The bloody end of Mean Tangerine

Hey how's it going?

Regarding what I posted yesterday, yes, we are ending "Mean Tangerine", though I think, at least amongst the members, it died a while ago, and you may have noticed a large period of inactivity. 

And we're kinda stoked.

Seriously, bad things just kept on happening and Mean Tangerine just started giving us really bad vibes, and too much was changing and it just didn't feel like "Mean Tangerine". It was supposed to be fun and sick, and it started being such a chore, an expensive, frustrating, mind numbing chore.  Too many bass players, and no van that works properly will really put an end to a band quick I tell ya! Ha, I was thinking about it, Mean Tangerine was a band longer than The Beatles were ever a band (Obviously not that I'm ya know, comparing us or anything, I just mean time wise....) We did it for 8 years, and it was fun as hell for most of it but that's just too long to be a band, with really not too much success to show for it. 

So we're doing one last show on October 19th at the London Music Hall.  It's a very fitting last show as we're playing in a setting where we were generally most comfortable, with some Ontario Reggae bands in our hometown. We started out as a ska-reggae type of outfit, and it seems like a nice complete loop to end Mean Tangerine with a similar bill with some bands we really dig.

Anyways, if you ever liked our band, or followed us in any sense, you're probably like well what's going on with that record you've been working on for ya know like 4 years at this point...

We're going to release it still. Regarding all the things that sucked about Mean Tangerine, let me assure you this record is absolutely 100% killer. Every song is amazing and we have  17 of them or something.  Absolute gems I tell ya! haha

And we're going to release it under a different name, some of us have started a new band I should mention. And when I say some of us, I uh, mean all most of us. After years of trying to convince one of our very best buddies to join the band, our pal Dale Stephenson is going to join us on guitar, and his very lovely brother  Matt Stephenson is going to join us on bass. We're going to call ourselves "The Eighty Nine". And holy shit are we going to play no reggae at all, one of the main reasons we wanted to just put and end to Mean Tangerine, and start a new project, is the things we've been working on at the studio for this record sound nothing like anything "Mean Tangerine" would do, it wasn't really a progression as much as derailing the old bugger, and just puttin her on some new tracks. The new stuff doesn't feel like Mean T, so why do it as Mean T? It's reeeaaalllllllyyy good though. As soon as I can, I'll be putting some of the new stuff online, to give you a taste of the new vibe of our stuff now. Run on sentence, I know. 

Anyways, so yea, new band. The Eighty Nine. Reckon we plan on playing a couple shows around Toronto, in the new year, and I'm so stoked for peeps to hear the new tunes. 

I was trying to convince Max that we should do something in Toronto, like "last mean t show ever and have Mean Tangerine open for The 89" He was thinking more along the lines of "hell no, thats so fucking stupid Jesse", but I think it's a sick idea, if anyone is thinking we should do a last show in our Toronto, write er on our wall, or just fb message Max.



Game has changed, but the players are the same.

 



Here's an old gem for ya.

RIP Mean Tangerine 2004-2012. 



- Jesse Wilks


 

Looking for bass players

Hey so Mean Tangerine is looking for a full time bass player, and if you

think you're the person for the job hit us up. Our ideal candidate would fit 

within the following stuff.

- Gotta live in Toronto, or be willing to practice there very regularly and be

  there just like all the time (west side of Toronto) 

 - Looking for ages 21-25 

 - Experience touring or being in a band in some capacity is definitely a must 

 - Be amazing at playing bass and be able to sing. Other instruments also a leg up. 

 - Relatively outgoing personality, music nerds are definitely okay, be self sufficient, 

    low maintenance 

 - Have tons of patience, and dedication and be like a chill guy you know what I'm saying 

 - I'm gunna say open to both genders, but if you wanna get real, I do not really see a 

  girl working out, but who knows? Most likely less of a chance if you're like a 

  knock out babe

 - Have your own gear, like show ready amp situation and etc. 

 - Someone who is good at driving, and has a clean record, for crossing the border.

 - knowledge of music, and I guess just being a well adjusted normal person. 

email ----- band@meantangerinemusic.com 

So if you, or anyone you know fits the criteria, hit us up! 

This also means yet again we gotta delay the release of our record a bit longer. 

We don't really want to release it and not be able to play any shows in support of it,

so it's probably best if we delay for it a bit. 

