surreal moments #1-5 and ... i'm out.

i wrote this whole long blog on the plane over to australia and the evil that is mac mail ate it. it’s been eating a lot of things lately. it must be hungry.

anyway, fuck it.
i’m now sitting in a cafe in sydney with my twitter-ride comrades, kate and tina, who are indulging the fuck out of me while i sit here and write this.

then i’m heading totally offline for about two weeks. no phone, no email, no twitter.

where will i be?
i’ll be outside sydney, hiding.
just yoga, people, food, meditating and a good long breath.
…it’s technically teacher training but i’m not actually planning on teaching, at least not until i get old and start my nightclub/juice-bar/cinema yoga studio, when i’m like 90.
i will wear only kimonos and start chain-smoking menthols because at that point i’ll be like FUCK IT.

neil will be 105 (or dead -but let’s hope for the best) and will hopefully enjoy my kimono antics as he sits in a bathtub, reading and sipping endless cups of tea, with cream and extra sugar.
being old will be great. i’m psyched.


then i head to melbourne for two weeks relatively OFF and try to be an artist again. 
melbourne  ninja gigs a definite possibility, and it looks like i might do a mini-gig in the butterfly again just for contest winners who help me promote the show at the forum
(which needs help BADLY, since i’m going up against the soundwave festival…if you’re in melbourne and want info on how to help me, go HERE.)

then i tour oz and new zealand, and somewhere in there i’m headed to a recording studio outside adelaide…just to see what happens.

i haven’t been in the studio since “Who Killed Amanda Palmer” with ben folds. it’s time. there’s songs. if all goes well, i’ll be able to put this shit out myself. pray for me.

i wrote some more blogs on the plane to be sent while i’m gone (one about michael jackson…i watched “this is it” on the plane - but now i’m thinking i might save it for later so that i can add to it - and one about Evelyn Evelyn).
and i also left tons of shit for sean and beth to twitter while i’m gone. i’ll be with you in spirit :)

……

so

the trip to france was a mistake.
i should have checked the weather. i’m a fucking idiot. i somewhere imagined the south of france being perennially warm. like florida, or other places with palm trees.
it was fucking mitten weather.
it was one of those snowball trips…i took a gig at the MIDEM conference because i thought cannes owuld be warm, and then..why not book a gig in bordeaux? and then…why not book a gig
in a nearby little town? c’mon, it’ll be warm…and quaint….

it was not warm, it was not quaint, i was tired and the travel was hard, and the shows were fine, weird and quiet. 
france outside of paris is a really small market for me - there were only about 200 people at each show. 
and they don’t really follow me online. so they don’t know me as well as, say, people in san francisco, or london.
this is the thing about the net.

my panel at MIDEM was short and trivial, we didn’t talk about anything very significant.

but i could talk about THIS for hours….in the cities where my fans are online and really follow me, the SHOWS ARE WAY BETTER, BECAUSE THEY KNOW ME.
it’s like internet dating. we get to know each other over the course of a year or two and then when we finally get together, it’s like we already know each other and can get right to the (often great) sex.
when i play for a cold audience who doesn’t follow me, it’s closer to going on a blind date with a third cousin. not as sexy.

surreal moment #1:

this living statue was stationed outside the main MIDEM conference hall one night.

i gave him some money, which i always do….even though the fact that he was using two trained cats kind of bugged me out.
he saw my MIDEM badge and my music case and must have somehow decided i was important and/or famous.
so after i took this picture with him he turned to me and told me, in VERY broken english, about his horrible fucking life and how he’s old and his three children are grown and how he hates being a fucking statue and how he can barely make ends meet and could i please, please, please help him out with his music career, he plays guitar and has to get out of this fucking racket man it’s killing him.



it was humbling and kinda painful.


surreal moment #2. no comment.




the suits at MIDEM were all running around talking about apps and social networking and the future of the music business, and meanwhile i’m trying to ignore it all and stay focused on what’s important:
the music. the fans. the simple connection. i feel like you can get lost in a sea of clever concepts. sometimes i feel like the suits overanalyze everything so much they forget why people love music.

