What do you think?
Rate this book
33⅓ Main Series #79
Chocolate and Cheese
Ween now seems like a permanent fixture on the pop-cultural landscape, but when the band first hit MTV in the early '90s, their longevity wasn't so secure. Nearly two decades on, though, Aaron "Gene Ween" Freeman and Mickey "Dean Ween" Melchiondo preside over one of the most devoted cult fan bases in American music. So how exactly did Ween manage to transcend joke-band oblivion?
One answer is that, in the years following their MTV breakthrough, Ween gradually polished their output, turning their staunchly primitive musical sketches into hi-fi paintings. Chocolate and Cheese, released in 1994, marked Freeman and Melchiondo's first crucial steps in this direction. Based on new, in-depth interviews with both members of Ween, as well as producer Andrew Weiss and associates ranging from Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) to Spike Jonze, this book explores the song-by-song creation of Chocolate and Cheese and how the album served as a bridge between Ween's original two-guys-and-a-4-track incarnation and the rich, virtuosic rock & roll force they would later become.
One answer is that, in the years following their MTV breakthrough, Ween gradually polished their output, turning their staunchly primitive musical sketches into hi-fi paintings. Chocolate and Cheese, released in 1994, marked Freeman and Melchiondo's first crucial steps in this direction. Based on new, in-depth interviews with both members of Ween, as well as producer Andrew Weiss and associates ranging from Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) to Spike Jonze, this book explores the song-by-song creation of Chocolate and Cheese and how the album served as a bridge between Ween's original two-guys-and-a-4-track incarnation and the rich, virtuosic rock & roll force they would later become.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
176 pages, Paperback
First published March 17, 2011
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
April 4, 2011
Well its short & Hank doesn't get too much in the way of his subject matter so its probably worth reading if you have any curiousity about Ween. But damn, dude has a grade school book report style that makes parts of the prose-- particulary chapter starts-- lousy with useless & redundant declarations like "I am going to show you how Ween's rise was both gradual & subtle" and "We have seen how Ween's rise was both subtle & gradual" etc.
I coulda dealt with a lot more technical details, too-- despite the fact that the author is revealed to be in a band (based in Brooklyn but still) he either has no hangers to get his subjects to talk about any of the finer details about how they achieved their super unique sound, or is hoarding that info to himself. In his descriptions of their recording process, aside from a few quick gimmicky anecdotes (Gener yelled in a car trunk on one part) there's little more than an explanation of the difference between analog & digital recording aimed at grandmas or doofuses.
I coulda dealt with a lot more technical details, too-- despite the fact that the author is revealed to be in a band (based in Brooklyn but still) he either has no hangers to get his subjects to talk about any of the finer details about how they achieved their super unique sound, or is hoarding that info to himself. In his descriptions of their recording process, aside from a few quick gimmicky anecdotes (Gener yelled in a car trunk on one part) there's little more than an explanation of the difference between analog & digital recording aimed at grandmas or doofuses.
August 3, 2016
Reaffirmed why Ween is my favorite band, and gave me a new, deeper appreciation for what was already a stellar record (still can't believe they got a major-label deal, though). Sure, the writing style leaves a little to be desired, but I didn't come here for mindblowing prose. There are plenty of details and anecdotes I'd never heard even as an obsessive fan, and Mickey and Aaron's joy and exuberance shine through the thick crust of brown on every page. If you can read this without smiling every few pages, you're dead inside.
Take a wrinkled raisin and do with it what you will
Push it into third if you know you're gonna climb the hill
Eat plenty of lasagna till you know that you've had your fill
Resist all the urges that make you want to go out and kill
~Ween, "Roses Are Free", 1994
Well, listen, everything's weird. You tell me something that's not weird.
~Bob Dylan, Guitar World interview, 1999
Take a wrinkled raisin and do with it what you will
Push it into third if you know you're gonna climb the hill
Eat plenty of lasagna till you know that you've had your fill
Resist all the urges that make you want to go out and kill
~Ween, "Roses Are Free", 1994
Well, listen, everything's weird. You tell me something that's not weird.
