Tiger lilies group. The Tiger Lillies: Martin Jacques and Death the Goldfinch. I feel great when people give me something as beautiful as a decorative skull.

tiger lilies(Tiger Lillies, translated from English "tiger lilies") - a musical trio from London (UK), founded in 1989 and active to this day.

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

Tiger Lillies were nominated for a Grammy for their album The Gorey End with Kronos Quartet (2003).
In 2005, a joint album "Huinya" was released with Russian group Leningrad. The leader of "Leningrad" Sergey Shnurov performs many songs of Tiger Lillies translated into Russian on it, and Tiger Lillies perform two songs of Leningrad translated into English. All songs are played by musicians from both bands.

Tiger Lillies and Alexander Hake in concert with the program "The Mountains of Madness" (Frankfurt am Main, 2007)
In 2006 the DVD "Mountains Of Madness" was released, which is a joint program with German musician Alexander Hake (of Einstürzende Neubauten) and visual artist Danielle de Picciotto (Hake's wife). This project is based on the works of writer Howard Lovecraft (including The Call of Cthulhu). There were also joint concert tours with this program.

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 band 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 Haque and Danielle de Picciotto

The London trio The Tiger Lillies ("Tiger Lilies") was formed in the late eighties. They have been compared to The Pogues and Tom Waits, 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 notice the influence of such musical and theatrical figures as Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Jacques Brel and Spike Jones, right down 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 re-created 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, musicians do not deny themselves anything in the studio - a variety of instruments are heard on the recordings: acoustic guitars, wind instruments, keyboards and violins. Musicians happily use the sounds of unoiled doors and two-handed saws, 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 lyrics of The Tiger Lillies are openly outrageous. Their dirty blues shock with their frankness and blasphemous lyrics. They sing about prostitutes and pimps, frail old 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 very much about positive things," says drummer Adrian. "Yes, we sing about death, atrocities and diseases, things that people prefer not to think about," adds Martin. However, what can be frightening and repulsive should not confuse the listener - after all, as a truly postmodern group, Tiger Lilies treat all this with a great sense of humor. About terrible, unpleasant and simply "politically incorrect" things, Martin sings very high and beautiful voice professional opera singer. Lying on the edge between a joke, outrageous and bad taste, the band's creativity, their blasphemy and "perversion" cannot be taken seriously, especially since their most shocking songs are usually the most hilarious.

Another feature of the group's work is theatricality. Their concerts, or, better to say, shows, are always an unexpectedly cheerful performance. Clockwork sheep run around the stage, the double bass player takes off his pants and dances in his shorts, the drummer smashes the drum kit with a huge plastic harmonica mallet, and Martin rolls his eyes, sings, yells, laughs, grimace and grimace. In fact, The Tiger Lillies are a truly theatrical group. Probably the most famous of their theatrical projects is the musical Shockheaded Peter. A modernized re-enactment of the bloody tales of the 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 world recognition both among viewers and critics. In 2002, the show received the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award for theater. The Tiger Lillies also has a circus project - The Tiger Lillies Circus ("Tiger Lilies 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 theater project - "The Little Match Girl" ("Girl with matches") based on one of famous fairy tales Andersen. The performance was included in the program of the Andersen Year and was shown at the most prestigious European theater venues. Another recent project by The Tiger Lillies is "Mountains of Madness", a multimedia show created in 2005 with Alexander Hake of Einstuerzende Neubauten based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

The musicians also managed to act in films - for example, in the film "Plunkett and McLain" (dir. Jake Scott, starring Liv Tyler, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle), in which their music also sounds. The musicians also wrote music and starred in the film by Sergei Bodrov Sr. "Let's do it quickly" (Quickie, starring Sergei Bodrov Jr., Jennifer Jason Leigh, Vladimir Mashkov, Henry Thomas). Bodrov Sr. fell in love with the group so much that he made a full-length feature about them. documentary, which has already been shown on Russian television.

The Tiger Lillies have collaborated with a wide variety of famous and unknown musicians, including Steven Severin (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 turned from the favorites of London bohemia into the legend of the world cultural underground, release their CDs on their own label Misery Guts Music. Almost every evening they play in some hall in some country of the world - England, Canada, America, Australia, Russia, Greece, Czech Republic, China, etc. They have more than 1000 songs in their repertoire, 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 cinema and simple theaters, former weaving factories, classical concert halls, clubs, spacious churches and other places where they happen to perform.

