Ween's Transdermal video

You can see the video at the end of this article. Fans of my stuff probably know the following story, but I thought I'd post it here and explain how it all came about.

In 2003 I created a music video for Ween. The song was 'Transdermal Celebration' from the album Quebec.



I had bought the album and listened through a few times.. I'd been a Ween fan proper for a few years by that stage, but listening to the new songs prompted me to check out their website for the first time.

There I saw a notice to fans saying "Transdermal video, looking for ideas". The third track on the CD "Transdermal Celebration" was one of the songs that I really liked, so I emailed Ween's manager right away with some sketches and a short synopsis.

He replied saying that unfortunately Ween had decided to go with a live video for the song, because they were about to go on a tour. I was gutted.. so after some thought I emailed back, saying that I would do the video free of charge, for the experience of it.

They gave me their blessing to go ahead, I got an email from Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween) with some explanation of the lyrics. Sadly the email was later lost in a hard-drive crash, but I'll always remember his opening line:

"Hi Adam it's Aaron, it's 3am I'm fucked up in Jersey City.."

So I got to work right away. At the time (October 2003) I was still working full-time for Disney.. I asked the studio manager for a month off so that I could do this music video. We were smack in the middle of crunchtime on "Return to Neverland", so I knew I'd be very lucky to get as much as two days off. To be allowed any time off during crunchtime was unheard of, so unfortunately I had to threaten resignation (actually that's something I'd never told anyone until now).

After a bit of negotiating I managed to get two weeks. Since landing my job at Disney, I saw this as the biggest opportunity life had thrown at me, so it was something I had to do.

I worked for around 12 - 14 hours each day on the clip and at the end of the two weeks I delivered it to Ween. I got another email from Aaron telling me how much he loved it, and how it captured the song perfectly. He told me it'd be the official video and that they wanted to pay me for it.

I rate that two weeks (and the month that followed) as the best working experience of my life to date. The video became a special feature on Ween's 'Live in Chicago' DVD.



Until today I've been aware of only one fairly low-quality version of the video on the net. But then while surfing YouTube, it suddenly occurred to me to do a search. I found several but I think the following is the best quality I've seen yet.

Enjoy Ween's 'Transdermal Celebration'..



These days I look at it and wish I'd had more time to fine-tune, but there's not much about the actual working experience that I'd change. Thanks Ween :)