Pier Festival!

Tomorrow we are playing on Southend pier as part of the festival organised by The Railway! We will be on the Olympus camera stage at 3pm, followed by the Beatroots. After this we're taking a bit of a break as Manda is expecting her second tiger cub, a man cub this time, haha. Also playing are the Jim Jones Revue, Theoretical Girl and 'many more.'

Entrance is free although it will cost you £3/£4 ish to get onto the pier. There will be food and drink available although please note the pier is a no smoking venue, due to the fact it burns down every three years. 

Next gig

This Saturday. Except it will now be £5 on the door and there will be free cake. Huzzah!

Feet and Footie

Manda's foot has pretty much healed, hooray! We took it, and the rest of her, to the Portland Arms in Cambridge for a gig somewhat poorly timed to clash with an England football match. 

We were on first and it went pretty well, aside from M having a coughing fit during 'Any Love' and the normal guitar unplugging issues. Quite slick for us, really. On second were Poesi, who were playing their second set of soft rock of the day. 

CK has started bringing flasks of tea to gigs so he was pretty chipper.

Eureka Stockade had the happiest bassist ever and a drummer who looked like Dave Grohl.

Paul and Manda in the beer garden, doing the same pose they do at every gig. Seriously, take a look back through the archive. Lean in, beer, grin. In fact, I need never take a photo of them ever again. Where ever they go, I'll just use this one. 

Next gig on the 14th July with the Bobby McGees and Maria and the Gay, at the Railway for Culture as a Dare, then we're playing the pier festival on Southend pier in August. WOOOO!

Back to Cambridge

Hi everyone, sorry we've been a bit quiet of late. This is for several reasons, firstly M is poised to release an album with Lost Harbours which has been a bit of work, also she has just passed her City and Guilds level 3 in ceramics. She did find time to knock together a new Pettaluck release though, there might even me a video for one of those tracks soon, you can hear the new EP on soundcloud



Paul has got a new job, with interesting hours, and Manda has recently had her foot broken and reset, so it's been a busy year so far. The good news is we have a gig next Friday, back in Cambridge at the Portland Arms which we have attended but never played before.

Pleas come up and say hello if you make it! Really looking forward to getting back out there and meeting some new people :-) we may even have some badges left if you're especially nice. 

The Temptations of Salford

On the 5th May we were invited to play Toska's Salford Temptation, a three day event organised by Toska Wilde who we had previously played for in Margate. We'd never played up North so we were quite excited. Unfortunately M totally lost her voice on the day before we were due to travel. Being us, we thought we'd go anyway, in the hope of a sudden recovery.

It was a pretty cool journey, we got to see some sheep and mountains, some spherical children and a sign to 'lolsworth'. Plus three of the band at least were able to sing along to the in-car mix tape. It was apparent though that M was not able to sing, or even to rap which was our plan B. So we went to the venue to make our apologies and it turned out that the gig might not be going ahead due to a flashing incident the night before! Apparently, even though it was a very punk venue, the sight of Luis Drayton's member had caused great distress and the further publication of photo evidence on Facebook nearly sealed the deal.

Luis Drayton - offensive penis?

Luckily, good sense prevailed and the show went on, although the furore had set sound check back by a couple of hours so we we high tailed it back to our Premier Inn to get changed and get some food in so we could come back and watch the other performers. As it turned out, several bands had had health and safety issues and had to pull out.  Toska suggested there might be a curse on whole weekend! Of course we don't believe in curses. Except, then a vital text message from the Get saying they were setting up on stage got delayed for 45 minutes between Gary's phone and M's, so we didn't get back to the venue in time to watch them which was really disappointing.  We did get to see the anarcho punk of the Black Light Mutants though, and they were pretty good.

note the pinky held aloft - even punks can be classy.

  

Unfortunately there was a smoke machine in the venue and it was quite difficult for Manda with her asthma and M with her throat infection to breathe. We hadn't had time to eat so we thought we'd quickly nip to the nearest chippy and get some fresh air, then head back to see more music. 

