Ween - Shinola Vol. 2

The curse of the "Volume 1" (or "Part 1") is all too real, especially in the world of rock. When an artist releases an album with "Volume 1" or "Part 1" in the title, they're making a promise to themselves and the world to follow it up with something -- ANYTHING. But all too often, the wait never ends.

Lil Peep's Come Over When I'm Sober, Pt 1 was arguably the most tragic. (He died 3 months later. Pt 2 was compiled by his estate and released posthumously.)

George Michael had one of these -- Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1. Who knows what happened with the follow up?

The Hall & Oates hits collection Rock 'n Soul Part 1 never had an official follow up either.

There's probably a lot more, but those are the first ones that come to mind.

Ween's Shinola Vol. 1 (2005) is probably our favorite of these -- a collection of re-recordings and remixes pulled throughout Ween's dauntingly extensive back catalog of unreleased demo collections and fan-only cassettes (like 1999's Craters Of The Sac or 2011's Caesar.)

We were largely immersed in the lore of Ween enough that by 2005, we realized that even with file-sharing services and a multitude of fan resources, it was pretty much impossible to locate at least 100 of their non-album-tracks in files that did not sound like garbage.

So with this in mind, we hugely respect that Ween opted to go deeper than simply re-packaging stuff like "Mango Woman" and "Skycruiser."

In the summer of 2004, someone tipped us on "Gabrielle." At the time, it was a 56kbps Chocolate and Cheese era mp3, but we could tell it would sound huge in hifi. And then we forgot about it. We also forgot about most of Craters Of The Sac.

We recall not having a whole lot of prior notification that they were working on the Shinola series. It just kinda showed up on the Chocodog website one day, in the midst of a zone of spontaneous self-released Ween collections like All Request Live.

We're pretty sure it arrived in the mail less than a week after we ordered it -- a day or two earlier than its release date, on a Friday afternoon. We had to leave the house at 7:30AM the next day to play a wedding in upstate NY so we grabbed our new Ween CD and packed a huge bowl for the ride. We spent most of the next 36 hours in an absolute haze and somehow ended up spending the night in Montreal. The border patrol uncharacteristically let us through in both directions without passports although we have almost no memory of this happening. Shinola is a great memories album for moments when our memory was not working so well.

We also recently noted Emily Lazar's mastering credit, who we now recognize among the mastering legends of the 2000s. At the time, her most popular credits included Destiny's Child's Christmas album and David Bowie's Heathen. So this helps explains why this version of "Tastes Good On Th' Bun" sounds like the Godzilla of Pure Guava demos.

Anyway, the point of this post is: Ween people stopped holding their breath for Shinola Vol. 2 years ago and will frequently share their dream tracklistings, which too often include tracks that have already seen an official release like the outstanding "The Beacon Light" from the soundtrack of The X-Files movie or the instantly classic "The Rainbow" from South Park's "Chef Aid" comp. We love these tracks, but we feel like their inclusion breaks the rules just a bit. In other instances, fans will go just a bit hog wild on track selection, filling up a double or triple CD set worth of music.

The thing we appreciated the most about Shinola was that it wasn't an easy "greatest hits of the non-album-tracks." It was so much more than this - a carefully curated entirely fresh hifi Ween experience. Again, we were tipped on "Gabrielle," but it didn't sound quite like this version.

I don't think we tried this before, but we're gonna have a go at our dream Shinola follow-up using the parameters laid out for volume 1:

• No b-sides or soundtrack songs
• Pulled from fan-only tapes and unreleased demos
• Enough music for a 1 LP vinyl

In our version, both sides are a few minutes too long for vinyl, so we should probably remove two songs, but it's too hard to choose right now.

Side A (27:31)
1. "Mr. Mocha" (2:16)
2. "Makin' Love In The Gravy" (3:15)
3. "She'll Just Get You" (4:41)
4. "Put Your Boobs On" (2:14)
5. "Koko" (3:30)
6. "Cornbread Red" (4:02)
7. "Love Will Conquer All" (4:30)
8. "Shalom Absalom" (2:56)

Side B (27:59)
9. "I Was Nothing" (4:30)
10. "Hello Johnny" (3:56)
11. "Kim Smoltz" (4:43)
12. "Ambrosia Parsley" (4:38)
13. "That Man (From The Flatland)" (4:59)
14. "Does It Turn You On?" (5:15)

EDIT [2/23/21]: "Cornbread Red" is a b-side! We never knew. So that one can go. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE2yvLFuEX-jIOB9tsJC2rXW5eXmY6pIR



Ween - The B-Sides (1992-2005)
1. I'm Fat (1992)
2. Ode To Rene (1993)
3. I Smoke Some Grass (Really Really High) (1993)
4. Mango Woman (1993)
5. Puertorican Power (Part 1 and 2) (1993)
6. Skycruiser (1993)
7. Cover It With Gas And Set It On Fire (1993)
8. Now I'm Freaking Out (1994)
9. Bakersfield (1994)
10. There's A Pig (1995)
11. Vallejo (1995)
12. I'll Miss You (1996)
13. Sweet Texas Fire (1996)
14. So Long Jerry (1996)
15. The Beacon Light (1998)
16. The Rainbow (1998)
17. Cornbread Red (2000)
18. Who Dat? (2000)
19. Mountains And Buffalo (2003)
20. Dirty Money (2005)