Prosperous-looking Dresdeners stood cheek-by-jowl in a city park, clinking glasses of Riesling and restlessly awaiting the appearance of local heroes Die Nierentische (translation: the kidney-shaped tables). Led by longtime friends of Mark’s, Die Nierentische recently played all over the Triangle, including a memorable set at Guglhupf when lead singer Martin climbed on the patio tables [...]

The magic kingdom of Bohemia never let up its aesthetic flood: literally every direction yielded a new vista that would send Imagineers running back to their drafting boards. A wall-to-wall carpet of tourists made streets hard to navigate without a battering ram. This preponderance of non-natives also gave the city an ersatz, vacationland feel.

People packed in to hear the show, including one chemically-saturated guitar player in a green hoodie who kept trying to grab my mic and scream about Kurt Cobain and Elliot Smith. He seemed poised to join their ranks, and soon. Then he settled down onto the floor at the base of my mic stand and proceeded to pour a side-salad sized pile of weed onto my setlist to start sorting out the seeds.

The time has come for us to unleash our newest album, Tender Age. A few things we’d like to tell you about it before you take it into your home and your ear space:

We had a great time weaving around through dancing girls and a guy who had some early hip-hop moves while looking like a cross between jed clampett and ziggy stardust

For the first five or six songs of our set, these two girls were reenacting the kama sutra on the edge of the stage right in front of me. It was, er, a bit distracting, but not the kind of thing I wanted to discourage per se.

Married people often say that, after all the planning and preparations, their actual wedding was a blur. There is so much going on around them that their processing abilities temporarily slow down. That’s how I felt at our cd release show last night at the Cat’s Cradle.

So we want to use this blog as a place for TOC fans to display their artistic talents.

By request, here are the lyrics to the new album. Enjoy!