The Sister-Awake list has attracted a diverse collection of individuals - all ages, from at least 4 countries, and cradling every musical taste under the sun (well, within reason). What we share is a passionate love of the Tea Party's music.
But that's not all of it. When I first came to Sister-Awake, it gave me an outlet for this incredibly huge craving inside. I'd just seen them on the Transmission tour, and it had awoken so many of the feelings that had erupted the first time I'd seen them on the Solis tour. And then there was Edges - the album which had a profound effect on so many of us - the sort of impact I remember feeling when I heard Dark Side of the Moon. But even more than with Pink Floyd, the atmosphere of the Tea Party hung around me long after the record finished. Like a sexually charged dream you can't - and don't want to - shake, the music of the Tea Party has taken on a much larger presence than other music I love, and resounds through my whole day.

After the Transmission concert in August 1997, I experienced a couple of weeks of musical emptiness, which could only be filled by listening to Transmission over and over. But it was also more than that - I needed to talk! I needed to share this utter awe and incredulity of the sheer brilliance of this music. That's when I found the list, and soaked up the posts like water on sunburnt skin. I needed to hear things. I needed to try to understand what this band were doing to me. I teach psychology for a living.it's my job to understand what things do to our heads! I've been on the list for about 6 months now, and I still don't know. What I do know is that most of us on the list have experienced fire in our heads, and in our souls, when listening to the Tea, emotions that go to the core. And at times, it takes us somewhere we may have only experienced a few times in our life, where the feeling is beyond words, and our state of consciousness is radically altered. Abraham Maslow called these sorts of experiences `peak experiences', but we call them the Tea Party!

This page is devoted to posts taken from the Sister-Awake mailing list describing what the Tea does to us.

It was a Sunday afternoon - lazy-day afternoon - session time. The Edges of Twilight was bleeding from my speakers and I was becoming increasingly mellow. Then the cool, bluesy tones of Drawing Down the Moon began. The music stole my senses utterly - everything around me ceased to exist except the sound. It enfolded me totally, settling on my skin, seeping through the pores; it flowed with my blood and sank into my bones. I heard it with every cell in my body, and was completely swept away.
I can't stop telling people about this band. There have been songs in the past that have captivated me - stopped me in my tracks, made me listen. But never before has a band's every song entranced me the way the Tea Party's has. The Tea Party are like a dream to me. A wonderfully fulfilling dream I can have whenever I want, wherever I am. And it will always make me feel good.
- MM

... despite discovering some incredible music lately, I still can't get over how powerfully Tea music affects me - after the first "silence swimming in a pool of dreams", I realized how long since I'd felt that deep, intense, heart-bursting sensation that so often powers me up - sometimes it's Jeff's voice, sometimes JB's drumming, sometimes Stu's keyboards (the ending on Psychopomp gives me the shivers every time).
- JE

Let me tell you....
You people here, are the ones who know what it is to live. You understand the realms of the Tea Party. The worlds they create, the dreams they breathe. To sit in a live concert lay back on the floor, slam into a stranger, the essence is the same. We drown into the Teaparty, they create something that is beyond the every day. Beyond neatly mown lawns, and a nine to five job. This is the call, the scream guiding us back to a life that matters. A pagan urge to do something real to feel something undiluted by the everyday. Children screaming at the moon, naked making love under the stars.
NO one understands this here. I'm in Sydney Australia, and no one gets it, no one fucking understands what it is to really live. To be. DO YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT? The first time you heard them, and they hooked you through the eyes, dragged you screaming into...into what ever it is they create...worlds.
They inspired me. And I thank them.
- SG

The only term that can properly describe the feeling that came over me was "blown away". I made damn sure to buy a t-shirt of their's just so I could be 100% positive that I remembered the band's name. (Well, after a few beers.you know how it goes.) I didn't know any of the songs at the time, but the next day when I bought "Edges.", I can remember them doing "Sister Awake" and "Turn the Lamp Down Low". Like a woman possessed and needing to hear more ASAP, I drove all the way up to New Brunswick to buy "Splendor." (Because it wasn't available here and ok, I visited some relatives too - hahaha) and I remembered hearing "Save Me". Both discs have been in constant rotation in my cd player ever since.
Just sign me: "Thirsty for more Tea" - M