but i got to meet some awesome people i’ve been chatting with online. mike masnik from techdirt (sweetheart) and jeff pulver for the 140 conference (ditto).
you can tell they love music and are geeky in a way that drives things forward. 

having spent a lot of time thinking about it, i think i have a point.
the whole point is: if you’re an artist, you either like connecting or you don’t. if you like it, you’ll find every possible creative way (online: blogging, twittering. live: meeting, signing, hugging etc.) to do it.
if you’re a misanthrope, you’re simply fucked. it’s 2010. the currency is connection. the internet is the tool.

my favorite picture from MIDEM…check out the comments when i twittered it, they’re hilarious: http://twitpic.com/zoqpf
“4 out of 6 cute, nerdy, industrious & chairless men at the #MIDEM conference prefer mac over PC.”



MIDEM also made me a great couple of friends…one is the DJ/producer hal ritson from the young punx, who i’m going to collaborate with on a dance mix of “map of tasmania” (you heard me).
he’s aces (esp if you’re in the UK, go watch the video ROCKALL, it features some of the guys from the mighty boosh and it’s hilarious)

hal took this photo of me with the french police outside the french music awards…

this is me & hal at the super-cheesy david guetta afterparty.
i borrowed thomas’ prada sunglasses to try to fit in.


he introduced me, in turn, to a UK dj named caged baby, aka thomas, whose sunglasses i stole and who just happened to live outside bordeaux, where i was headed.
so my awesome housemate geeta showed up and hopped on the party train. thomas took us to a restaurant in a 600-year old chateau in the middle of nowhere that had fucking miro and matisse pritns hanging on the walls….

surreal moment #3, and this one almost legitimately surreal….


people eating pasta under a miro.
sorry the pictures so bad.

i twittered this and a lot of art lovers expressed horror at the blazing lighting on the paitning.
i think it looks worse than it is.

we also noticed there were no bars on the windows. so if you’re in the market to steal some miros out of a restaurant, head to france. 

and off we all went to bordeaux, and drove 2 hours into cognac country to thomas’ house. 

he lives surrounded by vineyards and 6 other houses.

this is geeta, outside the house:

thomas in his home studio….

and his one-eyed cat, nelly, named after lord nelson:

thomas fed and watered us and we felt loved.

then we headed back to bordeaux and i played my second show outside of town.

i lost my ATM card.

then geeta lost her ATM card.

(well, to be fair, a bank ate it).

we were broke for a while and a small crisis day ensued.
i wound up borrowing cash from the promotor.

by now, i was in a foul mood.

i bought a winter jacket, finally accepting the fate that it Was Not Warm the South of France.


…………..

then geeta took off for paris and i flew to vienna. where it was snowing.

but i didn’t make it to vienna. by connection from bordeaux was late and the last plane from paris to vienna left without me.
so the fucking airline gave me a hotel voucher for one of those soulless airport hotels with one-piece plastic bathrooms and no minibar.

due to the lack of minibar, i twittered for wine and two people from paris showed up.
i had never met either of them.
one was nina, she brought a great bottle of red and some m&m’s.
one was olivier, he brought TWO bottles of red a bunch of twix.

when such events transpire, there’s only one thing left to do…
so i did it.
an hour long drunk french webcast.
i slogged my way through my first françoise hardy song on ukulele.
olivier played cameraman with my mac while i performed a touching & drunk rendition of “makin’ whoopee” as requested by neil.
(the whole webcast was recorded and, beware tired slightly drunk amanda, you can watch it HERE.)

anyway, by then i was really really fucking tired and everyone got kicked out and i went to bed.

i love the internet.

the internet means free wine driven to you when you’re tired and stuck at a shitty airport.
the internet is an awesome thing.



surreal moment #4,
playing a weird ninja gig in vienna in front of a defensive missile tower from WWII.


then we all headed to a cafe and hung out…..

it was the world’s fastest ninja gig.

i announced it 25 minutes before going.

the actual show in vienna was fucking incredible…the antidote i needed after the french shows, which were quiet and small.