Biographies of the band members:

Martyn Jacques
Martin Jacques, the leader of the band, was born in the small industrial English town of Slough. Later he would write a song with the words "I" ll sing you a song if you drop a bomb on Slough "(" I'll sing you a song if you drop a bomb on Slough "). Martin entered the theological college in Wales in the philosophy department, but a year later he was expelled from there because, being very drunk, he put the head of a pig with a Marlboro cigarette in his nose on the altar of a local church.
Play on keyboard instruments and Martin began writing songs at the age of 15, and he formed his first strange band God And The Supreme Beings ("God and higher beings") in the late 70s. He sang with a flower pot on his head, while his future wife and The Tiger Lillies manager Sophie Seashell played bass. In the early 80s, Martin moved to live in the "red light district" of London - Soho (Soho). Here he lived for 7 years in an apartment above a strip club. During the day, he sold hashish pipes and other "related" goods (and sometimes the drugs themselves) at the local market, often dressing in women's clothes, and watched the representatives of the London "bottom" - prostitutes, drug addicts, pimps, thieves, perverts, pushers, homeless people and losers, and at night he wrote songs about all this. In the late 80s, his apartment, along with a huge amount of texts and records of God And The Supreme Beings, burned down, but Martin was ready to form a new group, which he named after a notorious prostitute who was killed in London - The Tiger Lillies.
The founder and ideologist of the group, "castrated bandit", a fighter against censorship, hypocrisy and mediocrity likes to quote Jacques Brel, who once said: "All bad musicians should be shot." For a long time his manner of dressing a la Dickens, wearing a bowler hat, from under which a long pigtail hangs down, and singing with his eyes closed, is remembered for a long time. In 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." "However, he loves dead musicians," puts in drummer Adrian. "Yeah, we love the dead very much. And the funny ones too. We really love the 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, even though she's not very funny."

Adrian Stout
Adrian Stout, double bassist, is perhaps the only member of the band 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 he became one of the "Tiger Lilies". Here he replaced bass player Phil Butcher, who was tired of constant touring and wanted to get married. Adrian refused to play in Bob Dylan's backing band at the Wembley stadium concert because he was supposed to play with The Tiger Lillies that very night in a smoky little pub. Since then, Adrian has been behaving extremely indecently: like other members of the group, he "loves" inflatable sheep and dresses like a prostitute, and besides, he also dances wild dances during the performance of the song Suicide ("Suicide").

Adrian Huge
David Byrne, when he first saw the drummer of The Tiger Lillies, called him "James Joyce on drums". Adrian worked in butcher shops, candy stores, motorcycle shops, banks, and car repairs. When he earned his first a large sum money, he exchanged it for small bills, poured them out on the bed, stripped naked and began to roll and roll on the bed strewn with money. He first took up music seriously in 1982 as a member of Uncle Lumpy And The Fish Doctors, and in 1989 he joined the fledgling The Tiger Lillies. Once Adrian came to a concert in the Czech Republic, expecting to see a drum set prepared for him. Instead, he was shown a mountain of polished kitchenware. 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 looks like a cross between modern sculpture and a children's toy store - along with standard drums and cymbals, Adrian uses all sorts of tweeters, rattles, rattlers and rattles, as well as his favorite kitchen utensils. So far, Adrian's free time loves to fix cars.

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

From there, two accordionists were looking at Martin, or, as he immediately decided, he himself was looking at him. Having dined in the Trinity Suburb with something called "Pancakes with red caviar and balpolvaopvrar" (constituting Martin's "balpolvaopvrar" terribly scared), "Tiger Lilies" arrived at the "Reactor" 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 drunk and tired, but the musician understands little
and wants to go to bed and to the party. Nevertheless, we decided to chat with Martin after the show - to understand if he has changed from merging with the Minsk audience. Indeed, he had changed - now he was almost like a native to us: he signed Tatiana's memorial papers for friends, and even asked Lyudmila to help him get rid of the makeup, which, along with sweat, flowed 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 did not 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 talking to a friend. A little later we already 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 like our music, but because it was a city-wide event. Some of these people
I obviously didn't like the concert, and it'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 don’t come, it still doesn’t suit them. But in general, everything would be amazing, I'm very happy!

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

When you meet a new audience in a city you've never played before, how do you choose songs to play?
- In this case, everything depends on the atmosphere. For example, if you were at our yesterday's concert in Moscow, it would seem to you that a completely different group is performing. Firstly, it happened in the theater, and mostly slow compositions, melodic ballads sounded, people cried. Yesterday everything was very sad and emotional, and today everything was like a party. Crazy party with crazy people. Both went great, I
like both options. Great job. It turns out that you do something, and people love what you do, they enjoy it, and bringing this pleasure to people is an amazing feeling. I feel it myself
yourself wonderful. 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 are really famous there. Russia and Mexico are two huge countries that love us. Don't ask me why. Both of these peoples are interested in death, they like the accordion, maybe that explains everything.

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

When you're on a busy tour, when you're playing 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. That's how we make a living, that's our job, and it's quite a nice job to bring 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 work sometimes consists of. 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 is all very interesting.

- What is work for you, for everyone else - an event that they have been waiting for, perhaps all their lives.
- It's amazing, it really touches my soul. Because of this, some purpose and meaning appear in my life, from this I feel great. It's nice to know that people love you and what you do. It's an amazing feeling. At times like this, I feel like I'm doing something good - making people happy, bringing a little meaning to their lives, that's great, 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 like this happens tonight, it touches me. This is cool.

Five visual signs that could identify real fans of The Tiger Lillies in the Minsk crowd.
1. Ridiculous but chic fedora bowler hat.
2. Just some stupid hat of the original shape, more or less holding the volume (for those who did not have a classic British bowler hat).
3. A vest or at least some wearable piece with longitudinal blue or black stripes on a white background. Suspenders, starched white shirt, black jacket or tailcoat (however, it is enough to have at least one of the above).
4. The presence in the hands of stupid artifacts: a rubber mallet, a plastic baby, a Barbie doll stripped naked, etc.

