Also this issue: Billy the Kidder Will Oldham is being difficult. -A.D. Amorosi Time and Tide Jon Langford talks about death and going it alone. -Sam Adams Sam Jayne, Sam Beam, James Mercer -Chris Parker Miguel Zenón Quartet -Kyle Parker The 90 Day Men -Paul Burress Erykah Badu -Elisa Ludwig Joe Strummer/Clash Tribute -A.D. Amorosi Benny Golson Quartet -Kyle Parker

January 30-February 5, 2003

hearhere

by Patrick Rapa

What kind of karmic miscue made big-time ad agency Wieden and Kennedy even think of hiring Ween to write a Pizza Hut jingle? The mind-blowing "Insider" pizza -- which hides all the cheese inside the crust -- apparently demands an atypical ad campaign. So New Hope's resident avant-garde fecalphiliacs were called in.

The way Dean Ween (a.k.a. Mickey Melchiondo) tells it, the project was probably doomed from the start. "They didn't give us much direction other than that they wanted something left of center -- but we were dealing with a committee of people, conference calls from a boardroom, that kind of vibe. So the instructions were often in contradiction to the person who had just thrown in their two cents."

"[Wieden and Kennedy] mostly were concerned that we came up with a catch phrase along the lines of Œwhere is the cheese?,' or Œwhere'd the cheese go, what happened to the cheese?' -- that kind of thing," he continues. Which explains the redundant, catchy 28-second pop tune the duo came up with (and which is currently available for download from Ween's www.chocodog.com). One version of the jingle features a call-and-response of "where'd the cheese go" and "I don't know" over some snazzy electronica.

A hilarious alternate take (also available for download) features distinctly less marketable lines like "where'd the motherfuckin' cheese go at?" Though the band toyed with the idea of submitting this version to the ad agency -- after a week of frustrating rewrites and rejections -- Ween surprisingly showed some restraint. "We pussed out," says Dean.

Eventually Wieden and Kennedy took the band off the project and hired somebody else. "The spot ended up running for no more than two weeks, and then the ad agency was fired by Pizza Hut," Dean says. "They would've all made millions had they used our shit; I'm convinced of it. They ended up using something that was really pedestrian and ordinary."

Oh well, he says he never liked Pizza Hut anyway: "I live close to Trenton, N.J., home of the best pizza in the world. I think too much cheese ruins a pizza. I can't eat that stuff that Pizza Hut tries to pass off as pizza."

Ween ended up turning one of the rejected jingles into a song for the forthcoming album. And of course the band was properly compensated for their efforts. "Hell yeah," says Dean. "I always get paid. Better ask somebody."