieved cultural legitimacy in the mainstream. Led by the Beatles in the mid-1960s, rock musicians advanced the LP as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, initiating a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock , moved beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms. From

25632-413: The skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman , while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music. Renaissance , formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring

25810-731: The song "I Don't Wanna Leave You on the Farm" was written about him not wanting to leave his then-girlfriend to go on tour, but denied that "Waving My Dick In the Wind" was about him, calling the idea "complete nonsense". Ween has also been known for countless references to food, most notably the New Jersey regional favorite " pork roll " (the term generally used in South Jersey) found in the lyrics to four Pod tracks: "Pork Roll, Egg & Cheese", "Frank", "Awesome Sound", and "She Fucks Me". The Pod track "Pollo Asado" features Freeman giving

25988-569: The song "Loop de Loop" for the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Your Shoe's Untied". SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg had contacted Ween and told them that The Mollusk was one of the show's biggest inspirations. Many future episodes of SpongeBob would also contain subtle references to Ween. Additionally, the Mollusk track " Ocean Man " was featured in the closing credits of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in 2004. Ween also teamed up with Ben Vaughn to compose and perform

26166-413: The statement, Frey wrote: "There is a problem within the band, that requires immediate intervention, for the health, welfare, and safety of one of its members. For this member, years of touring have taken their toll." Ween would take a year-long hiatus from touring before hitting the road again in October 2005. In 2005, Ween hit the studio to record better quality versions of previously unreleased songs for

26344-419: The theme song and the interstitial music for the sitcom Grounded for Life which aired from 2001 to 2005. Ween formed their own label in 2001, Chocodog Records, which oversaw the release of several self-produced live sets. Paintin' the Town Brown , which was compiled and mastered by the band, was meant to be the first Chocodog release. According to Melchiondo, once the album was completed, Elektra realized

26522-459: The three-disc Live at Stubb's , which contained parts of two performances in Austin, Texas from July 2000 during the White Pepper tour. Ween signed to Sanctuary Records and released Quebec , their first studio release in three years, on August 5, 2003. Quebec was noticeably darker in tone than much of Ween's work; according to Freeman, many of the songs were written as he was going through

26700-615: The three-octave voice of Annie Haslam . Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market. The American brand of progressive rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa , Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat & Tears , to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston , Foreigner , Kansas , Journey , and Styx . These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO , all demonstrated

26878-452: The unreleased Part 4 from the demos for Chocolate and Cheese , and Part 5 from Craters of the Sac ). On November 3, 2017, they would perform "The Stallion Suite" live at Stubb's BBQ in Austin, TX. All Request Live also included rarely played early Ween tracks such as "Pollo Asado", "Mononucleosis", and "Cover it with Gas and Set it on Fire", and Ween's rejected Pizza Hut jingle, "Where'd

27056-409: The vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the U.K., the hippie movement and the wider Western counterculture movement that spread out from San Francisco in the U.S. in the 1960s, the latter of which continues to this day. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the goth , punk, and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of

27234-497: The video was a highlighted target on MTV 's Beavis and Butt-Head . The song was also a hit in Australia, reaching #18 on the singles chart. The track "Flies on My Dick" featured lead vocals by Guy Heller , singer of Melchiondo's other band, Moistboyz . Heller would occasionally perform the song live with Ween. Ween toured the U.S. in support of the album, and the show of December 9 in Chapel Hill, NC would later be released as

27412-492: The vinyl selling more than 5000 units in its first week, enough for it to hit number 15 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart and number 3 on the magazine's Vinyl Albums chart. The tour, however, would not go as well. In March, the first few dates of the tour, which would've seen the band play across the Southeastern United States, ended up being canceled, with the band saying this was to preserve Dean Ween's "mental and spiritual wellbeing". The band proceeded on in August, playing

27590-456: The words wuss and penis . Their earliest home recordings were drug-fueled and free-spirited; Melchiondo would later say about this era, "the music was designed to be obnoxious". From 1984 until 1994, Ween's live lineup consisted of Freeman on lead vocals and occasional rhythm guitar, Melchiondo on lead guitar and backing vocals, and a Digital Audio Tape (DAT) machine providing the pre-recorded backing tracks. They self-released six cassettes in

27768-418: The work of the Beach Boys , formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums included both instrumental surf rock (among them covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen . The Beach Boys first chart hit, " Surfin ' " in 1961 reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze

27946-533: The work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet (1968) and the Beatles' Let It Be (1970). Reflecting on this change of trends in rock music over the past few years, Christgau wrote in his June 1970 "Consumer Guide" column that this "new orthodoxy" and "cultural lag" abandoned improvisatory, studio-ornamented productions in favor of an emphasis on "tight, spare instrumentation" and song composition: "Its referents are '50s rock, country music, and rhythm-and-blues, and its key inspiration

28124-404: The world, except as a new brand of painkiller ... In the '70s the powerful took over, as rock industrialists capitalized on the national mood to reduce potent music to an often reactionary species of entertainment—and to transmute rock's popular base from the audience to market." Roots rock is the term now used to describe a move away from what some saw as the excesses of the psychedelic scene, to

28302-462: Was John Mayall ; his band, the Bluesbreakers , included Eric Clapton (after Clapton's departure from the Yardbirds) and later Peter Green . Particularly significant was the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States. Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith , and Derek and

28480-431: Was Prince . The GodWeenSatan track "L.M.L.Y.P." borrows lyrics from two Prince songs, " Alphabet St. " and "Shockadelica". Additionally, on rare occasions, Ween has jammed on Prince's "Kiss", placing it in the middle of "Voodoo Lady" during live performances. Other Prince songs covered in concert by Ween include " 1999 ", "Housequake", and " Purple Rain ". In 2012, Melchiondo remarked on his website that "by far, hands down

