The tiger group. Music group The Tiger Lillies

Martin Jacques walked out of the dead building of the Minsk airport and beamed: “I feel like I’m at home!” - he said, pointing to the first “Belarus” poster in his life.

From there, two accordion players were looking at Martin, or, as he immediately decided, he was looking at him. Having dined in the Trinity Suburb with something called “Pancakes with red caviar and balpolvaopvrar” (the “balpolvaopvrar” component scared Martin terribly), “Tiger Lilies” came to the “Reaktor” club and first gave a concert, and then an interview. Of course, doing an interview after a concert is idiotic. The journalist may have already had a drink and is tired, but the musician no longer understands much
and wants to go to bed and to the party. Nevertheless, we decided to talk to Martin after the show - to understand whether he had changed from merging with the Minsk public. Indeed, he had changed - now he was almost like family to us: he signed memorial papers for Tatyana for his friends, and he even asked Lyudmila to help him get rid of the makeup, which, along with sweat, was dripping from him in streams: the concert was a success.

- What are your impressions of the concert in Minsk?
- At the very beginning, when I just went on stage, I felt that the audience and I didn’t know each other
friend, as it should. It was like meeting strangers. When the audience is made up of old fans, it's more like chatting with a friend. A little later we found new friends, but at first it was a little strange and nervous. In addition, the organizers did their job too well, so there were people at the concert who came not because they liked our music, but because it was a city-wide event. To some of these people
The concert was clearly not to my liking, and that's understandable - some people don't like The Tiger Lillies. That is, among the total number of spectators there was a certain number of people who will not come to our concert next time. And it’s good that they won’t come, it doesn’t suit them anyway. But overall everything would be amazing, I'm very happy!

- Did you notice that some people came with toys - plastic hammers and a Barbie doll?
- Yes, it was touching. They gave me a decorative skull, look (shows - author's note), on the back of his head it says 'La calavera de la catrina' (that was the name of the engraving by Jose Guadalupe Posadí, then a figurine of a skeleton dressed in a woman's dress, a kind of skull of a fashionista or other in the words “death-dandy” - an attribute of the Mexican Day of the Dead, - author's note) Who speaks Spanish? Nobody. It seems to me that in Minsk the Spanish language is somehow not very good.

When you meet a new audience in a city you've never played in before, how do you choose songs to perform?
- In this case, everything depends on the atmosphere. For example, if you were at our concert yesterday in Moscow, it would seem to you that a completely different group was performing. Firstly, it happened in the theater, and mostly slow compositions and melodic ballads were played, people were crying. Yesterday everything was very sad and emotional, but today everything was like a party. Crazy party with crazy people. Both went great, for me
I like both options. Great job. It turns out that you do something, and people love what you do, they get pleasure from it, and bringing this pleasure to people is an amazing feeling. I feel it myself
feeling great. Especially when people give me something as beautiful as this decorative skull.

I feel great when people give me something as beautiful as a decorative skull.

- And yet he is Mexican, not Belarusian.
- Indeed, Mexican, but we have a huge number of fans in Mexico. We're really famous there. Russia and Mexico are two huge countries that love us. Don't ask me why. Both of these people are interested in death, they like the accordion, maybe that explains everything.

- Do Mexicans really play the accordion?
- (whispers - author's note) Well, maybe not. But I didn’t expect you to ask me such difficult and awkward questions. (louder - author's note) Actually, I think they really love the accordion!

During a busy tour, when you have concerts in different cities every day for a week, how do you, three grown men, let other people decide when you sleep, when you play, when you eat?
- This is our way of life. This is how we make a living, this is our job, and it is quite a pleasant job - bringing joy to people. We have fun doing our job. A journalist sometimes has to wake up early in the morning, sometimes he has to travel, all this must be taken for granted, all those terrible moments that sometimes make up the work. It’s the same in my case - I have to put up with all the difficulties. Such as getting up tomorrow at 7 am to fly to Kyiv, but at the same time it’s all very interesting.