~Bob Dylan, Guitar World interview, 1999
May 29, 2025
Love the album, and I love seeing a 33 1/3 on Ween - but I wish it didn’t read like a high school kid copying the wiki page.
June 15, 2025
I often find that my favorite albums from my favorite bands are those that bridge a gap between eras of a band's music. Chocolate and Cheese is a perfect example. It's the exact right blend of BROWN, more professional production, and improved song writing and musicianship. I enjoyed the snippets discussed in this book and the context provided about how Ween was able to evolve their sound while retaining the weirdness that originally made them popular. I need to read more 33 1/3 books.
June 25, 2020
I have no idea how I ended up reading a book about Ween and actually enjoying it, but here we are.
January 26, 2026
very insightful and interesting! not very well written but I guess it doesnt really need to be.
January 10, 2023
Definitely a must read if you love Ween as there's a good amount of anecdotes in here that are hard to find elsewhere even if you are a pretty obsessive fan like myself. However if you're anything like me by the end of this extremely short book you are gonna be pretty fucking tired of Hank Schteamer. As one of the other reviews said so much of this book feels like a middle school book report. It feels like it was rushed out as fast as possible and like he has no idea what to even write about at times. There's a whole multi page section where he's just going on and on analyzing the metaphorical significance of the differences in the photographed portraits of them in the pure Guava and chocolate and cheese sleeves. The gist of this section is that the CAC pics make them look more mature, but for some reason he feels the need to repeat this sentiment over and over again over the course of multiple pages like some kid desperately trying to fill space in their book report analyzing the significance of how the curtains are blue are some other innocuous detail. Or his endless overanalysis of the aesthetics of the CAC cover. It's like he just ran out of anecdotes about them and just had to start pulling shit out of his ass.
What I truly found grating however was his dismissive attitude towards The Pod and Guava. Yeah yeah yeah, CAC and what came after has far more mass appeal and more so, a strong appeal to music critics. Pod and Guava are not albums you can really pretend to get, you either love them or they sound like noise. Contemporary reviews of these albums tend to be much more honest than music critics are now when they discuss them. Now that ween has achieved critical acclaim you can't just say wow these albums sound fucking horrible! Even if that's clearly how you feel. Schteamer like many other critics tries to dance around how he really feels about these albums, which is that, for the most part, he obviously does not enjoy them. So he gives them this kind of, oh look how immature, underdeveloped, strange this stuff was compared to the mollusk, can you believe these boys went on to make real music?? What critics like this completely fail to understand is that there's nothing underdeveloped about these albums. If you love that kind of sound, there is literally nothing in the world other than pod or Guava that you can listen to that will sound remotely similar. They are utter masterpieces of the lo fi experimental persuasion, and they are so not in spite of but because of the way they sound and were made. There is a reason so many fans like me enjoy the early stuff just as much as the later stuff. Some people more so, The Pod alone is major classic for people who love experimental music. Guava is my second favorite ween album after Quebec. Annoying to have someone who doesn't understand Frank or Mourning Glory writing a book on them. Man's barely says a word about godweensatan!
And more so this book really succeeds in capturing everything that annoys me about retrospective critiques of Ween. Everything from his attempts to describe the Ween albums to extremely annoying, constant attempts to use the term brown wreaks of desperation. He obviously is not the sort of hard core fan you would need to be to really write this sort of book with the level of praise he is throwing at them constantly. Obviously this dude was just some music journalist who was commissioned to write this book, not someone with a passion for ween who chose to write a book on them. He's clearly a fan of some of their work but obviously not nearly as much as he tries to portray himself as. So his descriptions of the post CAC albums come off as pretty useless and hollow to me. This wouldn't really be a problem if he didn't spend so much time babbling about the greatness of their post CAC work. The unfortunate thing is there really is a clear narrative throughline from their earliest work through to Quebec which is easy to understand intuitively if you are someone who really truly loves this music.