MMMMM, 300 words to express the concoction of emotions this Canadian 3 piece manages to exhume from deep within. You may feel that this statement is a wee bit over the top, but sorry, this band really moves me. The euphoric scents from a mythical Eastern temple looms, thick and heavy. Spiralling from the glowing charcoal at a musical ritual. Below, the Pagans celebrate the unity of cultures as they dance amongst the cinders to the overwhelming percussive heart-beat of an angry god. Like the ancient vine, rhythms and scents intertwine through stories of journeys, emotions and consequences and verbally executed by a Shaman blessed with a voice of depth, intensity and power. That's what they do to me. Don't you understand?
- Metro Beat.

Their shows I relate to the final car chase scene in the Blues Brothers, where they go through hell to get the Cook County building to put down the money for the church, and when they finally get there and get out of the car, it totally falls apart. During the show, I could be so thirsty (which I was), I could have to take a piss so badly (which I did), I could be so tired from having gone to the show straight from work (which I was), and there could be a nuclear war going on outside (okay, that's pushing it a bit), but I would never notice any of it with how enthralling the show is.
- KW

Saw a bunch of bands and smoked more tea before the Tea Party. Party blew me away. The show was so amazing there was a full moon and three stars forming a triangle were above the stage. Jeff even commented on how mystical the night was. That was by far the coolest atmosphere for seeing the Tea Party it had a very halloween like atmosphere.
- TM

I was a casual Tea Party fan from about 2 years ago. I had the Edges of Twilight and I listened to it occasionally. Then I got the chance to see them at the Metro in Sydney in March last year. WOW!! they changed my life. The day after I went and bought Splendor Solis and put both albums on high rotation for weeks on end. I was completely addicted and I still am - and I haven't been the same since! (Sound familiar to anyone? thought so!)
That one concert just changed my outlook on life in general, not just towards music, although being a musician myself I couldn't help but be blown away by the playing. (Also the fact that over the night I probably passively smoked the equivalent of about 20 joints, which helped things along too). It was such feeling of communion, a meeting of like-minded people all there for that very reason. I can defintely understand why the Tea Party call Sydney one of their favourite gigs worldwide. The Tea Party seem to be at present in a league of their own in every aspect of their performance, and so every concert I've been to since has just seemed weak in comparison.
- M

The Tea Party at the Metro last year is the most stirring performance of any type I have ever witnessed. Having about 5 minutes of that eastern `atmospheric' music, and then the huge scarlet curtain being pulled away to reveal the band's setup on stage, intermingled with a scarlet backdrop, three glowing candelabras and bottles of red wine. The stage was then grace by stuart and the two jeffs who quickly ripped into a mindblowing version of `The Bazaar'. The crowd moving up and down as one, everyone in the room was captivated by what was happening on stage from that moment on, we were drawn into it, almost entranced. This worked so well because the Metro is such an intimate venue, those kinds of feelings can be so readily exchanged. The barriers between the band and the audience is almost non-existent. And I'm sure the Hordern Pavillion isn't conducive to that kind of atmosphere. I mean, if they do play at the Hordern it will be an absolutely awesome concert, but a "sense of communion and meeting of the minds"? I'm not so sure.
- M

I have been the largest Tea Party fan for a number of years and to tell you the truth I had no real hobbies before I started to listen to them but once I got my first taste of pure musical genus I new it would change my life and it has to the greats extent. I used to just play Drums as a fun thing to do but after listening to the pure brillance of the of the Druming master Jeff Burrows that ended and forced me to think how can one man be so damn fast! Now where ever I go I always seem to be tapping away a tasty Burrows beat! Now I know that the Tea Party has to put up with some shit over the years with comparisons and bad reviews but That is the biggest bunch off bull shit I have ever heard. In my opinon the only reason the media has brings out these comparisions is because they are SCARED and they know that they are looking at this band that is changing the face of music and are doing it with style and can't except that they RULE. See most people just have not figured out that they like the Tea Party yet! I am just writing this because hey I thought with out The Tea Party who knows what we would all be doing instead of poping in a Indie cd, or Splendor, or Edges, or Alhambra, or Transmission cd in. So lets all hope that they don't stop what they are doing!
- S

