[Artwork by TODD SLATER]
PHILLY DELI: Gene Ween will be releasing a new album on April 10 entitled Marvelous Clouds, which will be a 13-song tribute to poet and songwriter Rod McKuen (who has penned songs for the likes of Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra and Madonna just to name a few). All this will be done under his own name Aaron Freeman. MORE
RELATED: The statistics involving McKuen’s career and work are staggering. He has recorded over two hundred albums and is the recipient of 63 gold and platinum records worldwide. His three-dozen books of poetry have been published in eleven languages, sold 65 million copies and made him the most widely read poet of his time. The songs he has written and composed have accounted for the sale of over 100 million records for such diverse artists as Madonna, Perry Como, Petula Clark, Waylon Jennings, The Boston Pops, Chet Baker, Pete Fountain, Andy Williams, The Kingston Trio, Percy Faith, The London Philharmonic, Dusty Springfield, Johnny Mathis, Al Hirt and Frank Sinatra. Sinatra 
commissioned an entire album of original McKuen songs and the result was the highly successful and much acclaimed A MAN ALONE. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: Like you, I once thought of Ween as the Cheech & Chong of alt-rock, a semi-demonic duo hatched from a weird egg under a bad moon in New Hope, lo, some 23 years ago. We all thought of them – if we thought of them at all – as the Scotchgard-huffing twin offspring of Frank Zappa, able to parrot just about any genre of music with Zelig-like aplomb, and then turn it inside out with Mad magazine puerility and rank absurdity. And all of that is true, of course. However, you would be mistaken if you assumed that just because they are funny the duo of Dean and Gene Ween – a.k.a. Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman – are somehow less than serious about their music. MORE