Anyways, we're trying our best to keep things going and hopefully we'll be playing some 

shows soon!

Jesse 

FREE EP APRIL 24th!

It's been a while since I've cranked a blog out but I figured right now would be a good time. We finished The Yellow Snow Tour 2 last week and it was awesome. It was definitely great hitting all local southwestern Ontario and Quebec cities that we've frequented over the years, it had been a while since we'd been to a couple of them so it definitely felt pretty sick hitting them up again. Thanks to everyone who came and ripped it up with us and special thanks to our best buds The Johnstones for taking us on the tour again.

Anywayssssss let's get to the real issue here. We have not released as much new music in the last while as we would have liked to have. A lot of it has to do with being so broke all the time, because there definitely has not been a lack of songs. However we are very excited to announce the release of a free EP on April 24th. We're calling it "The Neon Lights EP" because basically that's the name of the first track and it has a decent ring to it.  I reckon at least.

We definitely hope that everyone that downloads it will share it with their friends and help get the word out about Mean T!  It will also be available on iTunes for anyone that wants to give us a little financial support, definitely very appreciated!


Here's a kind of boring rundown of the songs....


1-Neon Lights 
This is a pretty epic sounding song. It's got about heaps of guitars and it's probably one of the harder rocking tunes in our history I think.


2 Let it Slide
This one kinda sounds like white stripes ish, but with Max's voice. It's also got one of my favourite lyrics of ours, "These two days are two worlds apart/but I'm the fuckin same" I can objectively say I like it, cuz I didn't write it!

3 Run Away 
This one is a soulful bluesy rocker, with some sweet organ. Max's voice sounds as good as it ever has on this. The guitar parts in this are pretty fun to play as well, but hey why would you care about that?

4 On My Way Home
This one we kind of released, on a sampler that was available exclusively at shows, and has been a staple of our live show for the past year, however we re-recorded it and it sounds great. Really proud of this one, some of the other bands on our last tour we're telling us this was probably our best tune, I kind of agree.


Anywayssss I'm not really that sure why I gave that run down, because you don't even know what I'm talking about and won't for another month and half!  I do promise that no one will be disappointed, these songs kill!


Also, all of our cd's our now out of print, even the Wolf sampler, so we might kind of release a hybrid disc of a mix of all our old shit, with Change and Flash in the pan, because neither of them ever got released really. 


That's all for not though. If you feel like it, help spread the word about the EP!


Jesse


Also, check out our new website..www.meantangerinemusic.com

Yellow Snow Tour 2, vague announcment about releasing free music

Hey whatsup? It's been a while since I've posted a blog, and I just reread my last one about our shows down south and the collapse of our van. That was definitely a blow, but we're back on our feet now and the van is running again, after a couple months.

Anyways, it's been a while since we've released any new music, years even, and I ain't saying much, but we may be releasing some new songs for FREE online in the next little bit, to reward y'all for your patience. Followed by the full length a short time after. I know it's been a while but I promise these tunes are worth it.

Also, we embark today on the Yellow Snow Tour 2 with our good buddies The Johnstones, and our hopefully soon to be good buddies Hello Beautiful and Ghettoblaster.  Gunna write a couple more blogs during the tour keep y'all updated, and going to be posting a healthy amount of hilarious and amazing pictures.

It's been a while since we've played in Canada, our London Xmas show aside, and it'll be great to see some familiar faces and hopefully some new ones too. We're going to be playing quite a bit of our new stuff and hope that people are feeling it. Also Jesse from Street Pharmacy is playing with us at the moment, so we're hoping that he doesn't turn out to be a psycho killer after a few days in the van with us.

That is all 

Jesse

End of USA Tour, Possibly our van, Keep on Keepin on.

In front of my future residence

  

How's it going, on this blustery old fall day?  Days are getting shorter, subsequently the nights are getting shorter, and our van is still a fucking piece of shit.

Just wanted to do a quick little blog recapping the last couple days of our previously mentioned small excursion into the USA.

It's like they knew we were coming and erected a statue of Mike's boner.

Where we last left off, we were in Frostburg, Maryland. Never heard of it? That's ok. Neither has anbody have we, or anyone else we talked to basically outside of Frostburg. That night we ended up finding the cheapest drinks we would all tour, or actually in my entire existence. Ready for this?..........10 cent beers. I fuck with you not. Despite how pathetically broke I am, I went for it and tipped a whopping 25%....Totaling at 2 and a half cents. Yes, please shower me with compliments of how considerate I am....

