The Pod

Infobox Album |
Name = The Pod
Type = Album
Artist = Ween


Released = 1991
Recorded = January-October 1990
Genre = Alternative rock Lo-fi
Length = 76:17
Label = Shimmy Disc
Producer = Andrew Weiss
Reviews =
* Allmusic Rating|3.5|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:lpsxlfde5cqt~T1 link]
Last album = "" (1990)
This album = "The Pod" (1991)
Next album = "Pure Guava" (1992)

"The Pod" is the second studio album by Ween, originally released by Shimmy Disc in 1991.

Album information

Most often considered the band's "challenging album," "The Pod" (named for the apartment Dean & Gene shared in which all of the album's songs were recorded) is probably the band's most surreal. All of the songs have a murky, sludgy quality to them, possibly due to being recorded on a four-track, and many of the vocals are manipulated in strange ways. The lyrics are also quite druggy and bizarre. Contributing factors may have been drug use (the album notes claim that the band used Scotchgard as a recreational drug, although they have later confirmed that this was a running joke), and the fact that Dean & Gene both came down with cases of mononucleosis during the recording of the album.

The Pod has since been remastered and reissued by Elektra Records after the relative success of such Ween albums as "Pure Guava" and "Chocolate and Cheese" (At the time of the reissue, "The Pod" was not currently out of print on Shimmy Disc Records).

The cover art on "The Pod" is a takeoff of the 1975 "The Best of Leonard Cohen" LP record cover. Ween simply positioned a photo of Mean Ween's head (wearing a "Scotchgard bong") over Cohen's cover art and did alterations to the title and other graphics. The copy of the Leonard Cohen record that Ween used had purportedly belonged to Dean Ween's mother. "The Pod", according to Ween-lore, was written under the influence of Scotchgard, but was later disproved by Gene and Dean themselves as being "the most slime-bag thing we could think of". The contraption on the album cover is not a Scotchgard inhalation device, but a bong-like device use to send THC directly to the brain by use of nitrous oxide, which was said to leave the user intoxicated for daysFact|date=February 2007.

The songs on this album come from two tapes made by Ween spanning most of 1991. The tapes were titled the "Bilboa" tape and the "Big Timmy Wasserman" tape. Both tapes contain not only demo versions of songs on the album, but many outtakes not used on any album or tracks used on future albums.

Track listing

#"Strap on that Jammypac" - 3:03
#"Dr. Rock" - 3:11
#"Frank" - 3:46
#"Sorry Charlie" - 3:51
#"The Stallion (pt. 1)" - 2:51
#"Pollo Asado" - 2:45
#"Right to the Ways and the Rules of the World" - 5:05
#"Captain Fantasy" - 3:19
#"Demon Sweat" - 4:11
#"Molly" - 4:49
#"Can U Taste the Waste?" - 1:39
#"Don't Sweat It" - 4:02
#"Awesome Sound" - 2:22
#"Laura" - 4:37
#"Boing" - 1:33
#"Mononucleosis" - 3:01
#"Oh My Dear (Falling in Love)" - 1:57
#"Sketches of Winkle" - 2:44
#"Alone" - 3:12
#"Moving Away" - 3:06
#"She Fucks Me" - 3:59
#"Pork Roll Egg and Cheese" - 3:02
#"The Stallion (pt. 2)" - 4:35

* "The Stallion (pt. 1)" was not listed on the covers of original Shimmy Disc (CD, tape, double vinyl) releases, although the song is present as track #5.

Liner notes

From the Shimmy-Disc CD:

:"Recorded by Dean and Gene Ween on a Tascam four-track cassette recorder between January and October 1990. All songs recorded at the Pod, where we lived for a year and 10 months. (with our cat Mandee) The Pod was scenically located on Van Sant Road in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania. Our apartment was a haven for flies because it sits in the middle of a horse farm. In the time this album was completed, we filled up 3,600 hours of tape, and inhaled 5 cans of Scotchgard. This album was then produced and mixed by Andrew Weiss (our pal) at the Zion House of Flesh, Hopewell, New Jersey. Straight to DAT Mang. Mean Ween played the bass on “Alone” and that’s him on the cover doin’ up some Scotchguard powered bongs. We got evicted on October 1, 1991. But Dave Ayers says he’s gonna help us out. Cover and art designs by Logorhythms."

Personnel

* Dean Ween - Guitar, Vocals, Engineer
* Gene Ween - Vocals, Engineer
* Mean Ween - Bass guitar
* Ween - Art Direction
* Howie Weinberg - Remastering
* Andrew Weiss - Producer, Mixing