- What is work for you, for everyone else is an event that they have been waiting for, perhaps all their lives.
- This is amazing, it really touches my soul. Because of this, some kind of purpose and meaning appears in my life, it makes me feel great. It's nice to know that people love you and what you do. It's an amazing feeling. At such moments I feel like I'm creating something good - making people happy, bringing a little meaning into their lives, that's wonderful, right? Wonderful. (in a low voice - author's note) Because the rest of the time I don't feel it at all. And when something happens like tonight, it touches me. This is cool.

Five visual signs by which one could identify real fans of The Tiger Lillies in the Minsk crowd.
1. A goofy but chic felt bowler hat.
2. Just some stupid hat of an original shape that more or less holds the volume (for those who don’t have a classic British bowler hat).
3. A vest or at least some kind of underwear with longitudinal blue or black stripes on a white background. Suspenders, a starched white shirt, a black jacket or tailcoat (however, at least one of the above is sufficient).
4. Having stupid artifacts in your hands: a rubber mallet, a plastic baby, a stripped naked Barbie doll, etc.

What do you think about the combination of love and depression? There are people who dreamed of going to your concert, but at the last moment changed their minds due to depression.
- Everything I know about this, I know from my own experience, so I’ll tell you how it happens for me. For example, when I'm at home and I want to watch a movie, I look at a stack of three or four DVDs, among which there is something commercial and light, and there is a film by Ingmar Bergman, for example. And sometimes I choose a light film because I don’t want to watch something too heavy. Even though the other film is better, more interesting and more professional. Maybe The Tiger Lillies sometimes create the same effect.

- What in Belarus impressed you?
- First of all, people. They are amazing. The audience tonight was great. A wonderful, wonderful evening. I'm terribly happy. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to see the whole city, we had a small bus tour, it was fun and interesting. The city made an impression on me, but the most interesting thing was what the promoter told me. He came in and startled me with the message that nothing here belongs to anyone. Everything belongs to the state. Incredible. Just like in Soviet Russia, isn't it? That is, they can cover this place at any moment, because they have absolute power. Right? Unthinkable. (to the side - author's note) Tell me, is there any water there? There is so much vodka here, but no water.

- What dreams do you have?
- I don’t particularly dream about anything. Adrian is the one you need.
- (Adrian Huge) My dreams are terrible.
- He has funny dreams. When he falls asleep, it is as if he is going to the cinema.
- (Adrian Huge) When I play computer games for too long or sort through my videos, arranged in folders, then later I dream that I am sorting the folders, and each of them is a new level of the game. Or recently, before a trip to Russia, I dreamed that we were giving a concert at a recreation center in Wales - a terrible place to spend time. There were twenty schoolchildren there, and everything was just disgusting. After us, bad artists that I knew once in the past began to appear on stage, all of them wearing big clown boots, stupid gloves with stupid bouquets of flowers, and they were clowning around. Looking at this, the children constantly shouted: “Ah-ah-ah!” Because of this scream, the first clown stopped performing after three songs, and I still could not find Martin and Adrian, I could not return to the stage to pick up my drums, because the next clown was already performing there with another “A-a-a- a-ah! And then Martin's friend appeared, he entered through a secret door and brought with him a lot of drugs. He was looking for a sound engineer who takes a lot of drugs, but the sound engineer was very busy, and he also constantly spoke in Martin's voice. He had a voice exactly like Martin. How this dream exhausted me.

- You have songs about heroes from the Middle Ages. Do you think it would have been fun to live in those times?
- Oh! I think I would have been burned at the stake. I seriously doubt that living in the Middle Ages would bring me much pleasure. I would die of fear. I would be considered a heretic. No really.

Oh! It seems to me that in the Middle Ages I would have been burned at the stake.

