herd noises

OAK->PDX->OAK->NC->RENOOOOOOOOOOOO!

2010-06-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

First of all, thanks to everyone who helped us on our way through the West Coast this time around, either by helping us book a show or coming out to a show, or putting our sweaty asses up in the wee hours after a show. Let's do a little re-cap, shall we?

First of all, before we even got to a show, we blew out a tire on a balmy 100 degree day in the beautiful and not at all bleak central valley, giving us a sorely-unneeded 3 hour break and leaving us out a couple hundred dollars after realizing that all 4 tires were set to go. At least there was Castro tire shop only 20 miles from where the scene occurred. We still made it to Oakland in time to eat burritos and catch our favorite surf punks, the Careerers. Our set followed one by an Italian prog-rock band, and the whole time a live coop of quails was being recorded and projected above. This, by the way, was all at the original Mother's Cookies bakery.

First of all, that show was awesome, and the next day we set out on our trip to Portland, and stopped in Ashland, OR, the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It wasn't happening while we were there, but to prove how classy the town is, we saw some college kids throw a TV off their dorm's balcony. We think this was an homage to the famous balcony scene in Romeo & Juliet, but it was hard to tell from where we were standing. We'll call it a post-post-modernist interpretation. However, to Ashland's credit, there was an amazing sunset (see above).

First of all, we were supposed to play in Seattle the next day, but the show was cancelled due to lack of radness, so we had a day to kick it in Portland - the first day it hadn't rained in a month or something ridiculous like that. We ate sushi. Then, the next day, we played at the Ella St. Social Club, which adjoins the old Governor's office. There remains a portrait of the last Governor who worked there, who, as it happens, was our dear friend Gurney's great-great-great grandfather and who, as it happens, died directly under the aforementioned portrait. The venue once was the city coroner's morgue, and that was where the governor was autopsied. We practically danced on his bones.

First of all, we left Portland after eating the requisite amount of lox and descended along the continental shelf to Mt. Shasta, where we camped amidst many mosquitos and a bevy of natural wonder. We got up the next day and calmly hiked up to a brook before hightailing our whqle qsses back down to Oak-town for a fine show inside an old yogurt factory, now called Fort Gallery. Every band was good, but Tastyville really put on a show that was the avantest of garde. Amazing, really. I mean, what's happening in this picture, really?

First of all, it was a crazy night, and second of all, we then had to go to Nevada City to drink in the splendor of the Sierra foothills and hang with good friends who are great cooks. These are good friends to have, as you will inevitably end up in a kitchen at 11 PM eating freshly made burritos. Thanks, Joe and Wendy. Speaking of Joe and Wendy, here they are with their new baby boy Felix.

First of all, that night we played with the amazing Black Bear and City of Progress came up to share that show, and the next, with us.

First of all, the next show with CoP (and the final show of the tour) was in Reno. Reno is weird. The lovely guys from Fa Fa Fa put on a show in their basement with us and, afterwards, we all went to casinos, either to gamble or to simply see terrible music inside a splendorous dome of excess. Xanadu? Nay, Peppermill.

First of all, this was a great tour and, last of all, it wouldn't have been possible without all of you. Thanks everybody!

