Valentine’s Day is today kids, and while other music blogs seem to be in a holiday-inspired quasi-posting frenzy offering countless “Best Of” lists that make you question your taste in music, I offer you dear readers, just one, single song to nurse your dark heart back to life. 
Ween is a band I discovered in junior high school. I won’t mention how long ago that was, but I will say that at the time I was rocking quite a bit of M.C. Hammer and Bel Biv Devoe on my Casio Walkman. You can do the math. I clearly remember my brother and his best friend anxiously awaiting the 1992 Christmastime release of Ween’s Pure Guava. Big box retailers at the time didn’t carry music like that—hard, foul and birthed via four-track—with no internet to speak of, we had to get our music on from the little lone record store on Main Street, Downtown Sounds, I can still smell the dusty wood paneling and discontent festering behind the counter. The album had to be special ordered, that’s just how remote music like Ween was at the time. My brother and his buddy Kevin each bought a copy and then exchanged them with each other for Christmas. They thought that was pretty slick. When the shipment finally arrived at the store, weeks after Christmas, the boys couldn’t get their grubby paws on the genius quick enough. I remember they came home and locked themselves in my brother’s tiny bedroom, just big enough for a twin bed and a bong made out of an Abdow’s Big Boy plastic penny bank and listened to the album on repeat. A few days later Kevin’s mom called wondering where the hell he was. To be honest, neither one of them were the same after they discovered Ween and Downtown Sounds had just as much to do with that as the album itself. I soon ditched the bolo tie and patent leather oxfords in exchange for a flannel and something a bit more rugged on my feet and let the alternative side of life in.
From the same band that has blessed us with righteous tracks like, “Put Your Boobs On,” “Wavin’ My Dick In The Wind,” “Baby Bitch” and “Pinkeye (On My Leg),” I want to share with you one of my most favorite love song of all, a twangy, country-infused, simple little lick called, “Stay Forever” by Gene and Dean Ween. On Valentine’s Day, I dedicate this song to remembering how I first fell in love with the discovery of music. Eighteen years later and I’m still smitten.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of my kindred dark horses out there.
.“Stay Forever”
