Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
amazing, October 22, 2000
By A Customer
The day I bought this CD I hated it, with a passion. I thought it was just 2 college guys who wanted to see what it would sound like if they turned on a recorder & got more and more stoned till they passed out. But I kept listening to it (being the brainless Ween fan that I am), and now it's my favorite Ween album & one of my favorite albums ever. It's really not a listenable record, but these guys do have a ton of talent. If you look beyond all the slow tempos and the lo-fi recording, there are damn good songs here, & the variety is mind-blowing. There isn't a single song on this album that sounds like another song. Moreover, there isn't a single song on this album that sounds like it was sung by the same person. One flaw: every single guitar solo on this record is God awful. But usually it's used to really funny effect (like 'Sorry, Charlie': for a few bars it sounds like someone stoned out of his mind is doing a solo & just trying desperately to stay in the same key, then he screws it up & goes off-key), which brings me to the great sense of humor these 2 guys have. 'Pollo Asado' has to be the funniest song I've ever heard in my life, except for maybe 'Fish Heads.' It became the official song of my high school Spanish class. Some of the tracks here are very catchy ('Sketches of Winkle,' 'Captain Fantasy,' 'Dr. Rock,' 'Pork roll egg and cheese'), some are just weird ('Strap on that jimmy pac,' 'Laura,' 'Mononucleosis'), some even scare me ('Molly,' 'The Stallion pt 1'). Just buy the album.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Deaner! Dude! Where can you be? Come hither!, September 13, 2004
There are so many reasons to hate this record. I heard it back in my late teens, even while in the state that one is "supposed" to be in when listening to it, and all of those reasons were apparent. The production quality is awful, there is an omnipresent hiss going on, the drum beats are casio-esque, the solos are generally off key, the lyrics are nearly impossible to make out without looking them up, and the songwriting is totally unfocused and comes off amateurish. Playing this for most people, whether they are casual music listeners or "technical" music listeners (more on that later), will probably make them wonder why they ever associate with you.
The obvious question then: why do people love this album so much??? How can so many reviews contain the word "unlistenable" yet give the record five stars and praise its genius? The answer is complicated, but it is also the key to liking (and probably obsessing over) this record. I guess the best way to explain it is that this album successfully manages to use its limitations to be its strongpoints. By not restricting themselves to conventional song structures and leaving all of the imperfections in the record, you don't get the feeling at all that what you're hearing has been filtered through a studio and record execs. Because of that, it really feels like you were right there with them when they were recording this - it's like the anti-rock star music. Most contrived music these days attempts to make it sound like the singer is singing "from another world" - this stuff sounds like Geaner and Deaner are huffing glue with you in your den.
So the personal nature of the album is all well and good, but I've heard plenty of awful demos without mastering and they certainly weren't worthy of cult status. What sets this apart? The amount and density of the ideas contained in it. Every song is so entrenched in creativity that if one "gets into it" it's almost impossible not to have some of that creativity rub off on you. There are so many subtleties present here that you can uncover - and even though they don't enhance the album MUSICALLY, they are such concentrated outputs of thought that they are awe-inspiring. It's like a portal directly into the Ween boys' brain. If this sounds intriguing to you, then you'll probably grow to love this record. If you tend to approach music from a "melody and songwriting" standpoint, definitely pick up some later Ween, probably Mollusk and White Pepper, which are both solid albums for completely different reasons. As for The Pod, I can't give it five stars because even though I've drawn so much inspiration from it, it's not an album that I always want to listen to.
The best thing to do is listen to the clip of "The Stallion Part 1" on here - if it just sounds like cacaphonic sloppily-played noise to you (which it is), this probably ain't your bag. If it sounds even mildly intriguing and you giggle a couple of times during it, chances are you'll eventually grow to love it and memorize every minor sonic detail.
One more thing - people say that you need to use drugs while listening to appreciate this album. Obviously that's not true - I really "got it" long after I stopped using them. However, as much as I hate to call any album a "drug" album - I will say that if you do have the mentality to appreciate this album, you're much more likely to be the type of person that would have experimented with drugs at some point. So I guess I would say that if at some point in your life you've sampled a psychedelic or two you might be more inclined to appreciate this.
Oh, and I totally agree with the review below me - that A-B-C...Q-S-S-T-A-L-L-I-O-N part of the album is just such a great ten seconds. Maybe the most gratifying ten second portion of any record. I have absolutely no idea how to explain why either - and that's what's so great about it.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Assigned Work is Late or Incomplete, January 18, 2002
Letter to the parents:
¡§Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ween, your ¡¥sons¡¦ have gotten their hands on a budget four track recorder and recorded a series of un-beautiful songs for submission as their final project. The results are not pleasant. On probation for their previous term project (GodWeenSatan) I warned them to tone it down this time. Well, we seem to have less cussing but no improvement in quality. The cacophony flowing from your two sons¡¦ guitars is by no means sweet nor melodic; a symphony this aint. Song themes range from a note to a friend who missed school with mononucleosis, a letter to a ne¡¦er do well college dropout, Mexican Food, and repeated assertions of their masculinity. And amps turned up to at least eleven. We all know how much money and effort was spent on the boys music lessons and now they misuse their gift to make an awful racket and sing tales of useless dissipation. And darn it, this is kind of catchy. I¡¦ve listened to it a hundred times and it keeps getting better. These boys recycle every music format on the FM dial and I like it. Let me know if I can write them a recommendation letter for college, they¡¦ll need it after all the school they¡¦ve missed. Sincerely,
Principal Stallion¡¨
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