Expert: timothy sasscer - 4/21/2009

Question
The 1978 movie up in smoke,had a group listed as the whores.Were they the group that consisted of a drummer,a dancing lady,and a guitarist/singer? If,so i can't find any info on them.

Answer
Hey, Ken;

Sorry it took so long to respond, but here is a bit of info for you...I hope this helps:
The Whores in the film are indeed  from the L.A. punk scene, but whether they are the same Whores who "consisted of a drummer,a dancing lady,and a guitarist/singer", I don't know.

http://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Cheech_&_Chong's_Up_In_Smoke

mentions them alongside the Dils:

"The climax of the film is the Battle of the Punk Bands and its really hilarious. You can see some popular LA punk bands from the time such as The Dils and The Whores."

And then, a bit of background related to the Deadbeats, from a site about Dangerhouse records:

http://www.breakmyface.com/bands/dangerhouse2.html

Scott Guerin: If not for a string of chance events the Deadbeats may never have come into existence. My brother was asked to play drums for a band called The Whores for the battle of the bands sequence in Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke movie. Except he went and got himself grounded for cutting class too much and couldn't do it. So I filled in for him. This lineup was scheduled to play the Whisky but then the singer was forced to back out under the advice of his lawyer. It seems he was involved in a lawsuit with the Whisky so playing there would constitute a conflict of interest. There was only one course of action to take. I moved to vocals and my brother was brought back to fill the drum slot. For me as a singer this was literally on-the-job training as I had never even thought about singing before and truthfully was pretty awful. After a few sporadic shows our guitarist Hilary Haines up and quit and moved to San Francisco. Pat Delaney and I decided to change the name of the band to the Deadbeats.


So, maybe from here you can track down more info.  On a personal note, I found the research for this to be very interesting; L.A. punk is an area I know little about, but I respect it a lot, especially the early stuff, and I love anything that can be considered 'jazz-punk' and confrontational, as the Deadbeats seem to have been.  So I'll be doing some investigating myself.

Cheers

v