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May 7th, 2000. My first time at Montreal’s Club Soda (get it?) and my second time seeing what quickly became my favourite live band, Ween.
I was on the floor and the room was packed. This was early Ween, back when the band drank heavily on stage and played epically long concerts. The show went on and on as the band scrolled through one style of music after another; each musician pounding back a prodigious amount of beer. I remember them doing one of their ragers (was it Dr. Rock?) and as the audience peaked with excitement they began to slow the song down. Slower, slower, slower they went, until they were playing the song at about 10bpm. I had been pumping my fist in the air since the song began and when the music slowed down so did my pumping fist. As the band slowed and slowed I thought about bailing but I just couldn’t. By the time they had slowed to an absurd, comical level I knew I had to keep going; I’m pretty sure I convinced myself that the band was trying to break me, plus I just new that there had to be at least one person up there in the balcony who was rooting for me and I couldn’t let them down. Gosh, it was such a fun concert.
I remember them playing Roses Are Free and when they got to the end of the unison two-man guitar solo Gene and Dean gave each other a sloppy nod and with slurred smiles they repeated the entire, already elongated unison solo again, laughing and staggering and completely nailing it.
I was in shock when they covered Hot For Teacher near the end of the concert. I had no idea they regularly played the Van Halen classic, but if I wasn’t pumped enough that certainly pushed things over the top for me. I barely touched the floor for the whole song.
By the end of the show the band had drank so much that they were absolutely legless; they kept playing until they couldn’t stand up anymore and then they called it a night. As they slunk off the stage the utterly sated and stained crowd spilled out into the streets. I spent the night at one of the nearby budget hotels where I talked the proprietor down to $40 for the night.
Split between three people it was a bargain.
Todd Man Out 