Revenge of the Nerds

This is the second-to-last time you will find Ween and They Might Be Giants in the same sentence.

by A.D. Amorosi

Ween (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Because each is a devilishly wry duo with a knack for genre-hopping, Ween and They Might Be Giants have found themselves under the same umbrella. It's not a comfy place for either band.

"They seem like very creative guys with their own point of view," says TMBG's John Flansburgh of Ween. "But if I'm being asked to compare us to them, that's not my gig."

"I know there're obvious reasons to compare us," says Ween's Mickey Melchiondo. "But I think they're the opposite of what we do. They're witty and clean. No distortion. I don't like it."

OK.

But one can't help but smirk at the fact that each duo turned its unique sounds into similar levels of self-made success, even if their brands of snark come from different mind-sets.

"I remember reading that Kurt Cobain said his dream for Nirvana was that it could be as big as Sonic Youth," says Melchiondo. "Our goal was similarly modest."

Melchiondo — Dean Ween to Aaron Freeman's Gene Ween — marvels that their first new CD in four years, La Cucaracha (Rounder/Umgd), won Ween's highest Billboard debut and that they're selling out 4,800-person theaters.

"That's awesome and terrifying because we get bigger every album, but in small proportions, across 23 years of being Ween." He's laughing hard now. Because we both know that with that math, it'll take Ween only another 23 years before they wind up at the Wachovia. But it's not algebra that brings us here.

Mickey remembers being called innocent, arcane and a novelty during their earliest days, when Ween was still fresh out of New Hope. He knows those notions still get lobbed at the band. He doesn't care.

"If we ever did analyze how we did or what we did, it would be phony."

What Melchiondo is willing to analyze is that novelty question. Because in the 23 years of Ween, he's watched bands come and go. "Three or four times," he says. "We played City Garden with Jawbreaker and Fugazi in the '80s and got shit thrown at us. Watched the '90s come along with the Pearl Jams and the Better Than Ezras. Did festivals in 2000 with Limp Bizkit. We're still around. I'm not trying to give us more credit than we deserve. But when you have humor in your music — it just confuses everyone involved. Except for us. Let 'em call us a novelty. We're still here."

Melchiondo calls 1994's Chocolate and Cheese Ween's most important CD. With that, the duo became a quartet and went from sounding lo-fi and crude to lustrously rich. On the personal tip, the brotherly team went from living and working together every day to moving apart (OK, blocks apart) and starting families. By the time they got to their most forlorn record, 2003's Quebec and its quixotic take on drugs and divorce, things weren't so hot. "That's Aaron's divorce record," says Melchiondo. "Ween records aren't always funny. But that one wasn't fun. Not writing it. Not recording it. It was done piecemeal. We both got fucked up really bad."

While Quebec wound up an accurate portrait of that miserable period, Melchiondo was conscious of doing 2007's La Cucaracha in a different "head space."

They Might Be Giants (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Without sounding corny, the CD's best moments are about relationships — Aaron and Mickey's, ones with their girlfriends and wives. They got to these autobiographical snapshots by learning to be friends again. "It's not a self-help record though there's a taste of that too. But things are better than ever. I can call him and say, 'Turn on Channel 6' if there's something I want him to see."

Like all great self-referential Ween tunes, their twists on self-help are torturously tongue in cheek. Check out the abrasive "Shamemaker." Then there's "Your Party." With its slick, wheezing saxophone courtesy David Sanborn ("Who knew he's a Ween fan?"), the track is a magnificent hokey Al Stewart-like vamp on an old rocker's lameness — theirs. "There's nothing that offends me more than guys like McCartney and Neil Young writing about their country house and their third wife's hair. We've been joking about it for 20 years so this is like a pre-emptive strike. Only Aaron would take the initiative on something like that."

That's the point of Ween — that after 23 years of having parallel lives, they still impress each other. Being buds hasn't screwed up their music. Being musicians together hasn't fucked with the Boognish brotherhood. "We are very different people — always have been — but still like brothers," says Melchiondo. "It's like when you're a kid and you hear yourself on tape for the first time. We did that together as kids in Ween. And we never got over that."

They Might Be Giants' John Flansburgh might not sound as ebullient as Melchiondo regarding the 30-plus-year relationship with his partner John Linnell. But there's still closeness with the other John and things only the other John knows about Flansburgh. "John and I share a lot of quite specific, mildly snobby opinions about culture and politics," says Flansburgh. "If that is from nature or nurture it's hard to say since we've been stuck in the same vehicles for our entire adult lives." There isn't a lot of drama between them.

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"We've been working together very closely almost all that time on this band. We were good friends when we started the band, and have been through so much shared, formative stuff we've kind of come out of the experience in heated agreement on a lot of life-altering things. We still have a very jolly relationship, and our respect for the other has probably increased."

Mention that their vibe is one of innocence and Flansburgh jokes that in spite of fleeting bouts of optimism, as a 47-year-old Brooklynite he rarely feels innocent. Mention the idea of novelty that's been lobbed at a duo making songs about statues getting people high, or birdhouses in their souls and he says he's never seen the elements of humor in what they do as essential. "Whatever humor is in there is just a natural extension of our sensibility," he says. "If it felt added on or forced we'd be the first to pluck it out. We've also always been perfectly comfortable with ideas that are more straightforward or simply musical."

TMBG have been awarded manic devotion no matter what they do — straightforward stuff like 2001's Mink Car, kid stuff like 2002's No! and 2005's Here Come the ABCs, and something sensationally in-between like the dashing, darting The Else (Idlewild) — their adult album for 2007.

TMBG has always, in the most fundamental borscht-belt show business sense, "gone over," notes Flansburgh, whether it's kids records or dementedly mature character-driven tracks from The Else like "With the Dark" and "Withered Hope." Like Ween, you can probably call that success incremental. Maybe it's that each of TMBG's wildest escapades is maddeningly musically contagious despite their fill of what Flansburgh calls "unreliable narrators" and overall complexity.

"Audiences seemed to appreciate the songs even as complicated and awkward as they may have been." Whatever success they've had has been solely on their terms. Even if Flansburgh pleads innocent. "Whatever degree we have fit into that world has always seemed like a happy accident."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Ween plays Sat., Nov. 24, 8 p.m., $25-$35, Tower Theatre, 19 S. 69th St., Upper Darby; They Might Be Giants plays Sat., Nov. 24, 9 p.m., $23.50, Fillmore at the TLA, 334 South St.; 215-336-2000, ticketmaster.com.