- Obviously, you wouldn’t risk singing the same songs...
- Oh, God, no, of course not! You must be joking. I wouldn't sing any of them. People often ask me if there is anything I wouldn't sing about. I always answer the same thing - I wouldn’t sing about Muslims.
manah. This is fraught. Therefore, if I lived in the Middle Ages, I would never sing about Christians, of this I am completely convinced. I don’t know what I would sing about then, but definitely not about them. Now I can fearlessly sing about the Middle Ages. But now something else is scary. You heard that some guy, I think in Holland, was cut into pieces just because he made some kind of art installation that involved a naked woman with the Koran projected onto her body. Someone came in and slashed him with a ritual knife, the kind that butchers use. I wouldn’t mess with Muslims, that’s for sure.

- And the last question: what irritates you most about journalists?
- I think I know the answer. What irritates me most about journalists is this (pauses - author's note): “So, why is your band called The Tiger Lillies?” It seems to me that there is nothing worse than this. The rest of the questions are more or less, but this one brings me back to the thought: “But not this, I have to answer this question again, and again, and again...”

- It's high time to print out the finished answer.
- We recently talked about this, and Adrian said that we need to prepare “Ten Frequently Asked Questions” with answers. Or at least five. Although you can’t force many people to read even this. Here journalists come to us who know absolutely nothing about us, they haven’t read anything about us, they haven’t done any preliminary preparation at all. They come and just ask questions. Sometimes it drives me crazy. Although some of them are very cute and charming. Then it doesn't matter (laughs - author's note) whether they know anything about the group or not. If a person is cheerful, that's great.

London trio The Tiger Lillies formed in the late eighties. They have been compared to The Pogues and Tom Waits, and their style has been called street opera, cabaret and post-punk. However, no label or comparison is attached to them. Indeed, in their music one can discern the influence of such musical and theatrical figures as Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Jacques Brel and Spike Jones, all the way to Sondheim, Edith Piaf and Louis Armstrong. All world music, from gypsy ballads, German cabaret, French chanson to dirty prison blues and songs of street musicians, is mixed, destroyed and recreated by the musicians of this unusual group. And there are only three musicians: Martin Jacques (accordion, voice), Adrian Stout (double bass) and Adrian Huge (drums and percussion). In contrast to the ascetic set of concert instruments, in the studio the musicians do not deny themselves anything - a variety of instruments are heard on the recordings: acoustic guitars, wind instruments, keyboards and violins. Musicians happily use the sounds of ungreased doors and a two-handed saw, bicycle horns and the funny giggle of a bag of laughter. Three people with their acoustic instruments create unique eclectic and eccentric music of extraordinary melody, beauty and emotional power.

The Tiger Lillies' lyrics are openly shocking. Their dirty blues are shocking with their frankness and blasphemous lyrics. They sing about prostitutes and pimps, frail old people and disabled people, transvestites and freaks, drug addicts, homeless people and losers. They sing about sex with flies and sheep, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and how easy and fun it is to kill. "We don't sing about positive things a lot," says drummer Adrian. "Yes, we sing about death, brutality and disease, things that people would rather not think about," Martin adds. However, what may be frightening and repulsive should not confuse the listener - after all, as a truly postmodern band, Tiger Lilies approach all this with a great sense of humor. Martin sings about scary, unpleasant and simply “politically incorrect” things in the very high and beautiful voice of a professional opera singer. Lying on the line between a joke, shockingness and bad taste, the group’s creativity, their blasphemy and “perversion” cannot be taken seriously, especially since their most shocking songs are, as a rule, the most fun.