What I'm getting at is this overanalytical, music critic attitude sort of back fires when talking about ween. This book is so filled with embarrassing attempts to explain the appeal of things any ween fan will understand intuitively. A lot of times the answer is much simpler than Schteamer makes it, such as his attempts to analyze the middle finger drawing on the cd version of CAC. What was the deep thought process behind this, Schteamer poses? Some sort of statement towards people who thought they sold out, or to those who thought they'd never make it? He goes to Deaner with this brilliant question. What does Deaner have to say about this? Oh we just thought it was funny.
What I truly found grating however was his dismissive attitude towards The Pod and Guava. Yeah yeah yeah, CAC and what came after has far more mass appeal and more so, a strong appeal to music critics. Pod and Guava are not albums you can really pretend to get, you either love them or they sound like noise. Contemporary reviews of these albums tend to be much more honest than music critics are now when they discuss them. Now that ween has achieved critical acclaim you can't just say wow these albums sound fucking horrible! Even if that's clearly how you feel. Schteamer like many other critics tries to dance around how he really feels about these albums, which is that, for the most part, he obviously does not enjoy them. So he gives them this kind of, oh look how immature, underdeveloped, strange this stuff was compared to the mollusk, can you believe these boys went on to make real music?? What critics like this completely fail to understand is that there's nothing underdeveloped about these albums. If you love that kind of sound, there is literally nothing in the world other than pod or Guava that you can listen to that will sound remotely similar. They are utter masterpieces of the lo fi experimental persuasion, and they are so not in spite of but because of the way they sound and were made. There is a reason so many fans like me enjoy the early stuff just as much as the later stuff. Some people more so, The Pod alone is major classic for people who love experimental music. Guava is my second favorite ween album after Quebec. Annoying to have someone who doesn't understand Frank or Mourning Glory writing a book on them. Man's barely says a word about godweensatan!
And more so this book really succeeds in capturing everything that annoys me about retrospective critiques of Ween. Everything from his attempts to describe the Ween albums to extremely annoying, constant attempts to use the term brown wreaks of desperation. He obviously is not the sort of hard core fan you would need to be to really write this sort of book with the level of praise he is throwing at them constantly. Obviously this dude was just some music journalist who was commissioned to write this book, not someone with a passion for ween who chose to write a book on them. He's clearly a fan of some of their work but obviously not nearly as much as he tries to portray himself as. So his descriptions of the post CAC albums come off as pretty useless and hollow to me. This wouldn't really be a problem if he didn't spend so much time babbling about the greatness of their post CAC work. The unfortunate thing is there really is a clear narrative throughline from their earliest work through to Quebec which is easy to understand intuitively if you are someone who really truly loves this music.
What I'm getting at is this overanalytical, music critic attitude sort of back fires when talking about ween. This book is so filled with embarrassing attempts to explain the appeal of things any ween fan will understand intuitively. A lot of times the answer is much simpler than Schteamer makes it, such as his attempts to analyze the middle finger drawing on the cd version of CAC. What was the deep thought process behind this, Schteamer poses? Some sort of statement towards people who thought they sold out, or to those who thought they'd never make it? He goes to Deaner with this brilliant question. What does Deaner have to say about this? Oh we just thought it was funny.
July 18, 2018
A book about the making of one of my favorite albums by my favorite band. there's a couple of good anecdotes and some insights about the transition from the "two guys screaming to a tape recorder" era to (probably) "the best live band on earth". some technical info too about their struggles going from analog to digital recording.
Wishing for a 33/3 focused on "The Mollusk" but until then, this'll have to do:
Ween’s The Mollusk Turns 20: An Oral History By Mickey Melchiondo
Wishing for a 33/3 focused on "The Mollusk" but until then, this'll have to do:
Ween’s The Mollusk Turns 20: An Oral History By Mickey Melchiondo
June 20, 2011
Admittedly, I'm not a Ween fan, not even in the slightest bit. But, having read this book, I though Mr. Shteamer did a successful job of highlighting the bands hi-jinx, while also portraying them as hard-working musicians. Reading the book was easy, and well organized, though I'm still not super excited by the song by song explanation (at least here it wasn't about the time signatures, etc). This was definitely one of the better books in the series, and that surprised me as I have little to no interest in this band, until now. I'm off to listen to Ween.
