The band, not the personality test.
May 17th, 2009 by Tim
Over the next week or so we’ll be tricking out the Music and Buy Things pages with a bunch of widgets from our buddies at Topspin, so as a combination test/preview, we figured we’d get things started with a sneak peek at the lead track from Topless at the Arco Arena. Take a listen:
May 13th, 2009 by Tim
Why do I love this new Rancid video so much?
Operation Ivy’s one album was brilliant — clearly inspired by the Clash, but somehow still it’s own thing. Rancid records, on the other hand, never gave me that same feeling of building something new and glorious on top of hallowed ground. They were catchy enough that I dutifully obtained most of them, and ripped them into my portable mp3 player, but I never genuinely loved them as albums.
And yet, when a Rancid song crops up on shuffle play in between the 18,000 other tunes it’s competing with on said device, I usually find myself happily surprised. So when I got a tweet from @Punknews pointing me to this video earlier today, I clicked through, somewhat eager but, as usual, not expecting a whole lot.
There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot here. But I have been watching it incessantly all day (to the point where I’m now getting more excited every time I recognize some East Bay “landmark,” like Golden Gate Fields, where Donna and I won $65 after she talked me into taking a day off work just to fuck around).
There’s something big hiding inside small pleasures like that.
May 12th, 2009 by Tim
Here’s the label for the Topless CD. As you can see, we love it so much we incorporated it into the banner for this website. It will probably become a T-Shirt, as well.
It’s based on a poster I saw a few years ago in an exhibit of WPA art. In that one, the shadow was being cast by a heavily-muscled arm holding up a big steel hammer. I don’t know how people saw it at the time, but in retrospect I can only admire the weird combination of idealism and naivete. (Side note: if you like this sort of thing, and you’re ever in San Francisco, go check out Coit Tower. The WPA murals that ring the lobby are as much fun to look at as the view from the top.)
The design was done by Jeff Castellana, whom we’ve been working with since last year’s Love & Television EP. He’s sprinkled all kinds of stuff like this throughout the CD packaging. We figure, if you’re gonna make a concept record, you might as well treat it like an actual record, even if CDs themselves are starting to feel old-fashioned.
(Picture of a Coit Tower mural after the jump) Continue Reading »
May 10th, 2009 by Tim
So last night was our first experiment with webcasting. Wine Time with Wonderlick, in which Jay and I spent a little over a half hour drinking a fine bottle of Bordeaux, giving each other shit, and responding to comments typed in by viewers, was kinda fun and kinda embarrassing. The high point was probably when a deathbot like the one to the left did an extended dance to “Fuck Yeah!”, a track from Topless that got its world premiere during the episode.
If Stickam’s statistics are to be believed (and our friends at the label who set this webcast up in the first place insist they are), a total of 8,514 people tuned in, though most of those had no clue who we were and just joined because the episode was featured on Stickam’s homepage, then promptly left when they saw how ridiculous it was. Looks like we kept between 500 and 600 people engaged enough to stick with it till we got to the literal and metaphorical dregs.
Which, if we were on tour, we’d consider a pretty successful gig night. But I don’t know what it means in this particular context, or whether we should do one of these again.
It was fun watching some of the people who’d tuned in staring into their own webcams, and heartening to see that they had opened their own bottles of wine, and would raise ther glasses when we did.
If you watched, let us know if it’s worth trying again, or if it was just, you know, stupid.
May 9th, 2009 by Tim
I like watching music videos, but I hate being in them. Miming is evil.
Jay’s a little more of a ham than I am, but neither of us feel compelled to spend an inordinate amount of time in our own video. So a bunch of gracious volunteers will be sitting on this couch today, making out to the strains of “This Song is a Commercial” (the chorus, after all, goes, “Gimme a kiss!”).
The original laptop that was going to capture the footage crapped out; and I banged my head on a low ceiling, opening up a nice little gash; and the first couple didn’t show — nice to know that nothing ever really changes, as this has pretty much been the story on every video we’ve ever shot.
This is Lauren Tabak and Alexa Inkeles, producers extraordinaire:
Their production company is called Hi-Fi DIY, which is basically Wonderlick’s aesthetic, so it’s a perfect match.
More shots from the set after the jump.
Welcome to the new Wonderlick website. We’ve pre-populated it with some of the recent news from the old site, various posts from Lick’s Facebook page, and several years’ worth of interviews and reviews. But the real action is in the future — we’ll be turning various widgets on and off and maybe moving things around as we figure out how best to use this thing.
The plan, such as it is, revolves around creating something lively — a place where we can have something close to a real-time conversation with friends, fans and random passers-by. So, please, comment early and often — tell us what you’d like to see more of, what you can do without, weird dreams you’ve had about Jay, and things of that nature.
The Music and Merch sections will be getting tricked out shortly — we just signed a license agreement with Topspin, an amazingly cool and visionary company that provides all kinds of futuristic ways for musicians to share their creations with the public. Basically, all the stuff we’ve been idly experimenting with since 2001 they have turned into a fine science. So, check back often, or hit the RSS feed button up at the top there to stay informed whenever we roll out something new.
In the meantime, if you’re new to the world of Wonderlick, here are some helpful facts:
May 6th, 2009 by Tim
The Topless interviews continue. This one’s on a site called SoundMojo – at least, that’s what it was called when we did the interview. It appears to have transmogrified into WatchMojo in between.
May 5th, 2009 by Tim
I like this century. I spent my lunch hour talking to Garrick Van Buren for his FirstCrack podcast, and the interview was live on his site two hours later: http://www.firstcrackpodcast.com/archive/first-crack-120-wonderlicks-tim-quirk-on-truth-through-music/
It’s long, and perhaps overly philosophical. It usually takes a decent amount of wine to get me pontificating quite that much.
May 4th, 2009 by Tim
So, the label is very eager for us to do semi-regular webcasts. In an effort to be accommodating, we will be trying one this Saturday, 5/9, at 7pm PST.
We have no idea what we’re doing here, so we’ll be just as surprised as you if you tune in. We’re calling it Wine Time with Wonderlick, as we will be consuming a bottle of fine Bordeaux during the course of it.
Tune in here: http://www.stickam.com/wonderlick
Apr 28th, 2009 by Tim
Looks like “This Song is a Commercial” will be the first single (to the extent that means anything) from the record. Alternative Addiction is offering a free download of the tune.