Tour '010

2010-06-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

Here it is, folks! We're touring behind an EP that you can only get at our shows, or from us directly. It's called Magic Jackson and it's a psychedelic monsterwork. So let me tell you what's been up since last time. Um.... I guess we recorded this EP and then we played a show at Synchronicity here in LA and set up these shows. But that's enough about us, let's talk about Dostoevsky. Did you know that Tsar Nicolas I sentenced him to death simply for being part of the intellectual literati (redundant?) in Russia at the time? Well, it's true, but the Tsar, in his infinite wisdom, decided to commute the sentence. However, Fyodor and some others were put in front of the firing squad and only at the last second informed of this commutation. After that, he ended up working for 4 years of hard labor in a Siberian prison camp. Fucked up, right? Anyway, I guess if any of our lives were that intense then perhaps we'd be creating works that are as important and gripping as anything Dostoevsky wrote. So look at yourself and wonder - is the only thing that can help me create something of intense greatness an equal or more intense experience of despair and hopelessness? My guess is yes, though despair in the modern era comes in different forms than in times of yore. Nowadays, perhaps madness and genius are both pharmaceuticaled into the ether, leaving us with nothing but a commodified creativity. Thanks for nothing, Andy Warhol. I'd rather eat my soup, not pay someone to help me ponder it. But, while we're at it, fuck artists for arts sake, too. You can only be one if you're rich or willing to pretend you're rich, and the despair of the rich is worthless, and even more so for those who fake it. That output is hollow. Or is it?

Um, come see us play music soon.

wrqp-ups

2010-04-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

Well, everybody - it's been a while and I guess it's time we go over what's been happening in WhqleWorld for the past couple of months. We went on a somewhat successful tour of the Southwest that took us to Austin during SXSW (which I still have a hard time just calling "South-By" even though that's what everybody calls it). We played shows, met people, ran out of gas in the middle of Arizona (that's Ryan standing by the car pondering the next target for our roadside game of Throw Rocks at Stuff). It was mostly awesome. In Arizona we played with a rad duo called Melted Cassettes - go check them out if they come through your town! We almost played a show in Las Cruces with some great bands. My favorite that night was Broken Water, who I ran into later in Austin. They're an Olympian punk band and really killer.

We stayed in Austin with my good friend Chris Newton, from the band LaLa Quarry (with another good friend Devin Grobert) and other east-coasters were abounding. Mike Riddleberger was in town to play a bunch of music, some with his band The Defibulators, who played a helluva set despite the icy grip of a Midwestern storm holding all of Austin by the jugular. Between playing some house parties (one notable one with our friends Hurt Model, who we also trekked up to Oklahoma City with), we caught some pretty sweet music. Funny how all of it sort of blends together when you're so inundated with it like you are at South-By, so when somethings stands out, you know it's really good. Like Talk Normal, a two-girl punk band who are doing some seriously cool shit. Or the "Queen of New Orleans Bounce," Big Freedia, who, despite backing tracks (even on vocals!), put on an amazing show. There were bunches of other bands we saw, too, some old, some new, and some who were amazing, but I'm getting tired of writing and I have to go to practice, so I'll just put it like this - we played OKC and then drove back across, stopping only at the Grand Canyon to go on a hike and to make Ryan puke. That picture above is of him juuuust pre-puke. It was a long drive home.

ESS BY ESS DUBS

2010-01-13T11:06:00.000-08:00

Yo! I know it's been a long time, so let's get the formalities over with. Happy New whatever and Merry blah blah and that shit. Decade? It starts in '11, didn't anyone tell critics that there wasn't a year 0 and so they should hold off on their best o' decade lists until the end of this year? I guess no one cares. We like round numbers, like 0. 1 is more of a line segment. No one likes line segments. No one.

So our resolution, here at the whqle pod, is to go to SXSW (for those that don't unsertand this seemingly random string of letters, it is a shortening of the old adage, "sticks times stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Of course, it got too tedious to type out SXSWBMBBNWNHM, so it got shortened to its current form. The question is, could names possibly hurt us? Maybe if we had named ourselves On Limits. That name would have hurt a lot).

ANYWAY, we need as much help as we can get setting up a tour from LA to Austin, and especially playing ANYWHERE at ANYTIME within the Austin City Limits, between March 12-21, 2010.

Save the Whqles. Help us get a show.

TONIGHT TONIGHT TONIGHT

2009-10-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

Another unbelievably rad show at the Curio, everybody. Us, Pit er Pat, Neal Morgan, Conncet9.

Grant just wrote on the Facebook invite that it's one of his top 3 of the month. That's saying a lot for a guy who sees good shows almost every night of the week. Color me stoked.