i stayed at a fans house, a great girl named kathi who has a wonderful posse of friends and a cat who i got to cuddle at night.
kathi gave up her actual bed for me, which was fucking noble, and i burned my chin on her chandelier. long story.
she also had a friend named KLAUS who does great shiatsu. he chinese cupped my back and when i posted on twitter that it felt better than sex,
i got a faux-grumpy email from neil saying that he was getting flack for not being as sexy as chinese cupping. so i took it back.
but check out the awesome photo (care of kathi):

in the background: the chin eating chandelier.


i played at the Arena, the same place the dolls have headlined and also opened up for NIN back in 2005.
beautiful old, old, old converted building with tons of character and vibe:

it was a stupendous night all around….great sound, great people. 
i sold out the joint, almost 1200 people, i couldn’t believe it.
the feeling of playing solo to so many people while being technically off tour was transcendent. 
i had this sort of “holy shit, i can just DO this” feeling. it balances out the times that i don’t, and can’t. those times do happen.

i’ll look for good footage to post, but i think the highlight was the beginning, when i covered a song by HEINTJE on ukulele.
this will only be hilarious to german-speaking people.

here’s a fucking epic photo by @nacaseven taken from side of stage:

this is what the outsides of me have been doing.

the insides of me have been depleted, and sort of lonely.

i am really, really, really looking for the time off.
i haven’t had time off-line and alone in about 3 years. 

it’s time.


i love you.

rock on with your smocks on


xxx
AFP


p.s. congrats to my neil-moxy, by the way, for getting an oscar nomination for “coraline”. sadly, no, i won’t be there, it’s the same night as my show at the sydney opera house.
but if bjork calls to loan me the swan dress, i’ll swear i’ll consider warping time and space and heading over. anybody got a tardis handy?

p.s.s. TOUR DATES:
February 26
The Forum Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 4
Spiegeltent
Adelaide, Australia
Ages: All
BUY TICKETS!

March 7
Sydney Opera House
Sydney, Australia
Ages: All
BUY TICKETS!

March 8
A & I Hall
Bangalow (Byron Bay), Australia
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 10
The Zoo
Brisbane, Australia
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 12
Bodega
Wellington, New Zealand
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 16
Al’s Bar
Christchurch, New Zealand
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 17
Kings Arms Tavern
Auckland, New Zealand
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

April 12
The A.R.T. [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Cambridge (Boston), MA
DETAILS COMING SOON! Stay tuned HERE and HERE for additional info…

April 17
Òran Mór [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Glasgow, Scotland
Ages: 14+
BUY TICKETS!

April 19
The Academy [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Dublin, Ireland
Ages: 14+
BUY TICKETS!

FOURTH SHOW IN LONDON ADDED!
April 22
Koko [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Camden (London), England
Ages: 16+
BUY TICKETS!

April 23
Bush Hall [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
London, England
Ages: 14+ (under 18yrs with an adult)
SOLD OUT!

April 24
Bush Hall [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
London, England
Ages: 14+ (under 18yrs with an adult)
SOLD OUT!

April 25
Bush Hall [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
London, England
Ages: 14+ (under 18yrs with an adult)
SOLD OUT!

April 27
L’Europeen [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Paris, France
BUY TICKETS!

April 28
Melkweg [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
BUY TICKETS!

April 29
Kampnagel [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Hamburg, Germany
BUY TICKETS!

May 1
Babylon [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Berlin, Germany
BUY TICKETS!

May 3
Gloria [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Köln (Cologne), Germany
BUY TICKETS!

May 4
Arenbergschouwburg [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
Antwerp, Belgium
BUY TICKETS!


And lots and lots more to come in the US and such…


p.s.s. surreal moment #5, going into a bathroom in vienna and seeing this poster called “TOILET CAM”.
who do i see (bottom right hand corner) but my fucking friend scotty the blue bunny. small, surreal, little world.

FAME WHORING

i’ve had a hard time waking up lately. as soon as my brain activates, it floods with content. i’ve run out of RAM.
i have too many subjects to cover. 

