Last Best Show: My First Ween Show

A trip to a Ween show is like a visit to Oz. Remember when Dorothy awoke in that wigged-out Technicolor dream? Everything was recognizable - cornfields, apple trees, ruby slippers - but totally new. This is a Ween concert.

Wednesday at a nearly sold-out Orpheum in Boston, Ween’s guitars, amps and fog machines looked like guitars, amps and fog machines. But they were somehow different. Brighter, more vivid, with a wicked menace just around the corner just like, that's right, OZ.

Backed by a bassist, drummer and keyboardist, the Pennsylvania duo of Gene and Dean Ween began simply. Dean led the band through “Fiesta,” the instrumental opener to Ween’s new album, “La Cucaracha.” Gene joined in for the lo-fi punk of “Nan.” Then the fog rolled in like think reefer smoke, the laser lights fired up like the mothership descending and the eerie, magnificent music swelled to Oz-like levels.

With the weighty, grand rock of “Take Me Away,” the show transitioned from a couple of talented dorks jamming in their basement to the kind of spectacle you’d expect from a Blue Oyster Cult arena tour circa 1977. The pomposity raged on with the P-Funk-on-cough-syrup of “The Grobe,” the Jimmy-Buffett-on-coke of “Bananas and Blow” and the weed-happy prog metal of “Transdermal Celebration.”

The dream reached peaks during the guitar histrionics of “Voodoo Lady,” which riffed on Prince’s “Partyman,” and the epic new tune “Woman and Man.” Dean is a six-string nut whose solos stole generously from both unsurprising (Hendrix, Zappa) and unpredictable (Eddie Hazel, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Ritchie Blackmore) sources.

Gene, Dean’s foil and the band’s main vocalist, is an anti-frontman. Everything Bono ain’t, Gene is: a lump of atypically charismatic oddness born to lead a band with no qualms about performing a song like "HIV," in which the only lyrics are "HIV" and "AIDS." But Gene’s range extends to tenderness. “Your Party” was built of sensitivity and nostalgia as much as weirdness and whimsy.

Beyond Gene and Dean, the third factor at a Ween show is the crowd. A band with a cult that seems just one bad trip away from drawing pentagrams in goat’s blood, the Orpheum audience was as unhinged as any. Basically, these people were fucking fucked up. Lots of hotboxing (and maybe lines) in the bathroom stalls, collapsing in the aisles mid-dance/freakout, and screaming requests with a rock lust as impassioned as Romans calling for the next slave to be tossed to the lions.

Undoubtedly the faithful will tell you Ween’s show was Boston’s best of the year. Don’t believe them. That’s just the Oz hangover talking. But don’t scoff if they tell you Dean’s “Voodoo Lady” riffage was as good as anything Eddie Van Halen pulled off at the Garden last month. They may be right about that.