Another feature of the group’s creativity is theatricality. Their concerts, or better yet, shows, are always an unexpectedly fun performance. Clockwork sheep run across the stage, the double bassist takes off his pants and dances around in his underpants, the drummer smashes the drum kit with a huge plastic accordion hammer, and Martin rolls his eyes, sings, yells, laughs, grimaces and grimaces. In fact, The Tiger Lillies are truly a theatrical group. Probably the most famous of their theatrical projects is the musical play Shockheaded Peter. The modern dramatization of the bloody tales of child psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann, written 150 years ago (in the Russian translation of 1849 - "Stepka Rastepka"), a bewitching mixture of Victorian melodrama, puppet theater, mask theater and gothic horror stories, has received wide worldwide recognition among both audiences and among critics. In 2002, the show received the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award. The Tiger Lillies also have a circus project - The Tiger Lillies Circus - a large-scale show with clowns, strongmen, jugglers, acrobats and freaks.

In 2005, the whole world celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, and in honor of this event, The Tiger Lillies created their newest theatrical project - "The Little Match Girl" based on one of Andersen's famous fairy tales . The play was part of the Andersen Year program and was shown at the most prestigious European theater venues. Another recent project of The Tiger Lillies is "Mountains of Madness", a multimedia show created in 2005 together with Alexander Hacke of Einstuerzende Neubauten based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

The musicians also managed to appear in films - for example, in the film “Plunkett and MacLaine” (dir. Jake Scott, starring Liv Tyler, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle), which also featured their music. The musicians also wrote the music and starred in Sergei Bodrov Sr.’s film “Let’s Do It Quickly” (Quickie, starring Sergei Bodrov Jr., Jennifer Jason Leigh, Vladimir Mashkov, Henry Thomas). Bodrov Sr. loved the group so much that he made a full-length documentary about them, which was already shown on Russian television.

The Tiger Lillies have collaborated with a wide variety of famous and unknown musicians, including Steven Severin (Siouxsie and The Banshees) and Blixa Bargeld (Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Einstuerzende Neubauten). Their discography includes joint albums with the experimental English group Contrastate, the legendary Kronos Quartet (the album was nominated for a Grammy) and the Russian pop group Leningrad.

The Tiger Lillies, who have long since managed to turn from the favorites of London bohemia into the legend of the world cultural underground, release their discs on their own label Misery Guts Music. Almost every evening they play in some hall in some country in the world - England, Canada, America, Australia, Russia, Greece, Czech Republic, China, etc. Their repertoire includes more than 1000 songs, and new ones are constantly being written. Their discography includes 19 albums (which were re-released in England, the USA, Germany, Russia), the entire world press writes admiringly about the group and crowds of fans besiege cinemas and theaters, former weaving factories, classical concert halls, clubs, spacious churches and other places , where they happen to perform.

Biographies of group members:

Martin Jacques
Martin Jacques, the band's leader, was born in the small industrial English town of Slough. He would later write a song with the words "I"ll sing you a song if you drop a bomb on Slough." Martin entered theological college in Wales to study philosophy, but a year later he was kicked out of there because, while very drunk, he placed the head of a pig with a Marlboro cigarette in his nose on the altar of a local church.
Martin began playing keyboards and writing songs at the age of 15, and he organized his first strange group, God And The Supreme Beings, in the late 70s. He sang with a flowerpot on his head, while his future wife and Tiger Lillies manager Sophie Seashell played bass. In the early 80s, Martin moved to live in London's red light district - Soho. Here he lived for 7 years in an apartment above a strip club. During the day, he sold hashish pipes and other “related” products (and sometimes the drugs themselves) at the local market, often dressing in women’s clothing, and observed representatives of the London “bottom” - prostitutes, drug addicts, pimps, thieves, perverts, pushers, homeless people and losers, and at night I wrote songs about all this. In the late 80s, his apartment, along with a huge amount of God And The Supreme Beings' lyrics and recordings, burned down, but Martin was ready to form a new group, which he named after a notorious prostitute murdered in London - The Tiger Lillies.
The founder and ideologist of the group, a “castrated bandit”, a fighter against censorship, hypocrisy and mediocrity, likes to quote Jacques Brel, who once said: “All bad musicians should be shot.” His manner of dressing a la Dickens, wearing a bowler hat with a long pigtail hanging from under it, and singing with his eyes closed will be remembered for a long time. With an angelic voice he sings about the fall of man. When asked what he likes about music, he says: “I’m not a fan of anything at all. I don’t really like music either.” "He loves dead musicians, though," drummer Adrian interjects. “Yeah, we love dead people very much. And funny ones too. We really love dead funny people. Spike Jones is dead and funny, Bertolt Brecht, Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, Billie Holliday, Janet Jackson. Although, it only seems that she is dead. She must be dead, although she's not very funny."

