Pinky Pinky Is Here to Reclaim Rock N Roll

Why the name Pinky Pinky?

Eva—We’ve gone through a ton of band names, but I’m not really sure why we settled on this one. Pinky Pinky is the name of this South African monster that hurts little girls on the toilet if they wear pink. But I don’t know, we liked it.

Anastasia—It’s just funny because it’s such a fun, cute name, and then the context behind it is freaky.

Isabelle—Pink is such a girly color, but when people hear the back story they find it kind of disturbing.

Is it a South African legend?

E—We didn’t really look into it before we chose it. But when we read deep into it, it was actually a really feared thing in the 80’s in South Africa. There was a lot of rape going on. So now we just kinda of say, “Pinky Pinky, too much rock for one hand!”

Tell me about how you got your start.

E—Isabelle and I met in seventh grade, and then in eighth grade we started playing together. Then Anastasia came in a year after.

I—It was just for fun. There’s a lot of bands in LA, and everyone is kind of in a band. But we had another lead singer a couple years ago, and then it kind of split off and became the three of us. After that is when we started taking it seriously. But we’ve been playing together for four years now.

E—It was more of just a creative outlet for us, and then soon enough we started to take it more seriously. People started saying we were pretty good.

A—I think we saw the other LA bands, and we were like, “Oh shit, we could do this,” but in our own way. We were making stuff that’s a little different than them, so we thought it’d be fun to branch out more.

E—The “rock” genre is kind of dying right now, and there are a lot of bullshit artists around. We’re just trying to keep it going.

You said that everyone in LA is in a band. At what point does it go from being a creative outlet to being taken more seriously?

I—I don’t wanna toot my own horn here, but a lot of our peers who are in bands don’t really push themselves that far in music.

E—There are a lot of people just being in a band to be in a band. There’s nothing wrong with playing in a band to have fun, but we kind of got past that phase and realized that this is actually something we want to do in the future.

I know the songwriting process for trios varies. What’s the process like for you guys?

A—It’s different every time. I feel like we just build off of each other. I’ll come in with lyrics or a melody, and the rest is just us jamming like, “Whoa, that sounds cool… do that again!”

I—A lot of it is taking pieces from old songs we used to have and reworking them, songs from 5 years ago.

Any funny stories on how a certain song came about?

A—One of our songs is called "Margaret," and basically, Eva had a dream that someone said, “See Margaret on that kitty cat!”

E—I was in a hot tub. It was really weird. Someone just said that to me in my dream. And then two years later, we just wrote a song based off of it and made it about a depressed, single housewife. It’s kind of about beastiality.

A—The thing is that it could be about beastiality, but it could also just be about lesbian love. Could be a lot of things.

I feel like the term “authenticity” has gained a lot of different interpretations within the past few years. Is it easy to be “authentic” within the music industry today?

I—It doesn’t really matter what genre it is, but I think if someone’s writing their own music, that’s authentic. There’s a lot of music now that’s not authentic, but if it’s coming from someone directly, that’s authentic.

E—It really just depends what you consider “authentic.” I can hear hard work in a song even if I don’t like it.

A—We’ve gotta keep an open mind as musicians, too. Even if we hate something, we can be like, “Okay, that bass line is pretty cool.”

Do you think that “garage rock” has a bad rep?

A—Yes. Especially for a “DIY band,” it could be the first thing to consider yourself, you know?

I—I just associate garage rock with the 60’s.

E—The meaning of “garage rock” has kind of changed. Today, it’s just kind of considered “DIY,” but back in the day it was more about “rock and roll.” So if people want to call us “garage rock,” I guess they should emphasize “60’s garage rock” because it’s a totally separate entity now.

Are you working on your debut LP?

I—Yes. We just took pictures for our second EP, which is coming out in January, but we’re also working on an album that we want to start recording.

E—On our second EP, our sound has matured a lot.

A—It sounds like us, but every song is a bit different. You can just hear the growth on it—I like it so much better that I can’t even listen to the last EP now.

I—It shows our growth as musicians.

Is it because you guys have grown yourselves?

A—Yeah, I mean we recorded those in an open room surrounding a single microphone and when we were 15 or 16. Now we’re 18 and 19.

Are you guys into social media, or do you think it’s better to stay off of it?

A—Well, in this day and age, we have to be or else we’re just off the map. It kind of sucks, but it also kind of rocks because you get an audience and people can see you easier. But yeah, it would be nice if we didn’t have to indulge in that.

E—If we didn’t have to make a post every day reminding people we still exist.

I—Like, “We have a show in three months, be there! Don’t forget about it!”

E—Social media is such a popularity contest. Even now if you ask to play a show somewhere, they’ll look at your social media followers and place you on the set list based on that.

A—We were actually trying to book this one venue out here, and they were being such assholes about it, being like, “I bet you can’t even sell out a room, what bands do you know here that you can open for?” And we were trying to name drop before realizing, “Why are we even doing this?” We’d rather just not play there.