Paintin' the Town Brown: Ween Live '90-'98

This is an Enhanced audio CD which contains regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Ween: Gene Ween, Dean Ween (vocals, guitar); Danny Parks (guitar); Stu Basore (pedal steel guitar); Hank Singer (fiddle, percussion); Bobby Ogdin (piano, keyboards, percussion); Glenn McClelland (keyboards); Dave Dreiwitz, Andrew Weiss, Matt Kohut (bass); Claude Coleman (drums).
Compilation producers: Ween, Greg Frey, Kirk Miller.
Recorded live between December 1990 and December 1997. Includes liner notes by Dean Ween.
Audio Mixer: Kirk Miller .
Liner Note Author: Dean Ween.
Editor: Greg Frey.
There is very little middle ground with Ween: either you like what they do, or you don't. On the one hand the band's incessant jokes are clearly constructed to create a certain effect and are often quite funny. On the other hand, listening to them occasionally makes the listener feel like the only one at the party who is not chemically altered.
On this double live CD, most of Ween's songs fall into one of two camps: they are either elaborately stylized jokes ("Ode to Rene" or "Mister Richard Smoker") or drug-induced noise fests ("Mushroom Festival in Hell," "Bumblebee," or "Awesome Sound"). This collection's standouts are "Japanese Cowboy," a pretty obvious, "nudge-nudge-aren't-we-clever" neo-country song that they acknowledge lifts the melody of "Chariots of Fire" (so much so that they even tack on a coda covering the Vangelis original) and the Kiss-influenced "Doctor Rock," an archly delivered rock pastiche that continually threatens to derail. The 30-minute, hyper-kinetic version of the south-of-the-border, percussion-driven theme song, "Vallejo," full of burnt-out guitar effects and feedback, is noteworthy too. Also included, for those inclined, is a 26-minute rendition of the ambient/metal "Poopship Destroyer."