What do you think about the combination of love and depression? There are people who dreamed of getting to your concert, but at the last moment they changed their mind due to depression.
- Everything I know about it, I know from my own experience, so I'll tell you how it happens to me. For example, when I'm at home and I want to watch some movie, I look at a stack of three or four DVDs, among which there is something commercial and light, and there is an Ingmar Bergman film, for example. And, sometimes, I opt for some 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 impressed you in Belarus?
- First of all, people. They are amazing. The audience tonight was great. Lovely, wonderful evening. I'm terribly happy. Unfortunately, we did not have time to see the whole city, we had a small bus tour, it was fun and interesting. The city impressed me, but the most interesting thing was what the promoter told me. He came in and startled me with the message that nothing here belonged to anyone. Everything belongs to the state. Incredible. Just like in Soviet Russia, right? That is, they can cover this place at any time, because they have absolute power. Right? Unthinkable. (aside - author's note) Tell me, is there any water there? There is so much vodka here, but there is no water.

- What kind of dreams do you have?
- I don't really dream about anything. Adrian is the one you need.
- (Adrian Hughes) My dreams are terrible.
- He has funny dreams. When he falls asleep, it's like going to the cinema.
- (Adrian Hughes) When I play computer games for too long or go through my folders of videos, I later dream that I sort through the folders, and each one is a new level of play. Or just 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 sometime in the past began to come on stage, they were all in big clown shoes, stupid gloves with stupid bouquets of flowers, and staged a clowning show. Looking at this, the children constantly shouted: “Aaaaa!” Because of this scream, the first clown stopped his performance after three songs, and I still couldn’t find Martin and Adrian, I couldn’t return to the stage to pick up my drums, because the next clown was already performing there with another “Aaa- ah! And that's when 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's. How exhausted I was by this dream.

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

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

- Obviously, you wouldn't dare to sing the same songs...
- Oh, God, no, of course not! You must be joking. I wouldn't sing any of them. Often people ask me if there is something that I wouldn't sing about. I always answer the same - I would not sing about Muslims
manah. It is fraught. Therefore, if I lived in the Middle Ages, I would never sing about Christians, I am completely convinced of this. 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 it's something else. You heard that some guy, I think in Holland, was cut to pieces just for doing some kind of art installation, which involved a naked woman, on whose body the Koran was projected. Someone came in and slashed him with a ritual knife used by butchers. I wouldn't mess with Muslims, that's for sure.

- And the last question: what annoys you the most in journalists?
- I think I know the answer. The thing that irritates me most about journalists is (pauses - author's note): “So, why is your group called The Tiger Lillies?” I don't think there is anything worse than this. The rest of the questions are even more or less, but this one brings me back to the thought: “Not this, I have to answer this question again, and again, and again ...”

- It's high time to print the finished answer.
- Just about this we recently talked about, and Adrian said that we need to prepare "Ten Frequently Asked Questions" with answers. Or at least five. Although many will not be forced to read even this. Here journalists come to us who know absolutely nothing about us, they have not read anything about us, they have not carried out 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 band or not. If the person is funny, that's great.

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

Vomiting in apartments, old whores
They tell stories, flies fly
Vomit is their food
This is such a Wednesday.

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

Life is wonderful and there is success -
Almost everyone's belly grows
And there's a lot of food to choose from
But the Last Judgment is coming soon.
Nobody escapes him
Nothing awaits everyone
But there's no reason to worry
We will all die - you are not alone.

The verses given in the article are a free translation of the words of The Tiger Lillies songs performed by Shnurov on the aforementioned 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 intelligence and pseudo-intelligence. How often have you seen people in a state of strong alcohol intoxication? How much civility remains in them? You may disagree, 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 texts of The Tiger Lillies. Who said that it is necessary to sing only about the beautiful? You can sing about everything!

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

The Tiger Lillies was founded in 1989 but is still active today. creative activity. The team is a trio, which always includes Martin Jacques, Adrian Hughes and Adrian Stout. Despite the modest composition, the musicians have a sufficient number of different instruments in their arsenal, and Martin Jacques' not manly high voice has become a kind of hallmark of the band. The band's songs, as you may have guessed, are invariably defiant and outrageous, and live performances combine elements of horror theater, epic theater and cabaret. During their performances, the musicians actively interact with the audience, so that the visitors of 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 call Edith Piaf and Bertolt Brecht their role models. In terms of the musical component, their work is difficult to attribute to any particular genre, since many characteristic features different musical styles are reflected in the music of The Tiger Lillies. By 2014, the group had already released 28 studio albums.

Contrabass does not hit
The guitarist always messes up
Drummer past the checkout
And you don't hear the maracas.
Our show is shit
But it is one
But it's like that
Such one.

IN real life musicians are, if not quite, but quite ordinary people. The thing is that they treat their work somewhat detachedly, 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 an interview, the largest number of the group's fans lives in Russia.