Poop Ship Destroyer
"Poop Ship Destroyer" is a song by Ween from the 1992 album Pure Guava.
Song Details[edit | edit source]
Legacy[edit | edit source]
Dean Ween has called the song "our anthem".[1] For many, both the song's subject matter and the extreme and spontaneous nature of some of its live performances seem to epitomize the ethos of "brown" that is so essential to Ween.
Live Performances[edit | edit source]
"Poop Ship Destroyer" was debuted live with DAT-deck accompaniment soon after its release on Pure Guava, and has remained a common live song throughout every era of Ween. It was even played with the country band on the 1996 country tour, a recording of which (from 10/23/1996) can be heard on the album Live in Toronto Canada.
The most famous live version of the song is the 1/31/1995 recording from the Chocolate and Cheese tour that appears on Paintin' the Town Brown. Notably, the recording is over 26 minutes long, a large portion of which consists of what could be described as "noise". Dean Ween considers this recording to be "the definitive version of this song". Explaining further:
This song is hardly ever on the setlist, it just sorta happens naturally. On this night, the poopship definitely had its coordinates locked on Missouri. Everyone in this incarnation of Ween had a flanger, a phaser, an echo, and other horrible stomp boxes. After this show was over, I remember feeling a little bit guilty about having done this. But not much. I blew out one of my speakers listening to the cassette of this. Hats off to Kirk Miller for his part in this fiasco.[2]
In 1999, Dean Ween wrote about a rather outlandish proposal that, as of yet, has not come to fruition:
If we get the money someday, we want to get two big cannons that spray diarrhea on the crowd when we play this. We've been talking about it for years. Just a thin mist that wafts over the crowd, sending you home with blown eardrums, smelling like shit. . . . Stay tuned for more developments regarding the "shit-mister" (patent applied for).[3]
Despite the song's legacy among fans, drummer Claude Coleman has singled out "Poop Ship Destroyer" as one of his least favorite songs to play live. Speaking about it in the past tense (from an interview during the Ween hiatus), he explained, "'Poop Ship Destroyer' I got really tired of playing. It seems to always go on too long, no matter how short it is. I kind of grew weary of it, even though I enjoyed it for the most part. I can't remember ever looking at the setlist and going, 'Argh, I don't want to play that.' If anything, I was always eager to get on to the next song."[4]
Lyrics[edit | edit source]
The Pure Guava lyric sheet contains official lyrics in Dean Ween's handwriting:
Let me lock in the system at warp 2
Push it into systematic overdrive
U know what to do
Let's cruise!
Past all the golden poo that makes me blue
This thing gonna ? ? ? ?[5]
On the poopship destroyer
Let me jam all the frequencies on channel 2
I've been chewin' on this brownie
And I thinks I'm almost through
Let's cruise!
The chocolate stew was u know who
I told u to jam the frequency
This sector's chartered by you[6]
Song Themes[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ From the Paintin' the Town Brown liner notes.
- ↑ From the Paintin' the Town Brown liner notes.
- ↑ From the Paintin' the Town Brown liner notes.
- ↑ https://www.songfacts.com/blog/writing/claude-coleman-jr-of-ween
- ↑ Question marks are as printed in the original
- ↑ From the official Pure Guava lyric sheet; lightly edited for clarity.