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Stubble Interview By Ken Zebbyn

On a nice evening in Boston I caught up with 2 of the 3 key members of WHALE after their show at Axis opening for Virgin labelmates Blur. After missing them at their hotel I grabbed one of the guys as he was going offstage and eventually went upstairs to the band room and spoke with Henrik Schyffert and Cia Berg. Whale put on quite a show with all their personnel bringing WE CARE to a live format. It was real cool and crowd favorites were the single "Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe" and "Kickin" which the crowd clapped in rhythm with the band.

Ken: So where are you from ?

Henrik: Stockholm, Sweden.

Ken: Just how big was ABBA in Sweden ?

Henrik: That’s a good question, they were the biggest band ever in Sweden. They were like the Dallas people in Sweden. They got married and divorced and had drinking problems it was like the royal family.

Cia: Everyone pretended not to like them, everyone had their record at home.

Henrik: They sold 65 million copies and no one bought it.

Ken: A lot of the stuff we hear from Sweden is death metal, Is that a big thing ?

Henrik: Entombed and Candlemass they are really big outside, they are not that big inside Sweden. But there are a lot of people taking pride in making sort of pop music there. There are some good bands.

Ken: What happened with picking a band name?

Henrik: Whale was just a piss take on all the bands the Ride, Curve, Suede.

Cia: Blur.

Henrik: Everyone was called something that with 5 letters in them without The in one of them. So we just said yeah right. That’s it.

Ken: Some might say your subject matter in the songs are racy.

Henrik: That’s a nice way of Putting it. We sing about F**king a lot. We never thought about it until we started doing interviews and then everyone was asking that question. We didn’t really think about it we just wrote about stuff we know and care about or stuff that bothers us. It was just one of the subjects thrown in. it seems especially here that people pick up on it so we don’t really know how to deal with it.

Ken: Any unusual stories from being on the road ?

Henrik: We are too straight for that, I’m afraid. We are the most punctual and boring band in the world. (he holds up a beer) This is about as far as we go, and cigarettes. We recorded our album in Spain.

Ken: How has it been on Virgin ?

Cia: They seem to be nice people.

Henrik: We put our single (Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe) out on EastWest and they forgot to sign the options deal and they came running 2 days after........sorry pals.

Ken: Sweden has the world highest suicide rate, any comments ?

Henrik: The best rock thing to do is to shoot yourself listening to Dancing Queen its the ultimate position. Sit around in your bedroom and do that.

Ken: Final comment ?

Henrik: Confusion is sex.