The ‘Spray Q&A: Tiger Tunes

Tiger Tunes are a band destined for the ‘Great Bands You’ll Never See Live’ file.

Their album Absolutely Worthless Compared To Important Books was a rare find - an eclectic mish-mash of absurdly catchy lo-fi electronic rock and derango lyrics about ninjas, fish, flapjacks and fuckmachines. We were certain that the album would make international megastars out of Tiger Tunes. We asked them for an interview. They said yes. Then they split up.

Tiger Tunes are one of the best bands you’ll never hear, and certainly the best one from Denmark. If this interview is an obituary it’s a bloody good one, and one with a bizarre cheese fixation, too…

Who are you, and where are you?
Lasse Lakken, bassist of Tiger Tunes. I am at home right now preparing for a weekend on the German Autobahn.

Why should people buy your records?
There’s a million reasons for
buying our records - to have something to dance to, to support a bunch
of poor Danish musicians, to be the first one on the block who owns a
Tiger Tunes record, because all your friends have it….

How is Europe reacting to Tiger Tunes?
The Danes liked it. The
Germans like it too. The rest of the Scandinavians and the Spanish are
getting to know it. And the rest of Europe is checking us slowly out,
keeping their cool.

You have a song called Kirsten Is A Fuck Machine. Is she real? And if she is, is she proud?
No she is not real - but I’m sure she would be very proud to have a song written about her.

Tell us about your enormous wooden tiger.
The enormous wooden
tiger is about 2 meters tall and at the moment it’s in a quite bad
condition - it seriously needs some paint and a new spine. It’s been
following us on tour for several years and once some people from the
north of Germany stole half of it (the head) and took it out playing
football, playing in the forest and hanging out at the beach.
Fortunately they got a bad conscience and returned it to us during a
concert. They made a website with movies of them making fun stuff with
the tiger and letting us know that it missed us very much -there’s
still some of it left here. They’re crazy…

Why do you sing in English?
I’m not the one writing the lyrics -
but I guess it’s because it feels natural and also quite practical when
we are playing for people of different nationalities.

Your name is Tiger Tunes. In a fight between all the fake tigers in
the world (Tigger, the Esso Tiger, Tony the Frosties Tiger and Shere
Khan from the Jungle Book) who would win?
I think Tony is quite hard to beat in a cat fight, but I’m sure our tiger would do it’s best - and that’s good enough for me…

In the video for Highly Invisible & Out Of Control, you cheer up
a forest of dinosaur zombie things with the power of the high-five. Do
you believe in the redemptive power of American style hand-slaps in
normal life?
I believe in all kinds of physical contact between people - I like handshakes better than high-fives though.

Which sport has periods of play called Chukkas?
I know absolutely
nothing about sports - but a quick search on the Internet, yes I know
that’s cheating, got me to believing that we’re talking polo here.

What’s the Danish music scene like?
The Danish music scene is
like everywhere else filled with good, bad, stupid, fun and worse stuff
- the different thing with the Danish music scene is that since DK is
so small you kind of know everybody - which can be both frustrating and
nice.

Preach about something you love (not related to the band) in 100 words.
I
love cheese. It’s nice that you can get so many different sorts of it
and most of them taste lovely. It’s also great because it can be very
hard, but also liquid and all stages in between. You can have cheese in
the morning, in the day, and in the night and you can eat it alone or
with friends, with bread, biscuits, in a dish, or with nothing at all.
Cheese can be made out of milk from cows, goats, and sheep. I love the
cheese from goats, but I like the others too. You should try it.

What’s on the Tiger Tunes iPod?
There is no such thing as a Tiger
Tunes iPod, but on my personal one there’s some new songs that we’re
working on at the moment, some Grandaddy, some Feist and quite a lot of
Stereo Total.

Favourite movie soundtrack?
The Wizard of Oz.

Motorhead have Cheese And Chive Ruffles on their rider. What’s on yours?
I
don’t really know actually. Nothing special I guess - we never get what
we want anyway… ("So who was it that ordered chocolate milk for the
rider, Lakken!?!" says the manager)

Teach us some Danish please.
Kirsten er en kneppemaskine.
Fuldstændig værdiløs i sammenligning med vigtige bøger. The first
sentence should be easy to guess - the second is the title of our
record.

What are you going to do right now?
I’ll be leaving in a moment
to visit Q (the drummer of TT) and Moe (our manager) to pick up some
keys. Later on I will see if I can manage to go to bed early - probably
I can’t.

See what parts of the Tiger Tunes phenomenon you missed at the official Tiger Tunes website, or on the band’s My Space page, where you can also listen to their spiffy tunes.

[story by Stuart Heritage]