My eyes became opened at the shear brilliance of this 3 piece band when I saw the tea back in August of 1993 at RPM in Toronto. I can remember to this day, just as if it happened yesterday, the song that "converted" me. It was Sun Going Down. One of my favourites. Let me explain ...
The stage was dark except for one white spot light on JM who was sitting on a chair/stool. My vantage point was excellent because it was from up above, like a second floor view. Well, when JM started strumming the blues, my spine jumped and it was then that I realized this was more than just music. It was an experience. The way the tea took this song through one's emotions, building the tempo only to be let down gently by JM poetic interplay with the audience on how he should be let into the gate's of heaven, virtually pleading with St. Peter was something out of a surreal encounter that lasted a wonderful 20 minutes!! I vowed from that day on, that no matter how many times I would see the tea, I knew that each show was an experience unto itself.
I am proud to say that it has been since their Indie album that I have taken the tea journey. Frankly, several years later I still am not tired of listening to this high energy, ispirational, emotionally insightful group. May all future tea journeys be equally moving ones.
- LD

About Release; I just wanted people to now this:
My step-mother liked some tea party stuff ... mostly Splender Solis. But she says that her favorite song of all time is Release. Even before she knew what it was about. She says it is the most beautiful song she has ever heard before and for the first time today she finally saw the video with me and she started to cry. Her favorite part in the song is the last verse when he says, "I want you to be free/ I want you to be free from me." And she started to cry during that part ... she said she was really moved by the visual images she can now see with the video of the song. Exspecially the image of that picture in the subway of what looked like a girl in a white sheet who seemed to be wrapped in barbed wire.
- WC

In response to the question "What does the Tea Party's music feel like to you?"
Sister-Awakers gave the following replies:

Yes, I have felt a physical sensation from a Tea Party song: The Bazaar. The first time I heard it, it was like 'wow!'. And A Certain Slant of Light. It made my heart feel and my backbone. Bizarre.... - L

I do. Mmmm ... hard to explain though. I go into something like a trance, I suppose ... and I start breathing either really deep or really shallow ... my and my friend affectionately nicknamed it 'inhaling the music'. We both do it :) ... I guess that's not really explaining how it feels, but rather admitting I look like a total moron while listening to music ... to a group of strangers, no less. heh. - ps

'Save Me' gives me tingles up & down my spine. The first time this song really hit me, I was lying on my bed reading, and my son was playing music in his room - both doors next to each other & ajar. The first chorus of Save Me finally penetrated my concentration, & Jeff's voice went right to the depths - it felt like every nerve in my body had come alive, starting from my spine & flowing through the rest of my body. That was what made me really listen to the Tea - let's face it, there was no way I could NOT love them after that. I still get the same reaction when I listen to this on headphones.

'In This Time' brings on a warm sort of bursting feeling - there's only one way I can effectively describe this - it opens my heart chakra. I think some of you will know what I mean :-)

'The Bazaar' - makes me feel incredibly alive - this more than any song I know has every cell in my body dancing. There's a fantasy movie (Never Ending Story?) with a clan of little people who look sort of like jolly potatoes, & they dance a lot & are generally high spirited in a gentle contented way - when I listen to 'The Bazaar' I feel like one of them!!

'Turn the Lamp Down Low' (Alhambra version) - This one has a slinky, silky sort of effect - I love to dance to this - in a candle lit room, weaving through the incense smoke, building up from slow & sensuous to a dirvish-like frenzy! The drum solo (nah - can't call that a solo - all three of them are playing!) is very passionate. I find this version very sensous & erotic - much more so than the Edges version.