Adrian Stout
Adrian Stout, the double bass player, is perhaps the only member of the group who is a truly serious musician. He managed to play in a lot of jazz, blues and country bands in various countries (including India) before becoming one of the Tiger Lilies. Here he replaced double bassist Phil Butcher, who was tired of constant touring and wanted to get married. Adrian refused to play in Bob Dylan's backing band at Wembley Stadium because he was due to play with The Tiger Lillies in a small, smoky pub that same evening. Since then, Adrian has behaved extremely indecently: like other members of the group, he “loves” inflatable sheep and dresses like a prostitute, and besides, he dances wildly while performing the song Suicide.

Adrian Huge
David Byrne, when he first saw The Tiger Lillies' drummer, called him "James Joyce on drums." Adrian worked in butcher shops, confectionery shops, motorcycle shops, banks, and repaired cars. When he earned his first large sum of money, he exchanged it for small bills, poured them onto the bed, stripped naked and began to roll and roll on the bed strewn with money. He first became seriously involved in music in 1982 as a member of the band Uncle Lumpy And The Fish Doctors, and in 1989 he joined the newly formed band The Tiger Lillies. One day Adrian came to a concert in the Czech Republic, expecting to see a drum kit prepared for him. But instead he was pointed to a mountain of polished kitchen utensils. However, he was not the least bit embarrassed and excited the audience’s ears all evening, armed with pots, pans and a ladle. Since then, his drum set has looked like a cross between a modern sculpture and a children's toy store - along with standard drums and cymbals, Adrian uses all sorts of squeakers, rattles, bangers and rattles, as well as his favorite kitchen utensils. To this day, Adrian enjoys fixing cars in his free time.

Tiger Lillies (Tiger Lillies, translated from English as “tiger lilies”) is a musical trio from London (UK), founded in 1989 and still active today.

The trio works in the dark comedy-tragic style of the Grand Guignol theater with elements of Brechtian cabaret and black humor. The lyrics are often related to themes of various forms of sex and death; among the heroes of the songs are prostitutes, perverts and drug addicts. The hallmarks of the group were their stage costumes and makeup, as well as the counter-tenor voice of vocalist Martin Jacques, who accompanied himself on the accordion.
Collaborations

Tiger Lillies were nominated for a Grammy for their 2003 album The Gorey End, recorded with the Kronos Quartet.
In 2005, a joint album “Huinya” was released with the Russian group Leningrad. Leningrad leader Sergei Shnurov performs many Tiger Lillies songs on it in literary translation into Russian, and Tiger Lillies perform two Leningrad songs translated into English. All songs are played by musicians from both groups.

Tiger Lillies and Alexander Hacke at a concert with the program “The Mountains of Madness” (Frankfurt am Main, 2007)
In 2006, the DVD "Mountains Of Madness" was released, a collaboration with German musician Alexander Hacke (of Einstürzende Neubauten) and visual artist Danielle de Picciotto (Hacke's wife). This project is based on the works of writer Howard Lovecraft (including “The Call of Cthulhu”). Joint concert tours with this program also took place.

