Tiger Lily or: Fuck You Snarky Bitch

[GamblersGrin]

*Historical Note : Only one member of the band is sporting a haircut that could be called a "Mullet'. The rest of us are wearing fashionable coiffures of the 1980's. If you weren't born until the 70's or 80's.....A "Mullet" has a notable "lack of symmetry' and no transition between the front & the back, like 2 haircuts on the same head... I.e. a bad haircut. Not every layered haircut is a Mullet... Our hair is beautiful! (Don't I stick out amongst those güeras?) Also note: The only New Wave female band in Los Angeles fronted by a Mexican-American in 1983.

What you are seeing here is 5 young women who went for it. Or rather, I went for it and convinced 4 other girls to take that joyride with me. We were rank amateurs, but at least it wasn't put together by a man! At first, I would go audition for punk bands around L.A. and just freeze up and not be able to play! Tiger Lily became an all girl band when I thought I would be more comfortable around my friends so in 1981, I convinced one of my closest childhood friends, Gail to take up the bass guitar. (Friends no longer, we've only spoken once since 1984, and that was when my solo version of Black Cats was on KROQ in 1987.) A "Musicians Wanted" ad in L.A.'s famous "Recycler", was answered by drummer Becky Atkins and the female band with no name played trio in the garage while I searched for another female guitar player. We started as a rockabilly trio, and went through a succession of names including "The Tomboys" and "The Cat Women". Late one night I was watching a old movie in which Lucille Ball played a burlesque dancer whose stage name was "Tiger Lily". I liked it because the name is some strong next to something beautiful and people might guess the band was female. Our ad stayed in the Recycler and a parade of talentless freaks and very insecure girls auditioned. Out of frustration I started phoning every guitar teacher in the San Gabriel Valley and asking if they "had any female students learning the electric guitar". I finally discovered Jill Sharpe working in a Covina music store. She joined up and we had a real band at last, a second guitar player/singer allowing us to move into a more pop sound. We started writing songs, playing live and recorded a demo tape. We debuted at the Cafe Theater at The Inner-City Cultural Center in Summer, 1982 with keyboard player Nancy Morris who promptly left the band and headed back to Arizona. She was the only player we had who was not a native of Southern California. We did not meet Desha until late 1983, making it once again, an all instrumentalist quintet. No one in the band had really played in a rock band before. Jill had been in a punk band that never had left the garage and Desha had briefly played in a top 40 band. I'd been playing the guitar since I was 12 but until the D.I.Y. Punk movement of the late '70's it never occurred to me that I could play the electric guitar. I simply had no example to go by other than Suzi Quatro and in the 1970's she was considered a novelty and something of a freak. A local band called the Heaters had a big influence on me personally. They had 3 female players, Mercy Bermudez and Melissa and Maggie Connell and they played Pop.

http://nakeddave.com/TigerLily.html

http://www.lauramolina.com/Inside.html

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css did a cover of black cats that was amazing