'Psychopomp' - when I listen to this with headphones, it makes me cry. And cry. And cry. It evokes deep deep feelings & emotions, & brings them up to surface where I can't ignore them. And Stu's ending leaves a finishing shiver every time, headphones or not. The raw emotion in this song is extremely powerful.
- JE

Every - absolutely every time I listen at least to Drawing Down the Moon; many times with Sister Awake and every now and then with Psychopomp (UGH!! Those dammed little twocky electronic sounds ... They shouldn't be there) ... What kind of feeling? I don't know it goes really, really deep ... In fact to the core ...
For instances with Drawing Down the Moon it begins immediately with the very first sounds that another band would have deleted since it seems that it was JM's hand going through its guitar's arm ...
- JL

In response to how music feels: Turn the Lamp Down Low (acoustic version) makes me feel like I'm spinning around until the drums part where I can just feel every beat hitting me. If you sit between some really big speakes and listen to the first little bit of drums in Inanna (acoustic version) it gives you a pretty wierd feeling but that's nothing personal. As for the others: Save Me, The Bazaar, Drawing Down the Moon, Coming Home, Psychopomp, Temptation.
- O.

Time and In This Time just FILL me ... hard to explain, but I just close my eyes ... and the world goes away ... and I can FEEL the music. Better than any drug ... total feeling of euphoria for me. And TTP is the ONLY band I have ever experieced this with ...
- JC

Gotta add a new "feeling" song to my list ... Watching What The Rain Blows In. Had never heard this song until Ken cut me the Indie CD (Thanks, Ken). I must have played it 8 times over and over while I was washing my kitchen floor this morning ... tears rolling down my face the whole time ... what an emotional idiot ... heheheh ..
- JC

Don't feel so bad Judy. I just broke up with my fiance this week and everytime I play the song, I weep like a baby, especially at the line 'you're like a flower/fading and grey'. You're not hte only emothinal Teahead on the list. For the reso fyou, I get almost transcendental with just about every Tea song I hear, except the ones from the Indie album. Other great music I get wrapped up in physically and emotionally; Tori Amos - Boys for Pele Doors - Spanish Caravan, the End Metallica - Master of Puppets Garbage - #1 Crush and I get really pshychotic when I play Live thru This by Hole. I would say the Tea and the Doors are the only bands I put my whole soul into listening though.
- S.

Absolutely! I do feel the music as a bodily sensation - especially for me the Eastern rythyms and instruments.
- JK

This is my first posting on this list, so I should introduce myself. Well actually all I'll say is that my name is Mark and I live in Sydney, Australia. So now to get onto the important stuff here, I was a casual Tea Party fan from about 2 years ago. I had The Edges of Twilight and I listened to it occasionaly. Then I got chance to see them at the Metro in Sydney in March last year. WOW!! That one concert just changed my outlook on life in general, not just towards music, although being a musician myself I couldn't help but be blown away by the playing. (Also the fact that over the night I passively smoked the equivalent of about 20 joints, which helped things along too). It was just such feeling of communion, a meeting of like-minded people all there for that very reason. I can define it - the Tea Party seem to be at present in a league of their own in every aspect of their performance, and so every concert I've been to since has just seemed weak in comparison. I can't wait to see the and in the meantime, there's not all that much time until transmission comes out!
- MH

I'm pretty heavily into meditation, and on the few occasions that I have meditated to them (edges especially) I've had some interesting, you could say, visionary experiences.
- MM
Mike, can you share them with us? Ok if they're too personal, but you've got me intrigued!

