u/ImplementWonderful93

So there was a post a few days ago about some list of the 100 greatest guitar solos and how Deaner wasn't on it; but it made me think: Ween never gets any respect from a critical perspective. If you go to the wikipedia pages for their albums, many of the contemporary reviews are dismissive; the high and mighty Robert Christgau called them juvenile and sexist or some dumb shit like that.

Another thing that made me think of this: Last year I got a $50 gift card to Barnes and Noble so I was perusing the music magazine section and they had a "Top 500 albums of the 90s" magazine, something I would never spend $15 on but I bought it with my gift card. Not one Ween album was listed!?! I mean The Mollusk is easily a top 500 album of all-time, much less the 90s.

Either collectively or individually, Ween never get any critical acclaim. Dean Ween is one of the best guitarists in rock history. As someone who has played for nearly 30 years, I can tell you not only is he technically good, but more importantly he has an instantly recognizable style that is his own, which is something all great guitarists have. Sure, we live in an age where there are hordes of 15-year-old prodigies on youtube that can all play "Eruption" note for note perfectly, but they all sound indistinguishable from another and certainly can't create anything original. Deaner, like his guitar heroes before him, has his own inimitable style.

Gene Ween is easily one of the best vocalists and songwriters of the past 40 years (and not a bad guitarist himself). I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Claude is an amazing drummer.

Yet they are dismissed or outright ignored when it comes to critical acclaim, or any "best of" lists. It almost seems like a conspiracy at this point.

Just curious if anyone else owns this stock, it is quite a weird one. I bought it two years ago solely because I saw it mentioned in an article about the highest dividend stocks (their dividend is a little more than 9%) so I bought a few thousand dollars' worth just for the dividend; I wasn't expecting the stock to go up as I have always read tobacco use and even vaping are down. Yet somehow, this stock has doubled in price from when I bought it at around $30. I recently went to Poland and Croatia, and people smoking on the streets was pretty common there, you don't see that at all in the US anymore. Also both airports had what I'll call "smoking boxes" basically enclosed plastic boxes that were filled with smokers. So, maybe it's only the US where smoking is down?

Also, this stock has the weirdest price action. If it's a day the whole market is green, you can be sure BTI is down. And on a day like today, where everything is red, this stock is up. I have no idea if this stock will continue to go higher, but it has been one of my best performing non-tech related stocks.