Compound:
Martin Jacques - vocals, accordion, keyboards, guitar.
Adrian Huge - drums and percussion.
Adrian Stout - bass, musical saw, vocals.
Discography

Albums
1994 - Births, Marriages And Deaths
1995 - Spit Bucket
1995 - Ad Nauseam
1996 - Goodbye Great Nation, with Contrastate
1996 - The Brothel To The Cemetery
1997 - Farmyard Filth
1998 - Low Life Lullabies
1998 - Shockheaded Peter
1999 - Bad Blood and Blasphemy
2000 - Circus Songs
2000 - Bouquet of Vegetables - The Early Years
2001 - 2 Penny Opera
2003 - The Sea
2003 - The Gorey End, with Kronos Quartet
2003 - Live In Russia 2000-2001, live album recorded in Russia
2004 - Punch and Judy
2004 - Death and the Bible
2005 - Huinya, with the Russian group Leningrad
2006 - The Little Matchgirl
2006 - Die Weberischen
2007 - Urine Palace
2007 - Love and War
2008 - 7 Deadly Sins
2009 - FreakShow
2009 - SinDerella
DVD
2006 - Mountains Of Madness, with Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto

Do you know the group "Leningrad"? Surely known. After all, Serega Shnurov plays on the most primitive strings of the Russian soul. This can be perceived as irony, as parody, as humor. But in fact it just is and it's funny. So, the heroes of our article today, the London musical group The Tiger Lillies, perform something similar, but in their own way.

Vomiting in apartments, old whores
The stories are telling, the flies are flying
Vomit is their food
This is the environment.

The comparison with the Leningrad group is not accidental - the teams overlap so ideologically that they even recorded a joint album in 2005, called “Huinya”. Someone could say that this name briefly and laconically reflects the very essence of the work of this group, but! We will not agree with this.

Life is wonderful and there is success -
Almost everyone's belly is growing
And there are many dishes to choose from,
But soon there will be a Last Judgment.
No one can escape him
Nothing awaits everyone
But there's no reason to worry
We will all die - you are not alone.

The poems given in the article are a free translation of the words of The Tiger Lillies songs performed by Shnurov on the above-mentioned album. And on the one hand, this is the height of primitivism. But on the other hand, don’t they reflect the very essence of the philistine worldview, not covered with a fig leaf of feigned intellectuality and pseudo-intellectualism. Have you often seen people heavily intoxicated? How much civilization remains in them? You may not agree, but it is in a state of alcoholic intoxication that their true essence emerges in people, which is reflected, exaggeratedly, grotesquely, with irony and black humor, by the lyrics of The Tiger Lillies. Who said that you only need to sing about the beautiful? You can sing about everything!

Heroin is good!
Cocaine is good!
Anasha - fuck off
Well, vodka is better!

The Tiger Lillies group was founded back in 1989, but is still active creatively. The team is a trio, which invariably includes Martin Jacques, Adrian Huge and Adrian Stout. Despite the modest composition, the musicians have a sufficient number of different instruments in stock in their arsenal, and Martin Jacques’s unmanly high voice has become a kind of calling card of the group. The group's songs, as you may have guessed, are invariably provocative and shocking, and their live performances combine elements of horror theater, epic theater and cabaret. During their performances, musicians actively interact with the audience, so that visitors to their concerts become not just observers, but full-fledged participants in what is happening.

Do you understand me,
I don't understand you!
I don't understand, I don't understand!
We live in different worlds!

The musicians name Edith Piaf and Bertolt Brecht as their role models. In terms of the musical component, their work is difficult to attribute to any specific genre, since many characteristic features of different musical styles are reflected in the music of The Tiger Lillies. By 2014, the group had already released 28 studio albums.

The double bass doesn't hit
The guitarist always screws up
Drummer past the cash register
And you can't hear the maracas.
Our show is shit
But it's the same
But it is like that
This is one thing.

In real life, musicians are, although not entirely, quite ordinary people. The thing is that they treat their work somewhat detached, like a theatrical production. That is why they have successfully exploited their image over the past 20 years and at the same time continue to regularly delight their fans with new albums and live performances. By the way, as Martin Jacques admitted in one of his interviews, the largest number of fans of the group live in Russia.