However, it wasn't a very chip shop sort of road

And after about 40 minutes we gave up, got in the van, and found the nearest chip shop we could, which turned out to be in Oldham. 

By this point we had missed quite a lot of music and M was really flagging, so we went back to the Premier Inn for a nightcap and turned in about midnight, like the soft southern indie kids we are. 

Back at the venue, Toska was sporting his tiger stripes and being an absolute star for taking on such a huge task as a three day festival, no mean feat even without a curse! 

Thanks again to Toska for being so brave and for inviting us to play, even though we epically failed. 

And now, at the risk of turning this into the Lost Harbours Blog, here are some scenic photos M took while on the chip quest.

God moves in mysterious ways, and so do the working class.

Spring update

Hey there everyone, hope you're all well. Got lots of little bits and bobs to report.

We are very honoured to report that one of our badges has snuck into the Thames Delta exhibition at the Beecroft in Leigh on Sea. The exhibition celebrates the strong musical heritage of Southend and the surrounding area and most of the people featured have been signed and successful and documented, so it is a bit of a sneaky coup. The exhibition carries on until the 16th June and entry is free. The Beecroft is closed Mondays. We've also had some airplay thanks to the inimitable Ms Toska Wilde,

http://www.mixcloud.com/SonicDiary/sonic-diary-103-part-1/

 As part of the promotional lead up to our next gig, Toska's Temptation in Salford. We've never been to Salford before so we're rather excited. ROAD TRIP!

Also we're just about to launch our own internet radio show! http://www.mixcloud.com/Ten_Tigers/

Jenson Button

Hooray, our song Jenson Button has arrived to herald in the start of the new F1 season!

You can download the track for free from here: Bandcamp

HEY! YEAH!

We have a new song! And not just written, but recorded and available for free download from this coming Sunday, 18th March, start of the new F1 season. It's our ode to our current favourite driver, Jenson Button. He's exciting to watch because he's great at overtaking and zooming to the front from the back of the pack, also he is good at driving in the rain when other drivers often struggle, so he tends to liven things up a bit without crashing or going off the track and generally putting himself out of the race like Montoya used to (although we loved him for it). Anyway it'll be available from Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Last FM. and probably directly from our website as well. M has also made a video for the song, it's rather silly.

Nearly forgot....

Oh yeah, M also did a little solo thing, although not that solo as Paul did some drumming on one of the tracks. It's a departure from TT or Lost Harbours stuff, just some things she wanted to get out of her head, all recorded on a dictaphone with minimum takes and no real gameplan.

http://soundcloud.com/pettaluck/sets

Russia

So, for as long as anyone can remember, M has been pretty much obsessed with all things Russian.  Right now there's all sorts of upheaval over there, although the election at the end of the week seems to be unlikely to change much at all. But, this is a music blog, so I shall focus on the two points most salient to our band.

1) On the downside, there's the new law in St Petersburgh which is sort of like section 28 (the law in the 80's which stopped people 'promoting' homosexuality) only a lot bigger and scarier. Strangely this story doesn't seem to be being covered by the BBC online but you can find it elsewhere. It's all pretty ludicrous - basically you either pretend that gay and bi people don't exist, or you have to mention that we're all sick and evil.  They seem to have gotten the word 'gay' confused with the word 'vampire' or something.  The upshot is that you probably shouldn't email a copy of '82 to your comrades anytime soon.

2) Unless you comrade is one of these ladies and you have a safe address for her.

http://pussy-riot.livejournal.com/

Pussy Riot are amazing.  And they've got a track on the free comp I blogged about below. We are honoured to share that tiny scrap of history.

In all seriousness I'd like to get some copies of the Any Love album into Russia when it's released but it's a pretty big fire to prod.  It's important to remember that no one is free until everyone is free, no-one is equal until everyone is equal. Things can sometimes get tough in the UK due to prejudice but at least it isn't officially state sanctioned. Anymore. A lot of people had to fight to change that and the fight for many rages on.

We have been compiled!

riotgrrrlberlin.tumblr.com/compilation02

We're on this ace FREE compilation of riot girl and generally girly focused musics.  Our track is the album mix of Superlucky which hasn't been available before.