Touring in support of their eighth full-length, 2003's Quebec, Ween flexed their live prowess in front of a passionately eager 9:30 Club crowd Thursday night. Turning in a three-hour set, they rip through their discography with abandon. Everything was covered: noisy punk fury ("You Fucked Up"); psychedelic pop ("What Deaner Was Talkin' About"); country western ("Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain"); thrashing metal ("It's Gonna Be A Long Night"); libidinous funk ("L.M.L.Y.P."); even crusty sea shanties ("Ocean Man"). Not many in the indie music community can channel so many varied styles and sounds. Sure, some of the themes and lyrics may come across as infantile, but the band manages to make them sound as valid as the original source of inspiration.

After years and years of constant touring, the band truly is a powerhouse on stage. It's no wonder the jam crowd have discovered the group. Deaner is simply a modern-day guitar god. He sounds equally at home no matter what the genre. Prog-rockers like "Buckingham Green," acoustic easy listening like "Joppa Road," and how-the-hell-do-you-classify-this numbers like "Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)" are played with blood, sweat and tears. That's not to mention the solos: "Voodoo Lady" was enough to permanently fuck your hearing and melt your face. Gener also proves as adept at changing his vocal range to match the mood. Sounding spacey and dreamy one minute ("Zoloft"), deranged and panicked the next ("Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)"), he metamorphoses into a new narrator for each song.

But perhaps the strongest element to Ween's live sound is the backing band. Finally gathering a group of skilled musicians that share both their passion for music and their lunatic sense of musicianship, they have the added strength of having played together longer than any previous Ween line-ups. The longevity of the bunch shows on-stage; each member knows the others' playing inside and out. Cues are hit at the drop of a hat, and the extended jams weave flawlessly in and out of each song. Without the strengths of bass player Dave Dreiwitz, keyboardist Glen McClelland, and phenom drummer Claude Coleman, Jr., the live show wouldn't be half of what it is today.

Sampling fairly equally from every album they've released, new fans came away just as happy as the old ones. Ween has never been a band that has shied away from their past, no matter how juvenile, sophomoric or just plain stupid it can be. They even strive to make the über-geek fans happy, playing several unreleased tracks, including "Albino Sunburned Girl" and "Ooh Vah La," a Japanese-only cut from Quebec. Add a blistering cover of Motörhead's "The Ace of Spades," and you've got yourself quite a full night.

The crowd was more than appreciative. The end of every song was followed by cheering, then a rousing chorus of song requests, from the obvious to the obscure. The faithful even brought gifts. While the band doesn't accept the food they solicited in the liner notes to their third album Pure Guava, several homemade t-shirts, Boognish masks and signs were tossed onto the stage. Some gloomy individual, no doubt disheartened by the recent passing, even lobbed a Reagan mask to Gene.

And the ladies in the crowd were more than happy to make the ten minutes closing "L.M.L.Y.P." one for the record books. Women clambered to get on stage, gyrating and dancing while the band tore into another extended jam. Maybe it was the smutty lyrics or the pulsating beat, but two of the percipients were even taken enough to make out center stage. It may not be high art, but for the 900 people in attendance, Ween proved yet again to be one of the most talented, creative, and dynamic live acts in the business.