Little Whispers, an emo-rock band formed by UW-Madison Juniors Karl Latridge and Max Venders, still has aspirations to become a world famous band, despite near-daily subtle comments from close friends and even the band members' girlfriends that the band ""totally sucks."" While Little Whispers has yet to have an official gig, the band has played original songs such as ""Why do I care if you care about me?"" and ""I'm crying because you weren't crying [about us]"" at friends' and girlfriends' house parties for nearly two years, often against the wishes of the hosts themselves.
""When Max first told me he had gotten a band together with Karl [Latridge] I thought it was pretty cool,"" said close friend John Skoble. ""He asked if they could play at the upcoming party I was having that Friday and I just thought ‘yea, why the fuck not'?"" After the first minute or two it became immediately clear that Karl couldn't hold a tune if his life depended on it. After 20 minutes it also became clear that not a single member of the band knew how to play their instrument. Skoble told the band they had to stop due to a noise complaint, but was really merely attempting to salvage the party. Even after Little Whispers stopped playing they had killed a party of 200 people in less than 30 minutes.
Despite constant attempts by friends to convince the band members that super-stardom may not be in their future, the band members themselves seem oblivious to the subtle hints.
""My girlfriend Casey, she told me the other day that maybe I ought to start going to class since my father expects me to do well 'cuz I'm in the business school and blah blah blah. But I just said ‘baby, its really sweet of you to worry about how my father feels but it won't matter that I failed business school when we're totally fucking rich and I'm literally rolling around in the millions of dollars our band's gonna make,"" Latridge said.
""I mean, I've been getting pretty much straight D's since we formed the band, do you think I'd be dumb enough to completely throw away my future if I wasn't sure we were going to be totally fucking rich? She's so cute, always worrying about little, unimportant things like that.""
The exact source of Little Whispers obsessed, delusional optimism concerning the band's future is hard to pinpoint, but friends believe it stemmed from an incident nearly a year ago, when Latridge and Venders, while walking down state street intoxicated with acoustic guitars in hand, sang one of their songs to local Madison area homeless man Burt Hopkins.
""We was all drunk, and we started talking about music and whatnot, they gave me 20 dollars! Twenty fucking dollars, that don't happen everyday!"" Hopkins said.
""Anyways, they played me some song and asked what I thought and I said.....well, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I mean, they gave me 20 dollars so I think I said it was good.""
Unfortunately, the band's horrible music and total lack of any talent whatsoever is no longer contained to the friends of the band members, as Little Whispers have recently started to practice on the front porch of Latridge's newly rented two-story house on Langdon.
""You try to ignore it, you never want to be rude, but god, its just so bad,"" said Latridge's new neighbor Katey Taylor, who described the band's music as a ""melting pot of pure shit that sounds like some kind of twisted mixture emo rock, the sesame street theme, country music and Nickelback rolled into one.""
""I've been in Madison a long time, so I know that there are many, MANY shitty bands that form here, but never in my life have I heard anything like this,"" Taylor said.
""My ears were bleeding and I literally started to feel dizzy from the music. After I started to vomit blood I had to go across the street and ask them to please stop playing.""
Little Whispers' music can be found on their MySpace page, which has zero pageviews.
—Phil Vesselinovitch