28658-437: Was disrupted by COVID-19 ; dates for June and July were postponed into 2021. On August 9 and 10, 2022, Ween played the South Park 25th Anniversary Concert alongside Primus and South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker . It was broadcast on Comedy Central on August 13 and on Paramount+ on August 14. 2024 marked 40 years since the band as a whole formed, and 30 years since their 4th album Chocolate and Cheese

28836-517: Was "retiring Gene Ween", and a few days later, Ween's manager, Greg Frey, told fans on Facebook that Freeman had decided to "end his musical relationship with Ween", in order to "more fully explore and pursue his solo career". Melchiondo appeared to be unaware of this, stating, "This is news to me, all I can say for now I guess". On July 20, Melchiondo addressed the supposed "breakup" and stated "I can only speak for myself, but as far as I'm concerned, as long as Aaron and I are both alive on this planet, Ween

29014-460: Was 1963's " Wipe Out ", by the Surfaris , which hit number 2 and number 10 on the Billboard charts in 1965. Surf rock was also popular in Europe during this time, with the British group the Shadows scoring hits in the early 1960s with instrumentals such as " Apache " and " Kon-Tiki ", while Swedish surf group the Spotnicks saw success in both Sweden and Britain. Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal pop music, particularly

29192-473: Was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock , Chick Corea and Weather Report . The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan , Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music. Reflecting on developments that occurred in rock music in

29370-410: Was also due to appear in April at Levitation Festival in Austin, which was canceled the day before the weekend began. A sequel to the first outtakes collection, Shinola vol. 1 , was confirmed to be in the works by Dean Ween on Facebook in January 2016. However, as of 2024 there have been no updates on this. On October 19, 2016 the band announced the release of the live album GodWeenSatan Live , which

29548-424: Was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers , but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock ), bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues rock began to slip out of the mainstream. By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of

29726-509: Was directed by Spike Jonze and the video for "I Can't Put My Finger On It" was filmed at a Middle Eastern restaurant and featured actual employees of the restaurant. Both videos would be shown on season 5 of Beavis and Butt-Head in 1995. Ween performed "I Can't Put My Finger On It" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in January 1995. The Chocolate and Cheese track "Roses Are Free" began being covered by Phish regularly in concert in 1997. Freeman would later comment: "I like Trey Anastasio as

29904-449: Was founded in Britain), and Band of Gypsys , whose guitar virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated of the decade. Blues rock bands from the southern states, like the Allman Brothers Band , Lynyrd Skynyrd , and ZZ Top , incorporated country elements into their style to produce the distinctive genre Southern rock . Early blues rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be

30082-416: Was made into a music video directed by Trey Parker and Matt Stone , and "Stay Forever". Shortly after the release of White Pepper , Ween started the Internet radio station WeenRadio, which was awarded third best Internet music site by Rolling Stone . In July 2000, Ween performed the White Pepper track "Exactly Where I'm At" on the Late Show with David Letterman . In November 2000, Ween contributed

30260-666: Was recorded on September 14, 2001, and features the band performing its debut album in its entirety. It was released on November 16, 2016. On June 1, 2018, Warner Brothers released a compilation album titled Bananas and Blow ; according to Melchiondo, the band had no knowledge of the compilation until it was released. Melchiondo noted that the song choice for the compilation felt "random". While no new recordings have been made by Ween since their reunion, several of its members have done side projects or collaborated with other artists since 2015. Claude Coleman's side project Amandla released their third album Laughing Heart in 2017 and toured behind

30438-424: Was released. The band was initially planning to celebrate these milestones in two major forms: a reissue of Chocolate and Cheese, featuring the original tracks remastered by Bernie Grundman and 15 outtakes and demos, and a tour that would cap off with a concert at Philadelphia's Mann Center where they would play Chocolate and Cheese in full. The reissue of Chocolate and Cheese ended up being fairly successful, with

30616-555: Was subsequently pulled from theaters one week after its opening weekend. Also in 1994, Freeman, Melchiondo and Coleman collaborated with Japanese noise rock band Boredoms on a project released two years later as Z-Rock Hawaii . Melchiondo became a big fan of Boredoms upon seeing them live in Philadelphia in 1993, calling them "the heaviest band [he] had ever seen since the Butthole Surfers ". Boredoms frontman Yamantaka Eye had previously released an album that heavily sampled Ween's Pod album. These recording sessions took place in

30794-411: Was taken up by bands including Pentangle , Steeleye Span and the Albion Band , which in turn prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band , Spencer's Feat and later Five Hand Reel , to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic rock in the early 1970s. Folk-rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in

30972-548: Was taking place globally in the aftermath of the Second World War . Cliff Richard is credited with one of the first rock and roll hits outside of North America with " Move It " (1959), effectively ushering in the sound of British rock . Several artists, most prominently Tommy Steele from the UK, found success with covers of major American rock and roll hits before the recordings could spread internationally, often translating them into local languages where appropriate. Steele in particular toured Britain, Scandinavia, Australia,

31150-416: Was that there was all this thought that went into this shit. It's total bullshit. We wrote a lot of material—it was good, we knew it was good—we picked our favorite songs and we put them out on the record. That was it. [Laughter.] And that's been true of every record I've made, from the first Ween record to the second Dean Ween record." One month prior to the release of Chocolate and Cheese , Ween appeared in

31328-439: Was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation and the Beatles " I'm a Loser " (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan. The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with the Byrds ' recording of Dylan's " Mr. Tambourine Man " which topped the charts in 1965. With members who had been part of the café-based folk scene in Los Angeles,

31506-430: Was the major force in American record sales and crooners , such as Eddie Fisher , Perry Como , and Patti Page , who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed. Rock and roll has been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in

31684-400: Was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s. Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated

#529470