I've had quite a few experience using the tea party as a facilitator for trance and shamanic ecstacy. If anyone on the list has read up on shamanism, transcendental meditation, Zen or anything about Native American Vision quests, you'll probably be closer to what I'm saying. Basically I have amalgamated the aspects that I find work or are appealing from a variety of sources and meditate using a convoluted form of these practices. On a some occasions I will use either music, incense, medicine stones, mushrooms or certain breathing techniques to embark on some amazing "quests" (that's the best way I can encapsulate the experience). Most of the time when I use the Tea Party I receive some incredible results. Needless to say I have experimented with, and usually enter a trance and explore the practically limitless expanse of the universe within. It's actually pretty incredible the amount of clandestine experiences our minds harbor and only reveal when pandered to. A few specific examples involve a partial detachment from what we know as to be our bodies. (Although this sounds incredibly cliche and corny, in actuality it is relatively easy to view in a different light when we simply realize that the universe and everything we encounter is a direct result from our own minds. In one way or other, and depending on the degree to which you believe this statement, we exist within a solipsism. Granted there probably is some sort of physical plane that one is able to revel and consequently communicate through, which we know as the common experience, but we view everything in reference to ourselves and therefor there is validity in the aforementioned statement declaring the solopsistic nature of our existence, and of course the ramifications that would extend this "reality" into a pragmatic, malleable and above all tangible system.) Anyway, I got a little side tracked and was actually simply trying to alleviate some of the connotations that these type of transcendental experiences often carry. One of the most incredible meditations I have had with the tea parties aide was a few months ago when, as close as I can convey this is an experience outside, once again using another cliche, the bounds of words. It basically was like entering another world while residing within my general awareness. A dualistic experience that allowed me to somehow be in flux between two or more different universes within my mind. I felt quite a few "pushes" (once again an inadequate adjective to convey the meaning) that forced my body into small, concentrated convulsions. I was inundated by waves of powerful emotions that were both common and some that I could not even classify. Of course there was always a series of smooth images jerking around and slithering with a visionary bliss that enveloped me. Then, the shamanistic part became evident and I felt an odd metallic, yet completely organic molding and transformation of my body. Shamans especially, employ a technique that actually involves them changing shape into their animal guide or Naguales. (the transformation, some say is physical, but in most cases it is within the mind and on a different level. This is where mine took place.) Keep in mind that I was not doped up or anything. This was natural meditation, with of course the aid of our beloved band. What exactly I was becoming still eludes me, but I have experience the same kind of shift before. The entire event, probably lasting for forty five minutes or so, and embraced an odd dualistic semblance that went beyond words. I also found that during parts of it I was considering the, oddly enough, practical applications of shamanism. (Even though this type of juxtapositioning is our of character for me when meditating) It was interesting to say the least. I have had quite a few other experiences, but don't want to bore the rest of you guys with them.
-MM

I have had almost the same experience. It was at edgefest 97 in vancouver and I was on the most intense mushroom high I have ever had and the tea started playing Save Me and I felt like I was in another world, or a different 'when'. The pushes I felt though were the people moshing around me.
- B

I've just came from having a mystical experience ...
Well, as mystical as an agnostic person like myself can have ...
In fact it was a deeply emotional experience but since some of our last messages were about kinds of mystical experiences and meditation and stuff I find it more appropriate to use the term ...
"Come on ... What is the experience you are talking about?" you ask ...
Well, I have this friend and he has this brother. In fact a rich person. Rich enough to have a stereo system "worthing" US$60,000 ... You read write ... $60,000. The zeros are those ones ...
I went to his place with Edges ... and the Temptation single (because of the River version) ...
I couldn't listen to the whole album but I was knocking the doors of Heaven went Drawing Down the Moon came. And then I went through. And in I was ... in Heaven, guys ...
I know I'll probably never attend a Live Tea Party session but do you have any idea of what it is to listen to Drawing Down the Moon on a $60,000 sound system? And the River (Alhmabra version)? Can you imagine the drumming? Or the sound of the guitar in Drawing ... And Jeff's voice? And all the rest for that matter?
Well, it ended. I left Heaven. I came down ... And here I am, writting to you ...
That's life.
- JL

All in all this was the most amazing, mind blowing, breathtaking show I've ever - and I'm pretty sure WILL ever see ... after I got in the car I was still in a weird mood, hell, I still am, just blown away by the experience ... to anyone who could have gone to this show and didn't I FEEL SOOOOOOOO SORRY FOR YOU ... this was such a good show I couldn't believe it ... I'll stop trying to describe it ... it's like describing sex to a virgin ... I could never convey in words what the experience was ... I can safely say it's changed me, for the better of course ... but changed me.
- AH

If you would to add your mindblowing experience of the Tea to this site, please send email to: n.rickard@sci.monash.edu.au

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