I have some unfortunate news, Nobody Wave is breaking up. Calbert and Greg have moved on from music and it's time to close this chapter.
Thank you so much to everyone who supported us, the OG fans, people who sang along at our shows :)
Greg and I will be playing 2 more acoustic shows, one this Friday and one at the end of March. That's it for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully we'll play a farewell show in Thousand Oaks this summer with the full band...thanks again.
Music Blogger Leisha from Listen Before You Buy.net wrote the sweetest feature on us, check it out:
"You know what, fuck it; I’ll just say it. MAKE OUT MUSIC. Nobody Wave are just two dudes, Chris Kokiousis and Greg Kestenbaum, from LA (represent!) that are making good ol’ fashioned lo-fi surf-inspired rock. I think it’s so easy to love this music because I feel like I know these dudes; c’mon, we ALL knew these guys in college, every group of friends had them. The guys that are young, passionate, and willing to play in your garage at your party. Don’t let the christmas lights fool you, I think there’s some real talent here. They’re churning out music with some serious hustle; I got the Trance Vacation EP and I just let it run on the iTunes. Seriously, put this shit on and mack on your girlfriend or boyfriend… pretty rad. Wait, I don’t have a boyfriend… not rad. Alas, I digress.
Their music is dripping with inspiration, you can feel their experiences oozing out of it. They blogged about their Summer tour in August of 2009 up the California Coast, and you feel the 101 all up in their music. The buzz is only going to grow, and its proven through their music. It’s melodic and it’s catchy, it’s upbeat and it’s surfy but there’s also a bit of a psychedelic drone to it that I really like. Kind of if Gauntlet Hair was drunk and then met Black Tambourine. I would hate to write a post about the emotionality of the disillusioned youth of the more tan segment of California, so I won’t. It’s actually pretty refreshing to see a band so dedicated to positively promoting themselves in the most genuine way. Their soundcloud is blowing up and each comment that people are stoked on in the songs have a response from the band. I back it.
I’ve really taken an attachment to “For the North”, but the whole Trance Vacation EP is great. I originally picked up their name because they recently released a new track, “Look Into the Trees (Bedroom Mix)”. Wait, Bedroom Mix? THEY KNOW THEY’RE MAKING MAKEOUT MUSIC. So below is “Look Into the Tress (Bedroom Mix)” and the Trance Vacation EP. Get some!"
It all began with a hometown show, a town called Westlake Village, a suburban garage (at Casey’s house) filled with old friends and acquaintances. We (Calbert, Greg and I) had prepared for tour all week, practicing in Greg’s garage extension nearly every day, printing flyers, spray-painting stencils and photocopying hand-drawn tour posters. We even learned a cover of the Smiths’ “This Charming Man” and dedicated it to our friend Soaps, who has a thing for Morrissey. Casey’s sealed garage was packed with sweaty folks who helped us get psyched for the twelve-show journey ahead. After we had stuffed the gear and merch back in our cars, everyone took a delirious group photo in front of Pretend’s newly acquired econo-van, donated to them by a middle-aged lady friend. They would carry all the equipment and Nobody Wave (plus our roadie Ranj) would follow in a whip of our own.
The next morning I filled a school backpack with clothes and toiletries, enough to get me through a week tops. Around 2, Greg, Cal and Ranj showed up with our loaner ride, a fairly new Honda Accord; Greg’s dad had a business associate named Jose, a “developer” who got us the car no questions asked. We cruised over to Vons for some road snacks and cheap eats (pasta, cereal, fruit) and then hit the 101 freeway towards UC Santa Barbara, our next stop.
The night’s show took place on a patio overlooking the ocean; a sign read “Danger Cliff” on the fence behind us. Despite the mist and fog rolling in and getting our gear wet as we played, the show was a success, with drunken friends coming in caravans to see us off. We said our goodbyes and crashed at Ranj’s new apartment after some late-night talk over bowls of cereal and Super Smash Bros. Eleven heads passed out on the carpet floor in personal mummy bags.
We slept in late, called dibs on showers and wolfed down breakfast burritos at Super Cucas before heading out of Isla Vista and up the coast towards San Luis Obisbo. A group called DIY SLO was putting on the day’s epic Mountain Show, but we were a little nervous about it even happening considering their instructions. We were told to “meet at the gazebo” of a local park so that we could all carpool up an unmarked road off the 101 freeway to the top of a rustic mountain, where we would play. This sounded rad in theory.
Sadly, the crew that came to watch us were crusty punks who just wanted to drop acid as the sun went down. They couldn’t care less about the music, but we weren’t complaining, so we took two weirdos in our car and Pretend took two. One of them threw up on the curb before climbing in. But when we got to the mountain road, we knew it wasn’t going to happen. The Honda kept bottoming out as we dipped into pothole after pothole; we kept thinking of what Jose would say if we didn’t return the car in perfect condition. The econo-van fared even worse, stalling only a quarter of the way up. Matt, the show’s promoter, said that in all the mountain shows they’d ever done, only one band’s van had ever broken down. This was the worst road I had ever driven on. We decided it wasn’t worth it to risk the whole tour for one weird show, so we let the crusty dudes out and turned back. We salvaged the rest of the night at our friends’ condo in SLO, where they prepared us a feast. We bonded over Soul Calibur marathons, budget beer and our favorite OG local band Respira.
“We’re Nobody Wave, and there’s nobody here,” Calbert said behind his drums as we stood in the back of Streetlight Records, surrounded by vinyl. We had driven from SLO to Santa Cruz the next afternoon, passing out flyers on Pacific Ave and waiting for Pretend to show up in the van. They had brought it to a repair shop that morning and were stuck until the mechanics finished. Luckily, Streetlight gave us some slack and we started over an hour late. The record shop was empty aside from a handful of people browsing. One bored older man across the store decided to count one of our songs off, so I guess he was into it. Afterwards we gorged ourselves on an Indian food buffet to keep up morale from this series of setbacks. And later that night we’d be playing another house show at my good friend Stephen’s place nearby: Did the cops show up? Did homies even come? Did we make a huge mistake eating all that Indian food right before? Find out in Part II.
