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Biography

Orca! Straight Ahead! is a super fun happy time dance band made up of John Oddy and John E. Q.

It all started when John had all this music built up in archives over the years. The archives were called his brain. But no where for it to go. He thought about starting a whole band but realised he doesn't actually like people in general. And he couldn't clone himself. Because clones are people too and he doesn't like them.

Just when he was about to admit defeat he bought a young computer and raised it as his own, all the while training it to extract his musical ideas so he can play everything himself live like Andre 3000 in the 'Hey Ya' video. Because hes cool. Ice cool! John uses a talkbox for vocals because he can't sing.

John brainstormed ideas for adding drums. 'What about a drum machine?' one friend asked. This was out of the question. Ever since watching Terminator 2 at the tender age of 9 John has developed a mistrust of machines. A machine couldn't be trusted with such funky beats.

So the search for a human drum machine began. This is where we find John E. Q.

Part human, part machine, John E. Q has combined to become the tangible form of rhythm itself. No real understanding of John E. Q can be adequately reached in the realms of the human mind with its skull like barrier and various styles of impenetrable hair.

After years of rejection in his own time due to his majority human form and the fact that music had become a strict state of mind not to be heard or engaged with, John E.Q decided to devote himself to travelling back in time. His reason for being here is seemingly logical. In the same way that a professional sportsman could go back in time 5 decades and dominate their discipline due to our present developments in biomechanics and nutritional knowledge (and illegal drugs) John E. Q has come back in time in order to excel in an area that he is considered under-average by his own times standards.

It has been confirmed that he enjoys manifesting crop circles, giving people wrong directions and following them to witness the realisation, entering speed drumming competitions and coming 4th and waving at people from long distances.

After auditioning for Australian Idol and being again rejected because of being a weird dude wearing a light transfer on an imitation ballistics mask (and because he played an instrument and couldn’t sing) he fell into a spiral of despondency and musical celibacy and other words that end in 'cy'.

He then scanned every current band on ‘the web’ as the internet has come to be known and found a solitary being who required a human drum machine! Could his mainframe stand another potential rejection? Yes. He began playing with 'Orca! Straight Ahead'!

Orca! Straight Ahead! is the best band in the world.