9:00
$5
BYOB
Sweetness.

Show Two-Morrow

2009-10-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

at the Old Towne Pub (66 N. Fair Oaks Ave. 91103-entrance down the alley around the corner on Holly St.)

Saything

City of Progress

Whqles

FREE!

Good Beer!

At least 1 member of both City of Progress and Whqles will have the flu! Come and guess who!

Also, I remember meeting the guys from Saything up in Mendocino and when I asked them what their band name was, they said, unequivocally, "Saything - one word." I then heard them say the same to a number of other people that asked. I wondered why they put such emphasis on the fact that it is one word. If you click on the screenshot above and take a close look, you will see that my question has been answered.

Thanks, Old Towne Pub!

Re-View

2009-09-21T11:33:00.001-07:00

So for the week ending on September 13, 2009, our first EP ended up at #24 on Stanford's radio station KZSU. We were just ahead of Novalima and just behind Sonic Youth. That's probably the closest, physically, that we'll ever get to SY, so we're running with it. Here's what the station had to say about us (in Arial for your reading pleasure):

Trent KayReviewed 2009-08-13
What a weird little EP. Post-punk, psych, garage, and a classic rock edge... and somehow every track on this thing sounds like a different band. I hate to compare these guys to Bauhaus, but. Atmospheric, minimalist, some cultish chants, the most prominent instrument is usually drums. Wavering, off-key, at times distorted vocals.Whales are Ryan Adlaf & John Nixon, out of LA. Other than that, I have no idea where they dropped from. Their MySpace link is invalid. I can’t find their label either. They are veritably absent from the intertubes. This is the way local music should be!

And again in Wingdings:

Trent KayReviewed 2009-08-13
What a weird little EP. Post-punk, psych, garage, and a classic rock edge... and somehow every track on this thing sounds like a different band. I hate to compare these guys to Bauhaus, but. Atmospheric, minimalist, some cultish chants, the most prominent instrument is usually drums. Wavering, off-key, at times distorted vocals.Whales are Ryan Adlaf & John Nixon, out of LA. Other than that, I have no idea where they dropped from. Their MySpace link is invalid. I can’t find their label either. They are veritably absent from the intertubes. This is the way local music should be!

RECORD RELEASE PARTY 2 NITE!!!

2009-09-11T10:19:00.000-07:00

Come one, come all to yon Curiosity Shoppe of ye olde Echo Parque. Thine enter-tainments commence promptly in the hour of 9 Post-Meridiem. Be there or thou shalt be square!

HOLA FAIRY RELEASE PARTY
Echo Curio (1519 Sunset 90026)

9 PM
$5 BYOB!!!!

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHAHAHHHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!

Hola Fairy!

2009-09-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

It's the name of our new album. Is it a long EP? Is it a short LP? Impossible to say, but it's all ours and it'll blow your mind. Hopefully. Anyway, we're celebrating the release of it at the ECHO CURIO on Friday, September 11th and it's going to be a blast.

You might notice that the CDs in the above picture all look different. That's because they're limited, HAND-COLORED editions! Every one's different. You've gotta be one of the first 35 people to pick one up if that's your type of thing. Otherwise, you'll just have to color it in yourself!

Hola Fairy!

Tour! Tour!

2009-09-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

So we're about to head into the wild north yonder (and back) and play some shows. Here's the line-up:

Friday, September 4 - 8 PM
@ The Totally Intense Fractal Mind Gaze Hut
w/ The Atomic Bomb Audition, FEZANT, and (possibly) CansaFis Foote

Saturday, September 5 - 4 PM
@ Invisible Ocean

Monday, September 7 - 10 PM
@ The Ivy Room
w/ Shiney Things Explode

Thursday, September 10 - 8 PM
@ Downtown ArtWalk (we're in the building at 453 S. Spring St.)

Friday, September 11 - 9 PM RECORD RELEASE!
@ Echo Curio
w/ Battlehooch, 60 Watt Kid

Invisible Ocean!