Anyways that wasn't at the venue we were playing at, the venue we played at was called "Dante's", and it was a pretty cool places. In a week that had a couple strange venue's on it, it was nice to play on a real big stage. But we kind of just roll with whatever situation we're given, stage, floor, dark corner, rollin with the punches is what we do best.

New band member

On stage in Frostburg, one of the local patrons who could rip the saxophone came on stage with us to add some horns to a couple of our songs, he was a great lover musician, and it was cool to add something new to proverbial fold.

Everyone was feeling mighty sick at that point, sleeping in our van and being freezing cold turns out did not bode well for our health. So the next morning we got the hell outta there, to perhaps one day return, who knows. I should mention that all the people we met there were real nice to us. 

"Hi I'm Max, the stupidest piece of shit alive"

Anyways, the next day we played in Arlington, which is kind of sort of part of Washington D.C. unofficially (as one resident explained to us).  So we mustered up the energy to check out all of the touristy Washington stuff.

We thought this was the white house for like half an hour

Seeing the white house was actually spectacularly boring but the Lincoln memorial was cool. The show that night, we played at a place called the Cowboy Cafe (we knew we'd fit in instantly given our love affair with romantic comedies starring Hugh Grant  cowboy movies. The show there was fun and people seemed to dig it and buy cd's and t shirts all that important jazz that keeps us on the road. Bands are really just T shirt companies, we make more from t shirts than anything else, it's really the only that keeps us going, so ya know, if you're at a show in the next little bit and the shirt you're wearing sucks, check one of ours out?? 

See; dark corner, as mentioned above

After the show we got invited to a party with some local folk so we figured we'd go there and try and find a floor to crash on. Unfortunately at one point some drunken asshole came in, said he hated Canadians and we got kicked out of the house. What a bunch of fuckfaces if I do say so myself. There are generally speaking subtle differences with American and Canadians, but I just don't see any Canadians doing something like this (except Scott, he's a dick) but maybe I'm just painting us all with a very broad stroke of kindness. Not sure anyone I've ever met would kick someone out of a place for being "American", as if right? I'm sure this was just one asshole and obviously most American's wouldn't do this, but it still left a salty cholorine-"y" taste in our mouths.

The place we played in Lock Haven

Not to make this too much of a sob story or anything, but on the way home from Arlington, shit really started to suck. Somewhere about 60 miles outside of Buffalo our van completely and utterly fucked off on us. It stopped accelerating and instead started to hiss very loudly. This is just such a bummer because we obviously need that van. We ended up having to tow it back from Buffalo to the border, than from the border get picked up by another tow company and back to our place in Toronto. If you get anything from this blog....get CAA. Haha. Our total trip would have cost us over 800 dollars, if we didn't have CAA. Fortunately we do, so it was free. Wish the same could be said for our transmission replacement.

So yeah that was our second foray into the United States. I think we're doing a decent job on starting to build a bit of a following there and it's definitely been extremely cool to us, however this one just ended on a bit of a bummer note. But we'll bounce back, keep soldiering on. If there's one thing we always do, it's soldier on.....It's what good waffles do.

Good Waffles

 

 Some Random Observations  

• Some guy came up to me in Arlington and was like "you know what we call Canada right, America's hat! Get it, like cuz it's on top of America right!"  You know what we call America? Canada's dick.  He thought it was pretty funny, he was a pretty good guy actually.
• Cannot believe how much prices vary in the states. The average pint cost like 2 and half bucks. That would be terrific on my wallet and just terrible on my liver/reputation/livestock....k I don't have any livestock, but good god, under the circumstances in which I did, and there was cheap pints, they would most likely be neglected.
• Cannot wait to hit the road again. Gotta say it's depressing a little bit to be back home. I feel like in some fashion we're really only "us" when we are on the road.
•  We have TONS of new songs! Can't wait for everyone to hear them. They sound awesome. In some ways we're starting over and it's pretty different stuff. Not to suck our own schlong, but I'm not sure it really sounds like anything that's out there right now. Maybe that's just wishful thinking though. You can decided in the upcoming year as it's all released. 

Thanks for reading. I'll be sure to report any other news or musings in the future. Hope this didn't bore the shit out of you.

Jesse