As a student of the University of Vermont during the late 90's / early 2000's, there were a few guarantees. You were guaranteed to see naked people running through shows at Slade Hall. You were guaranteed to score a nice bag of weed in front of City Hall in the park. It was also guaranteed that Ween would play their halloween show in Burlington.

It's no secret that Phish helped open up a whole new group of fans for Ween by covering "Roses are Free". Over the years the bond between the two bands grew stronger, especially in the late 90's / early 2000s when the drug scene within Phish was at a peak, lending itself to the lifestyle of both Dean and Gene Ween, who both struggled with drug abuse over the years and is the main reason they broke up as Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween) set his sites on sobrietary (for good this time) and also to shed himself of his longtime alias. 

As recently cited in a jambase article, in the early days of the Elektra years, when the two bands shared the label, it was noted by Jon Fishman in a reply to a fan asking if they liked Ween and Negativland where he answers by saying about the new album Pure Guava, "it is my favorite new album in quite awhile". So it's no surprise that during the recent Blossom show after performing Roses they (Trey) called for the former bandmates to patch things up and return as Ween. Heck, if Phish could do it why not Ween. Watch Rose's and Trey's call to action at the end.

I've seen them several times live. One of my favorite memories is going to see them in the Summer of 2001 up on a farm near their home town of New Hope, PA (near my home town too) where they played on a stage that came down from the side of a truck (think carnival). It was just an absurd event with really no policing. To put it another way, we rolled a cooler of beer up to the show like most where we surrounded this truck stage. It was insane. Pretty sure we woke up in the morning with either Dean, Gene or one of the other band members faced down in a tent next to ours. I recently found footage of this show that you can stream here.  

In honor of this great call to action to bring back Ween, I'd like to share one of my favorite tunes by the band and one that often gets added to summertime playlists - "Bananas and Blow". I found the below video that isn't an official video of the song but it's certainly well done by some fans. 

During one HalloWEEN show in UVM we all got dressed up as our favorite Ween song, as most do/did at Ween 'Ween shows. My costume was "Bananas and Blow". How you ask? I dressed in all white and drapped tiny banana's around me. When they eventually played the tune that night, my friends and I started taking the banana's off of my costuome and threw them up on stage. Of course both Gene and Dean began noticing and started throwing them back at us. These two new how to perform and I am certainly with Trey in this call to bring back a great rock duo.