Decoy Deloy is done daydreaming and ready to give you the download on the latest Music News, brought to you by Hello Merch. And here at Hello, we’re greeting Korean/Canadian artist Luna Li’s new project, When a Thought Grows Wings: Reimagined.
With it, the Korean-Canadian she invited friends and collaborators to re-imagine her 2024 album When a Thought Grows Wings. Now available to pre-order, the first disc features the original album and second contains the reimagined versions. Check out our WASTOIDS Music News backstage interview with Luna Li, recorded in 2024 at Valley Bar.
ALERT: WASTOIDS is hosting a free television show taping: See you at First Studio for our live taping on April 5th & 6th for the taping of Permanent Zoo, a surrealist talk show hosted by Andy and Candy.
And to close, The Linda Lindas play Walter Studios Monday, March 31st. Ahead of the show, we caught up with them to discuss their latest Epitaph Records release No Obligation, touring with Rancid, Green Day, and The Smashing Pumpkins, and how they lined up a collaboration with the legendary “Weird” Al Yankovic.
WASTOIDS: You all have played with some really fascinatingly diverse bands from The Rolling Stones to Paramore, which is a pretty big spectrum right there. But I was really curious, at one point you were all on tour with The Smashing Pumpkins, right?
Eloise Wong: Them and Rancid and Green Day.
WASTOIDS: What did you all think watching them do their set and did you have any interactions with any members of the Smashing Pumpkins that were interesting?
Lucia de la Garza: Their set was the most epic thing.
Eloise Wong: They had this huge light rig and it was super cool. It was a big show. Kiki [Wong] and Katie [Cole] from The Smashing Pumpkins, they would hang out with us sometimes. James Iha at catering, he would talk to us a lot and he’s really funny. He told us that his favorite, well, I like to ask what favorite dinosaurs are…I think did I ask it at their VIP thing? Yeah, they had had a bucket where you could drop questions in it, and I asked them, “What’s your favorite dinosaur?” And James was like, “Oh, my favorite dinosaur is the dimetrodon. And he goes [makes face]. I guess he connected with it at an early age. He saw it in a book and he loves how it’s just like [makes the face] He made that face. He goes, yeah, I love the because he’s just chill. He’s like, we’re like,
Mila de La Garza: So monotone and straight faced.
Lucia de La Garza: And then a funny connection is that since we’re kind of named after the song, “Linda, Linda” by The Blue Hearts and also the movie Linda, Linda, Linda, which are both Japanese things, and so James Iha actually scored the movie Linda, Linda, Linda that we kind of are partially named after, which is kind of funny.
WASTOIDS: How about Rancid? Did you all probably grow up hearing Rancid relatively early in your lives?
Eloise Wong: Rancid was so fun. It was so fun. We had a 20 minute set right before Rancid, so it was so fun because we would just play 20 minutes and then I’d leave the stage. I’d painted on cat whiskers every show that tour. So I’d take off my cat whiskers and go straight, straight into the audience for Rancid and try to start a pit. I guess they saw that, right? Because one of the shows, Lars dedicated a song to us. He was like, because every day I see The Linda Linda’s out there and I don’t know, this feels weird to say, but he was like, he was just talking about how we were always out in the crowd and he goes, “If you can’t handle your shit, get out of the pit.” And I was like, “Oh my God, he dedicated that song to us. I don’t know, that just made me so happy. But they were all super nice and Lars showed Bella how to do some stretches for her back; Tim was super sweet and I don’t know, they were just all super nice. It’s funny watching Matt Freeman’s Bass Bunker we saw him filming a few of them and then I saw them up on YouTube and I was like, “Oh my God, I was there when he filmed that.”
WASTOIDS: Were Operation Ivy a band that any of you connected with?
Eloise Wong: Yes. Operation Ivy was so good. Yesterday, we have a playlist that plays while people are walking in or in between sets and stuff. And let me think. Common Rider played and I was like, “Oh, I love this song. And I was like, “Oh, well, I put it on the playlist.”
WASTIODS: Do you all update that playlist together?
Eloise Wong: We kind of forgot to make a playlist for this tour.
Mila de La Garza: Listening to it when we hear it, there’s a lot of Taylor Swift on it that I didn’t realize, and I think that’s my fault. I don’t mind, but it was just kind of funny. [Laughs]
WASTOIDS: Green Day’s just out here really doing a ton of activity. When I consider the fact that they were sort of my introduction to punk rock in a lot of ways as a person who is your age and younger, I have to imagine that that’s probably carried through to generations: there’s so many people for whom Green Day is their first punk band.
Eloise Wong: Dude, the Green Day tour was so fun. I had so much fun on that tour going into it, I was like, man, it’s going to feel weird playing baseball stadiums and stuff, but the vibes were not off and everyone was super nice and it was just so much fun being able to see Green Day every other day. They put on such a good show, and I am just really happy about that experience. Their spirit…they’re just so into it. I mean they played two and a half hours every night and I mean that stage is so big. Just running around it for 20 minutes is exhausting for me, but they’re at it for two and a half hours, 110% the whole time with pyrotechnics that you can feel them from the crowd. I can’t even imagine how hot they are stage. I don’t know, they just go for it and I really appreciate that.
WASTOIDS: Our project is almost exclusively based on us trying to do our own version of UHF by Weird Al, so I wanted to ask a little bit about the fact that “Weird” Al’s on the record. How did that come to be?
Bela Salazar: That was really fun because we did this song in Spanish and we really wanted an accordion player. We thought, who is the most obscene person we could get? And so we’re like “Weird” Al, and we asked him and he said yes right away, which is crazy to think about. And he’s the most prepared musician I’ve ever seen. He played it once and it wasn’t right and he kept playing it until he finally got it and it was so cool and he brought the right accordion for the type of music. He went above and beyond. He was amazing.
Mila de La Garza: Then for the music video, we asked him if he would be a part of that too and he said yes again, which was crazy. And he brought four different outfit options, which were all so good.
Eloise Wong: He brought four different Hawaiian shirts and he was like, “Also, I have an abnormally large head, so I’m bringing my own hat.” And we’re like, oh, okay.
Mila de La Garza: We were like, we have one. He was like, “No, my head’s going to be too big for that.”