August 28, 2011
This was a very interesting short read about the making of Ween's most famous album. I wish they had one of these about every Ween album! Sometimes the book-report style of it got old, but overall very well-researched and lots of good trivia. As someone who is obsessed with Ween's music but knew almost nothing about them as a band, I recommend it.
April 14, 2023
The author does a lot with the 150-ish pages of this book. It covers all aspects of the album: the production, every single song on the album, the cover art and even the included pictures. The writer has interviewed Deaner, Gener, Claude and many other people associated with this album and they get to say their word about every aspect discussed. The best parts of this book are when the writer lets them tell the story directly. The author particularly does a good job in discussing the important place of this album in the evolution of Ween as a band as well.
The writing style however, is a bit simple. It serves it purpose, but doesn’t do anything more. The author is also quite negative of Ween’s earlier work. I’m not a big fan of the pod or pure guava, but I do think they deserve more credit than given in this book.
In conclusion, by reading this book I have gotten even more respect for Ween and the album. The book shines when Deaner or Gener get to discuss their inspirations and ideas behind the album directly. I recommend it to people who, like me, love Ween and love this album.
The writing style however, is a bit simple. It serves it purpose, but doesn’t do anything more. The author is also quite negative of Ween’s earlier work. I’m not a big fan of the pod or pure guava, but I do think they deserve more credit than given in this book.
In conclusion, by reading this book I have gotten even more respect for Ween and the album. The book shines when Deaner or Gener get to discuss their inspirations and ideas behind the album directly. I recommend it to people who, like me, love Ween and love this album.
December 18, 2020
Pues están medio repetitivas algunas partes (sobre todo al inicio sobre hablaban de la producción) pero pues ya llevaba bastante escuchando ween y no sabía mucho sobre ellos o sus influencias, inspiraciones, etc entonces darse una idea de cómo fueron evolucionando y creciendo así como haciéndose más profesionales y “polished” desde pure guava y the pod hasta chocolate and cheese y white pepper estuvo bonito, también me gustó que dieran contexto a todos los tracks de chocolate and cheese (porque a pesar de que me gusta mucho ese álbum nunca aprecié todas las canciones como se debe) y sus videos musicales, incluyendo entrevistas y anécdotas de los integrantes, la verdad es que me gusta que hayan empezado siendo una banda outsider pero de alguna manera ahora puedan hacer feliz a tanta gente con toda la variedad de cosas que hacen :-) y pues ahora sé más de su discografía (que sigo explorando)
December 31, 2025
My son loaned me this book, & I clearly remember him getting into Ween back then, & playing me this album. Enjoyably, this is more than a simple album review. Packed into its modest 152 (small) pages is a pretty thorough Ween biog, including an exploration of all their albums, before & since. I can't profess myself to be a Ween 'fan' (I did love Push The Little Daisies, the band's extremely weird MTV debut) but found their story to be worth the few days it took to read. I expect actual fans, like my son, will love this.
June 15, 2021
A bit of TMI. Some great anecdotes strewn throughout, but overall forgettable enough to not let the overanalysis ruin a long-form discographical joke. Yet the irony is that Ween puts a lot of thought into their music which, on average, comes across as purely spontaneous.
Read for the anecdotes; skim through the rest. Though I can't knock the passion of a literary Ween fan who put so much effort into this essentially really long essay. So, respect where it's due.
Read for the anecdotes; skim through the rest. Though I can't knock the passion of a literary Ween fan who put so much effort into this essentially really long essay. So, respect where it's due.
