Ain't nobody here but.........

Last bits of recording for Milk Teeth are taking place, against a backdrop of personal life dramas and germs as per usual.  No animals were harmed during the making of this album, but it was tested on Manda's chickens, who like to peep through the window of her shed while we're recording. Egg production has been unaffected so it can't be too bad.

Next gig Ladyfest Essex, http://ladyfestessex.wordpress.com/
which is only £3 to get in and all proceeds go to Refuge, M will have a stall there selling crafts and zines with Sophia  Noisyzine as well.  We're hoping to unveil new song 'Trinity', get there early so you don't miss us or the wonderful Art Gruppe.  We then return to Cambridge on the 22nd June.

This weekend we have started work on our song for the Any Love is Good Love compilation, which is a CD put together by M and Ste McCabe to raise awareness of homophobic and transphobic violence.  Why, 'transphobic' isn't even in the spell checker, that's how much this CD is needed.  Our track will be an exclusive, and other confirmed artists include the Lovely Eggs, Das Wanderlust, SaltyLips, Pocket Gods, Stella Zine, The Get and Toska Wilde.  We're also looking forward to playing a gig in Margate in August with The Get and Toska, so it's going to be a busy and varied summer.  If you're on facebook and would like to help us spread the word about this compilation, here's the link. http://www.facebook.com/AnyLoveisGoodLove  we need everyone to help make us much noise about it as possible, so that we get a chance to talk about the reasons behind it.  It's going to be released through Cherryade records in September and we've got some sleevenotes written by Peter Tatchell, all a bit exciting!

Stay safe in the sun

TT X

Creative

My my, listened to the first airing of our session for Phoenix FM. It's fair to say we winced a bit in places, but being sandwiched between They Might Be Giants and The Beatles is probably a once in a lifetime experience! 

Cambridge!

Yes!  We have finally played Manda's hometown!

We had a fantastic night at the Cornerhouse, it's such a nice pub!  The audience was really good and we had a laugh with the other artists, who tonight were:

Tom Burgess

The Tiger MCs (for the last time, at least for a while)

And Karmadillo

Shown here performing a song about a zombie. 

We got Tom to take a photo of us with Tiger MCs, as it was the last gig of our tour, sob!

Now we're going to lock ourselves away until the album is finished, we're not far off now, just need to get some drum parts done which is proving difficult with everyone's busy work schedules.  In the meantime we'll be tuning in to Phoenix FM to hear our session on Wednesday evening, hooray! 

Gift Shop

Last Saturday we took part in this

http://www.phoenixfm.com/story/4665.php

Basically a marathon recording session in a gift shop.  Phoenix FM were recording 24 sessions in 24 hours, and we played the witching hour slot, with live versions of Sunny Shades, Runaway and 82 (with special sax solo just for the night). It was actually a really nice space to play in, and we had a rather good time.  We were photographed an interviewed and all the footage will see the light of day soon, once the crew has had time to sleep!

Seeing as it was in aid of the Essex Wildlife trust and I wanted a souvenir, I purchased a small giraffe keyring.

If you follow this link to our bandcamp page you can download the acoustic version of Superlucky we did for our last session for Phoenix, many moons ago, for free.

http://tentigers.bandcamp.com/

Lovely Eggs

On the 6th Feb we had a gig at the Railway supporting the Lovely Eggs!  Also on the bill were Plantman and Tumble Dryer Babies.  Everyone was ace.

 I managed to take some photos.

Although as you might expect Audie's ones were a lot better, although somewhat hampered by the dark stage

And the venue was totally sold out!  Although obviously that was the Lovely Eggs, not us.

And Eddie Curry took a video of Superlucky.  Thanks sir! 

And someone else caught us fluffing the start to Sunny Shades

Chinese New Year

On the 4th Feb we put on a gig in association with Culture as a Dare at Bar Lambs. It was a Chinese New Year celebration and also the second part of our slow protracted Tiger Tour with the Tiger Mcs.  We drafted in local indie (as in real, old school indie) band Art Gruppe to open the night, although both Art Gruppe and Tiger Mcs were fantastic and the running order was by no means any measure of musical prowess!

To honour the occasion I (M) decided to open our set by dancing like a tiger up the central aisle of Bar Lambs, wearing a tiger mask and waving my arms around in a sort of interpretive tigery way while throwing firecrackers.  This was a lot of fun, but I was also wearing a corset, so by the time I hit the stage I had no breath whatsoever left to sing with!  Not good when we were opening with Superlucky.  Also CK's trademark Guv'nor pedal somehow died between soundcheck and performance.  But we'd been away so long no-one seemed particularly bothered about the technical issues!

Anyway Hayley kindly wrote a nice review of the evening here:

http://djmoonlightmusic.blogspot.com/2011/02/ten-tigers-bar-lambs-4-feb-2011.html

And Audie (Dim Locator) took some amazing photos.

Plus Bunny Massacre was there (local very cool clothes designer) and she had made some tiger gloves especially for the evening!

Green

One of the songs which will be featuring on our album but we no longer play live is called 'Modern Living'.  It was written by CK and is about self sufficiency and respect for the environment, and we really like it but it never goes well live.  The lyrics are on our main website under 'discography and lyrics', and at the top of the Modern living page is a link to a special photo gallery featuring fruit, veg and flowers grown by people who tolerate our songs and want to show off their green fingers.  At the moment it's a bit sparse, but as spring is round the corner we would like to urge you all to plant something.  Gardening is great for the soul.  And when it fruits/blossoms/gets bigger email a picture of your plant to us and we'll include it in the gallery.  It's a great celebration of the simple joys of life.

CK doesn't really interract with the outside world that often but when he does it's fairly forthright.  Here is an example.

We all want to make a mark on the world. We don't necessarily want that mark to be 100,000 Bangladeshis dead and millions more displaced. So here is

CK's guide to making the world not quite as bad as it could otherwise be.

1. Shower with a friend...

   ...and save water.
   If that friend is a bucket, then the water you collect can be used to water your lawn, or your vegetables.

2. Recycle your food.

   Collect all your food scraps together, put them in your composter, and in a matter of months you'll have plenty of nutritious compost that you can use to make more food.

3. Piss anywhere but in the toilet.

   The parts that take most energy to remove from sewage are the nitrates and the phosphates. The compunds that your garden most likes, and that you buy in with fertiliser, are nitrates and phosphates. This is without even considering how sensible it is to use litres and litres of water to move a few millilitres of urea around.
   If you instead collect this fertiliser and apply it to your lawn or trees you can save money and have a greener garden. It makes a good compost activator, too.

If you think of any more handy humanity-saving tips, feel free to pass them on to me.