Ween's "Chocolate and Cheese" (33 1/3 excerpt)

Ween's ability to have it both ways, to reach a larger audience while retaining their initial DIY recording methods and every ounce of their insular obnoxiousness onstage, was no fluke. The band was fortunate enough to enjoy the support of a major-label staff who understood that to overdress Ween at this stage would be to spoil them. Steve Ralbovsky, the A&R representative who signed Ween to Elektra, explains:
Ralbovsky's faith in the band's methods meant that he played a much more passive role in working with Ween than with many other artists. “It was basically: Give them the resources to make the records the way they wanted to make them, support their agenda within the label and try to come up with creative plans with my colleagues to support the releases,” he explains. “And just basically get out of the way.”
Even if Ralbovsky was committed to getting out of the way, Ween wanted to make it official. Dave Ayers, Ween's manager at the time of the Elektra deal and the man responsible for Ween's initial Twin/Tone signing, still marvels at the conditions of the major--label contract:
Andrew Weiss stresses how unprecedented this all was. “No major label had ever put out a record recorded on a 4-track, except maybe [Bruce Springsteen's] Nebraska,” he notes. “But obviously [Nebraska] didn't sound Scotchguard. It didn't wear its 4-track on its sleeve like Pure Guava does. So that was kind of a coup because they got all this dough for doing a record on a 4-track that cost, like, $100 to make, and that was probably all spent on pizza and weed.”
The Elektra arrangement may have seemed like winning the stoner's lottery, but to Dave Ayers, it was also emblematic of a unique era in the music industry. He's quick to praise the shrewd instincts of Ralbovsky and Bob Krasnow, Elektra's president at the time of Ween's signing and an industry veteran who had previously worked with left-field visionaries such as Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra and Love's Arthur Lee. “Steve was the odd and crucial link that could make something like Pure Guava happen,” says Ayers. “And Krasnow was as weird a guy in his own way. He had a very eclectic roster of real artists at a time when it was becoming quickly out of fashion to do that. The timing had to be right on something like that.”
The timing clearly was right, and the 4-track-via-major-label mode of Pure Guava struck a chord beyond the underground. In 1993, Freeman and Melchiondo appeared as guests on The Jane Pratt Show, a daytime talk program hosted by the founder of Sassy and Jane magazines. Introducing the band as part of a “Homemade Media Festival,” Pratt played up the duo's use of cheap gear, introducing them as “a band called Ween, that actually records on a portable 4--track system.” During an interview segment, Melchiondo portrayed Ween's devotion to simple technology as both a badge of honor and a sort of truth serum:
The duo goes on to offer an unmistakably brown yet undeniably beautiful version of one such song, the smooth soul number “Freedom of '76,” which would end up on Chocolate and Cheese in a much more fleshed--out form. A DAT machine onstage churns out a plodding funk beat, over which Melchiondo strums jazzy chords, while Freeman shows off a supple, Prince-like falsetto. The pair's easy virtuosity and comfort onstage constrasts starkly with their makeshift setup and disheveled appearance. (“This was filmed early in the morning and we were very stoned,” wrote Melchiondo, annotating the clip on YouTube.) It's clear that at this point in Ween's career, this contrast was key to their appeal. Like expert pool hustlers, Freeman and Melchiondo came off as a couple of postadolescent burnouts—until you saw their formidable talents in action. At this point, Ween seemed completely content in their brownness. When Pratt asked Freeman and Melchiondo if they'd ever thought of upgrading, all she received in response is playful sarcasm.
Neither Maui nor Michael Bolton's backing band lay in the band's future, but on their next record, Ween would begin to set aside the homegrown approach that made it so easy for them to play the lovable underdogs. Before the year was out, the duo would make a modest yet very significant upgrade to their tried-and-true methods, tracking the follow-up to Pure Guava in a rented space with producer Andrew Weiss rather than at home, and taking advantage of state-of-the-art digital recording. It was a move that would pave the way for Ween's more-mature later work and that would have a profound effect on the way fans and the general public perceived the group.