September 21, 2020
2.5 I read this book because I tend to enjoy the entries in the 33 adn 1/3 series and my husband is a huge Ween fan so I've heard this album many times, but this was definitely not one of my favorites. It read like a poorly written thesis, very little joy or emotion related to the author's love of this band and it's work.
November 7, 2022
Another amazing 33 1/3 book on an amazing album. Shrteamer breaks the book down into sections defining Ween pre-album and how Chocolate and Cheese is the bridge between the 4-track brown sound era Ween and what was to follow.
The section where he covers the songs made me want to listen to the album again, and I will!
The section where he covers the songs made me want to listen to the album again, and I will!
September 3, 2023
I’ve owned this book for far too long to have just read it now but holy shit. I cranked it out in preparation for An Evening with Ween in Chicago next weekend, and this book just reminded me once again why this band will always be my favorite band of all time. My only demerit is that there isn’t one of these for each album!
October 24, 2023
Of the 33 1/3 books I've read (about ten or so), this was one of the best. Great structure and analysis. But it never forgets that, well, this is Ween, so it allows for fun along the way. I just want to add how much I appreciate a book that sincerely attempts a critical analysis of songs like "Mister, Won't You Please Help My Pony?"
March 29, 2026
Just an observation: "Hank Shteamer" sounds like a pseudonym that Dean and Gene made up so they could write a book about themselves. If that is true, I'm ok with it.
Although there were some repetitive parts (Pure Guava was the first Ween album on a major label, Elektra, Phish made "Roses are Free" popular, Ween used a 4 track, etc.) I am just happy to see a book about Ween.
Although there were some repetitive parts (Pure Guava was the first Ween album on a major label, Elektra, Phish made "Roses are Free" popular, Ween used a 4 track, etc.) I am just happy to see a book about Ween.
April 20, 2026
ween krijgt alle 5 de sterren maar de schrijver zelf zou ik eerder een 3 geven. precies een presentatie van in de middelbare school hahahaha !!! heb op momenten goed moeten lachen. goes without saying dat dit als fan makkelijk naar binnen ging ! jippie
ik zal het zo zeggen: de anekdotes waren gewoonweg interessanter dan t boek in zn geheel
ik zal het zo zeggen: de anekdotes waren gewoonweg interessanter dan t boek in zn geheel
July 12, 2019
It's not a particularly well-written book from a stylistic point of view--it comes off more like a freshman paper than anything else--but it's full of tons of interviews with Ween and others involved with the making of the album, which makes it a fun read.
August 24, 2021
Good to have if you're a fan of brown, but hardly the strongest in the 33 1/3 series. And really, you could find prose and info about the band online that match its quality. However, it has enough cheese to sink your teeth into to justify a read. Especially with its song dissection.
September 26, 2022
Just a real pleasant, easy read about a good album. Pure Guava is still better, but C&C is a classic bridge album, and the book does it right. Reading about the background screams in "Candi" was tight I suppose. I wish the boys would come back to Vancouver. 4/5
February 5, 2024
I’m a big Ween fan and Chocolate and Cheese isn’t one of my favorite albums by them but this book was well written. I learned a lot about the band and appreciated the deep dives into the making of Chocolate and Cheese.
June 6, 2024
A little dry at the beginning and the end. This book really shines in the middle section, going over the iconic album track by track, including many lengthy, and hilarious direct quotes from the band. This book was a much needed palate cleanser for me!
February 24, 2025
Nothing new here for the die hard fans, but it made for a great read about an album that defined the late 90s for me. Ween is the best American rock and roll band of all time (see “Baby Bitch” for further evidence).
“Smile on mighty Jesus…”
“Smile on mighty Jesus…”
July 11, 2018
An interesting primer on Ween. I'd love to read a biography of these guys that goes further in depth, because this is a story that desperately needs telling, but this is a fine starting guide.
January 14, 2019
Short, informative read on one of my favorite albums from one of my favorite bands.
February 28, 2020
3 stars are really only for the subject matter. Found this to be a very dry read, almost like a high school essay
August 26, 2020
Great detail and analysis. Very fun and fast to read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews