Shwartze Pete
"Shwartze Pete" is a song by the Dean Ween Group from the album The Deaner Album.
Song Details[edit | edit source]
The title "Shwartze Pete" appears to be a reference to the dutch tradition of Zwarte Piet.
"Shwartze Pete" originated as an unreleased Ween song titled "Little Peter", which was a rejected theme song to the show The Oblongs. There are two circulating demos of "Little Peter"[1][2], along with a separate studio recording which features a clarinet[3], all of which predate "Shwartze Pete". Interestingly, "Shwartze Pete" appears to be identical to the second of the aforementioned Ween demos.
Dean Ween said of "Little Peter":
Another animated show---maybe on Fox? I can't even remember anymore. We tried to make the theme sound like an old Les Paul and Mary Ford record. There's an mp3 of the demo I did of this tune on my 4-track circulating around the web with the working title of "Little Peter". For the version we submitted we hired an old Jewish guy from Queens to come in and play the clarinet on the tune. It was a lot of fun to record, but again, we got dicked and they decided to use another tune.[4]
Spectrogram Analysis[edit | edit source]
Comparing the spectrograms of "Little Peter" demo #2[5] and "Shwartze Pete" further indicates that "Shwartze Pete" is, in fact, the exact same track as "Little Peter" demo #2, only with the existing distortion effect removed and replaced with a different distortion effect.
Both tracks feature the same loudness in the 0-5kHz range throughout the entirety of the track, and both feature the same "cut-off" visible around the 5kHz mark. "Little Peter" demo #2's distortion effect is limited to primarily the 17-20kHz range, which does not feature in "Shwartze Pete". It appears that the distortion on "Little Peter" demo #2 was removed manually, only to be replaced with a different distortion effect that affects the entire frequency range. Despite the distortion masking the cut-off in the spectrogram of "Shwartze Pete", it's still visible at the same 5kHz mark.