2009-08-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

So we whqles are hitting the road pretty soon with some shows up in northern Califor-nigh-ay and we're topping it all off with a sweet festival on a little farm in Mendocino, set up by our good friend Elias Reitz. It's called Invisible Ocean and there will be a ton of great performers there, including one of my personal favorites, Karl Blau.

Anyway, here's the website for it so everyone can see for themselves how awesome it will be: http://www.invisible-ocean.com/.

Status Quo and the Un-Asked-For Rebirth of 3EB

2009-08-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

So I read three articles in succession today and it seemed apt to describe them here, as they riled up all sorts of thinkings in me head. The first is an article in the NY Times by A.O. Scott where he opines against the avalanching infantilization of the Summer cinema. Basically, he says that some films that could be blockbusters because, beyond having all the requisite parts of a blockbuster (action, suspense and/or comedy, broad accessibility), they also have all the aspects of a great film (strong preformances, great writing, realistic adult themes). He references Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" as one of these, as well as Judd Apatow's "Funny People" - the first of which is considered a success because it has earned around $15 million but had almost no marketing push and small distribution, and the latter of which is considered a flop because it brought in more than "The Hurt Locker" but fell short of the expectations created by the multi-million dollar marketing blitz behind it.

Scott goes on to say that everything people seem to want now is something they already know, which is why "Transformers," "Harry Potter," "Star Trek" and the other rehashings of old brands have performed so well. He blames the studios and their fear of failure. He's right, of course, but I think there's something deeper happening here.

This leads me to the second article, James Surowiecki's brief exploration of the psychological tendency to want the status quo kept in place. In other words, humans (especially Americans) hate change, even when we know we need it. He, of course, applies this to the health care debate and why, during the election, so few people said their insurance was good, but now almost half of respondents say it is. They're afraid of change, just as the studios are afraid of giving people something new, and people are afraid of taking it.

But, you may ask, what does all this have to do with music? This is not the Huffington Post - it's the whqles blog! whqles whqles whqles whqles whqles (sorry - the ghost of keywording just got ahold of my hands) Anyway, the third article I read is about how Third Eye Blind (remember them? 1998 - bad radio station - doo doo doo, doo duh dooo doo repeatedly causing lacerations of your tympanic membranes) is back with a new album and they're topping the charts! Third Eye Blind? Seriously, you ask? Yes, unfortunately.

This (almost) brings me to my final point. The music industry, in arrears because of the internet, is having a hard time spoonfeeding people music like the Hollywood studios are able to do with Summer films. However, it doesn't matter because people, sheep that we are, aren't really trying to go out and find music they truly connect with. NO, they're reverting to those things that were spoonfed to them in their younger years and pushing THIRD FUCKING EYE FUCKING BLIND to the top of the music charts.

Final point: Americans are generally dumb and apparently listen to Third Eye Blind while avidly awaiting the next Transformers pic. They deserve the shitty healthcare they are so desperately clinging to.

Tuesday!

'bloggin'

2009-08-20T19:23:00.001-07:00

This is the blog of the newly-infamous whqles. We're a band. We're a band writing a blog. We're a band listening to Randy Weston's 'Blue Moses' and writing a blog. We're a band trying to think of what to write in a blog post while listening to Randy Weston's 'Blue Moses' and writing a blog.

Did you know that the word "blog" is just a shortening of the compound word "weblog" which is, itself, just a combination of the words "web" (common slang for "internet") and "log" (like the captain's - a diary of sorts)? Indeed, a 'blog, as we'll call it, is slang for a word that is basically slang already! Outrageous! What kind of world are we living in, where this sort of nonsense will be tolerated? We should be more like France and appoint some really smart people to positions wherein they decide how the language is going to change from year to year, rather than leaving it in the hands of the people like our Democratic Nation does and ending up with foul-sounding word-detritus like 'blog. I rue the day it shows up in a crossword puzzle.