Customer Reviews

At the Cat's Cradle, 1992

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
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Ween Live at the Cat's Cradle offers the early 90s Ween experience, a stripped down but nonetheless powerful set of Gene and Dean. The audio sounds pretty good considering some of the ragged live bootlegs of shows I have heard from the same era. The folksy absurda of Genes lyrics and melodies combined with Deans full tilt distortion happy guitar makes some of the songs you have heard shine like never before (captain fantasy, Demon Sweat). Rarely heard live tunes like Nan, Mango Woman and others are vital pieces of the Ween puzzle, and early versions of Buckingham Green, a soulful and mild Bday Boy, and a crushing reggaejunkiejew make the CD portion absolutely essential for any completist. The DVD is a perfect companion piece with its terrific 17 cuts of live Ween, audio here is a bit murky as well as the video but it only adds to the sheer browness of the package, as do the tunes like boing and mountain dew. A completely different animal than the Ween you will see on the Live at the Vic DVD/CD. This CD/DVD set gives us the rude, raw audacious DAT drumming Ween that for many of us is the "real" Ween. PLAY IT LOUUUUUUUD.......

At the Cat's Cradle captures Ween live in December 1992 as the original two-man band backed by a tape deck containing drums and bass. It seems crazy that just two guys can pull this off, but as Ween fans know Gene and Dean did it for years before gathering a full "real" band. The DVD is so cool - it's footage from multiple concerts and some studio stuff - so much fun to see. Very homemade and raw, this is excellent audio and video documents of Ween near the end of their days as a duo. Highly recommended!

At the Cat's Cradle, 1992 is awesome... It's a great early show - just Gener and Deaner, plus great video footage on the bonus DVD. Listening to this CD made me realize just how genuinely talented these boys are, and how their raw talent preceeded their musical abilities... A "musthave" for any Ween fan.

pass me some more live Ween and cheese if you please before the band. If you like Ween's earlier music this CD is for you. Two men and a DAT. It's the Ween you can't seem to remember. I highly recommend.

Hornswoggle your lugholes with this loud and lively lump of vintage Ween. Demon Sweat alone ought to fully fluff your scrubble but there are any number of brawny and gobsmacking retreads here plus by the time Gener sniggers and says "This next song is in French" well Zut alors! but you've simply just gots to doff your chapeau to these two trippy troubadours from Transylvania. I mean Pennsylvania.

Friday the thirteenth of March, 2009: Finally fired up that bonus DVD too so I did and talk about electric zowsers in your trousers! Was never really an actually I am like so there kind of gig guy so the fact that these shows were filmed is a big plus in my book. One of the venues was overseas too apparently, Holland of all places if you correctly extrapolate the liner notes. Stayed home in any case, turned on the telly instead. Bunged this home movie in the appropriate technology and activated my La-Z-Boy and before I even got to sit down and stretch meself out comfortably Ween were up and cranking out a right old ruckus. Stupendous live footage captured here I have to say--raucous, stripped and punchy. Gener's wearing some kind of homemade chef's cap at one point and Deaner's got this T-shirt on with big, capital-letter, collegiate-type writing on it that just says BROWN! Crushes that axe too does Deaner on some of these numbers. Closed my eyes and was reminded for a moment of Forest Hills in New York and that other fuzzed-up and side-burned Fender Bender Leslie West executing the sublime Guitar Solo on Volume 14 of the Official Live Mountain Bootleg Series. New Year Concert 1971--that's another astounding live soundboard recording to bung in the appropriate audio doohickey.

Friday the thirteenth was also in fact the original birthday of this Greek barkeep I know who very early in the AM last Thursday got chauffeured to work in a beautiful maroon 1979 Cadillac piloted by Jack the Irish dude who plays bagpipes every St. Patrick's Day inside the very taproom which was his actual destination that same exact morning! The very ale venue indeed where days later, Sunday in fact, lunchtime God help me, Stevie, who's not at all supposed to be smoking anymore either, slipped me a Kool on the way out. Aye Aye Aye sez I. Sharpen your boot and bludgeon your eye. Another great number by the rock group Ween. When Dean sings The Blarney Stone live in Chicago on that 2004 DVD he bends it way beyond breaking point--it's hilarious really but unfortunately this drunken Irish singalong isn't on Cat's Cradle, I don't think the brothers had even gotten round to writing it yet back then. Originally track six on The Mollusk in any case and a fine, piratical sea shanty it is too begob. Go and indeed Up Potatoes!

What a treat this release is for old Ween-heads like myself. 'At the Cat's Cradle, 1992' takes the listener back to a time when it was just Gene and Dean with their DAT machine, throwin' down with their all-brown sound. A few of the many highlights of this set are the opener "Big Jilm", an epic, intense "Buckingham Green" (five years before the tune would turn up on 'The Mollusk'), "Birthday Boy" (which comes off as a shocking moment of tenderness and vulnerability amidst all the insanity here), and the immortal "Reggaejunkiejew" (one of the five best songs ever written in the history of mankind, perhaps?).

I understand how Dean and Gene could grow tired of playing to pre-recorded rhythm tracks every night...but damn, did they have to go and turn into Widespread Panic?

STOP! LOOK! LISTEN!

The fellas of WEEN have done y'all a BIG FAVOR...they went & gave y'all some live tunes to listen to when you're at the gym, in the hair salon, on the toilet, wherever!! Also, ya can have the pleasure of watchin' 'em in all their glory.

This CD/DVD release gives you the pleasure of audio/video footage from WEEN's early psychotic days as patron saints of the music industry...

Gene + Dean WEEN open their vaults to give y'all some mighty special performances from the "early daze" o' WEEN (circa '91-92, baby!).

The beauty of this release is that it gives ya some awesome live crap from GOD WEEN SATAN, THE POD, PURE GUAVA (their early, far superior albums!). It also gets ya some "Mango Woman" & "Cover It With Gas & Set It On Fire" -flava, which are harder-to-come-by WEEN classics!!

Break open yer child's piggy bank, steal tools from yer neighbor's garage in order to sell them fer cash, write a bad check, do whatever ya have to do, but just GO OUT & BUY THIS ALBUM/DVD SET!!!!

Finally, this album is for the WEEN purist, who knows that WEEN only mattered as a live band when they was doin' it as a duo (w/ a lil' help from a DAT machine), before they became sucky & thought that their fans wanted to see 'em "jam" while they were ingesting copious amounts of drugs...