PEEN and a Clash tribute share a December Friday at 5 Points

Charlottesville's long-running Ween tribute plays 5 Points Music Sanctuary on Friday, Dec. 18, with Lost in the Supermarket covering The Clash.

A week before Christmas, while most of Roanoke is working through party invitations and gift lists, a room of about 250 people is going to spend a Friday night shouting along to Ween songs. That's a better holiday party than most.

PEEN (A Tribute to Ween) plays 5 Points Music Sanctuary on Friday, Dec. 18, at 8 p.m., with Lost in the Supermarket (A Tribute to The Clash) on the bill. Tickets run $18 to $35 through See Tickets, and the date was announced Oct. 29. The room holds 250, which is about the right size for a crowd that knows every word.

PEEN comes down from Charlottesville, where C-Ville Weekly has called it the city's premier Ween tribute band. The project goes back to 2004 and has run with what C-Ville describes as an expanding and evolving lineup ever since. More than two decades in, that's less a cover act than a local institution, built by people who clearly care about getting the deep cuts right.

That matters with Ween in particular. The band's catalog runs all over the map, and a tribute has to be able to swing from one corner of it to another in the same set. The fans who show up for a night like this aren't there for a greatest-hits medley. They're there to hear the songs they've been arguing about with friends for years, played by a band that has been arguing about them too.

Less a cover act than a local institution, built by people who clearly care about getting the deep cuts right.

The pairing with Lost in the Supermarket is a smart one. The name comes straight from The Clash's catalog, and putting a Clash tribute on the same bill as a Ween tribute makes for a night that covers a lot of ground: punk urgency on one side, everything-at-once weirdness on the other. Two tributes on one ticket also means the room fills early and stays full, since half the crowd came for the opener and half for the headliner, and most will stay for both.

5 Points Music Sanctuary is the right kind of room for it. At 250 capacity, it's small enough that a tribute night feels like a party among people who share the same record collection, and that's really what a show like this is.

The price runs from $18 to $35, so check the See Tickets page for tiers. With a cap this small and a date that falls right as people are looking for a reason to get out of the house before the holidays, it's sensible not to leave it until the last week.

Call it the office party for people who would rather be at a rock show. Get a ticket, bring the friend who introduced you to Ween, and get there in time for The Clash.

Sources: Peen at The Southern Cafe & Music Hall 11/28 - C-Ville Weekly (c-ville.com); Peen - C-Ville Weekly (c-ville.com); Ween - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); PEEN at 5 Points Music Sanctuary - See Tickets (prod-nts-api.seeticketsusa.us)