10 Must-Hear Highlights From Ween’s ‘Chocolate And Cheese’ Deluxe Edition Reissue

Crappy Anniversary Jimmy

An instrumental with a chord progression reminiscent of Chocolate And Cheese stand-out Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony? (spoiler: I think it’s his lung), crappy Anniversary Jimmy is a blast – all tough riffs and playfully supple lead lines. Whoever Jimmy was, let’s hope this helped his big day go with a bang.

Warm Socks

A slice of slinky loverboy R&B that comes on like a slowed-down take on Chocolate And Cheese’s Roses, Warm Socks is a Gene and Dean duet that could be read as one long and reassuringly unconventional chat-up line (“Let us study in the art of philosophy and saunter back to the house/Let us share in the blood of the Buddha and try to straighten our postures out/If there’s a leak then I’ll fix it with some shit and then I’ll take off my wet clothes”). You had us at “philosophy”, lads.

Dirty Money

Released as an iTunes single in 2005, Dirty Money is an appropriately filthy blues-rock number with a raucous lead vocal from Gene. Perhaps to prepare fans for the release of the 30th-anniversary deluxe edition of Chocolate And Cheese, the song returned to Ween setlists in 2023, making its first appearance since 1994.

Belgian Stew

Previously unreleased, Belgian Stew juxtaposes seductive lyrics (“Hold me close and squeeze me tight/Under a lover’s moon tonight, yeehaw”) with an unrelentingly frantic backbeat, menacing guitar riffs and a snarling lead vocal from Gene. Somehow, as is so often the case with Ween, it’s ridiculously catchy.

Voodoo Lady (Demo)

A Latin-rock workout that finds the Ween boys playing Santana at his own game, Voodoo Lady became one of the group’s most enduring live tracks after its release on Chocolate And Cheese, peaking at No.32 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. This demo version shows how fully formed their vision for the song was, even before the studio glow-up.

Smooth Mover

While the identity of the dancefloor lothario (“He’s got a way with the women I just don’t understand/They love the man”) who served as inspiration for Smooth Mover is a mystery, this previously unreleased track is an exhilarating excursion into fuzzed-up hardcore that’ll blow the cobwebs out.

Take Me Away (Demo)

This demo recording of Chocolate And Cheese’s opening track is another highlight from the 30th-anniversary deluxe-edition reissue. It’s taken at a slower pace than the familiar album version, and the drum machine underpinning it has the effect of making Gene sound even more like a half-cut nightclub host. (This is by no means a bad thing.)

Sasha

If this is the same Sasha mentioned in Chocolate And Cheese highlight Freedom Of ’76, she must be quite a gal. This previously unreleased track is a riff-heavy slice of strutting cock-rock that’s very nearly derailed by an increasingly unhinged and lusty vocal which suggests that Gene Ween and UK club singer Vic Reeves may have been separated at birth.

I Really Miss You (And I’m All Alone)

If there’s an overriding concept at play throughout Chocolate And Cheese – and, indeed, all of Ween’s catalogue – it is the colour brown. “Ween is nothing else but brown,” Dean once said. “It has been our asset – our principle asset – our whole lives… The harder we try, the browner we are. The more legit we try and pretend we are, the more it blows up in our face.”

Brown is a guitar so hopelessly out of tune that you wouldn’t have any other way; it’s a nonsensical, wild vocal that couldn’t suit the song more. In the case of I Really Miss You (And I’m All Alone), it’s taking a straightforward, my-girl-has-gone-to-college ballad and framing it with seasick-sounding guitars, a hilariously drippy vocal and a recording of what sounds like the inside of a washing machine. It shouldn’t work, but it does, because it is deeply and unmistakably, beautifully and horribly brown.

Buy Ween ‘Chocolate And Cheese’ anniversary merch.