“as in life; in blog.”

what’s the latin for that? i want a plaque.

so, i simplify.

i wanted to talk about the golden globes. 

later, i will talk about all sorts of other crazy shit, like getting married, and…stuff.
hell, looks like i have my whole fucking life to talk about that one, what’s the rush?

…………

so, the golden globes, and fame whoring.

we went because “coraline”, which was based on neil’s book, was nominated for best animated feature.

in order to understand the background of all this, you need to know a few things.

i do not ever go to the movies. i have almost no awareness of famous hollywood people.
when i’m in my chiropractor’s office i will occasionally read a tabloid, or i will get wind of some cultural phenomenon through links that people send me.

there were probably 70+ films up for nominations spread across the actor awards (“avatar”, “inglourious basterds”, “up in the air” and a few others were hugely represented)  

of these 70+ films, i had seen ONE of them. 

coraline. 

(i’d seen ONE of the television shows: “entourage”).

no offense to neil, but if i hadn’t been his main squeeze, the chances of me seeing it would have hovered close to below zero. 
i just don’t make time for movies. ever. even on planes nowadays, which used to be my film-culture catch-up ground, i end up sleeping or reading.

so…i felt like an alien. but i have to say, i enjoyed the fact that i had a VERY VAGUE idea of what people are supposed to do at these things. 
i decided to keep it magical, do no research (how would you fucking research this anyway? buy “the red carpet for dummies”? call fucking j-lo?) and just do what i’ve been doing my whole life: wing it. 

(i actually just googled “red carpet etiquette” and theres a slew of shit. thank god i missed that.)

we showed up from the airport (focus films paid for everything, thanks guys) a few hours before we had to get to the joint for the event. (the golden globes are held in a beverly hills hotel restaurant-banquet-hall.)
a team of stylists descended upon me, arranged a few days before by me & fabulous lorraine, neil’s main assistant. the make-up was done by jennifer (who came through neil’s LA assistant, kitty, who knew she’d toured with tori amos), the hair was done by chris (also a friend of cat’s) and my dress was whisked in and tailored by a fantastic gal named jessica, who saw my blog about looking for a dress and emailed in. she found the dress, rented it for me with money i wired into her account, and showed up with silicone tit-shields, a fucking SEWING MACHINE and a cute friend named max who took a picture of the three of us attacking me into glam shape, snip-snip-here-merry-old-land-of-oz style:


i’d narrowed the dress selection down to the slinky beady one and kambriel’s beautiful coat-dress, and we decided, group consensus, to go with the beads. (thanks for all your input, by the way. i think about 700 of you weighed in with your opinions).

jessica had brought a bunch of slips to go under it, and HAND-SEWN one to match (she’s a serious find), and we tried out every combination.
the ending consensus, including neil (and this was his gig, so i didn’t want to ho-bag him out at his own event) was to sport the balls-out slipless dress for the carpet and keep kambriel’s for the afterparties.
i folded up kambriel’s dress and kept it in my ukulele case, which i carried around all night, since i don’t really own a purse. my 8 year old EMS hiking backpack and the beaded dress woulda clashed.

then we got in a car and drove off.

have you ever wondered how the red carpet shit works? i’d never thought about it.

the red carpet attendees all have to arrive by limo and line up in a queue.

you’re on camera when you get out of your car.
i, of course, being impatient and knowing fuck-all about the protocol, didn’t realize i was supposed to wait for a valet to escort me out of the car on the side where all the cameras were, so i hopped out of my side, lugging my ukulele case with me and missing the shot to be captured by network tv for posterity, which means i can kiss my fucking acting career goodbye forever.


then you wait in another line to enter the event via the official red carpet, where the camera crews are lined up. 
the red carpet is long, flanked on one side by the press and paparazzi and on the other side by those giant fake walls covered with logo endorsements that you’re used to seeing.
above those fake walls are stands of high-paying onlookers, who observe the entire circus from above.

this was all outdoors and it was raining, which happens once every decade or so in LA. this was clearly pissing off all of the celebrities who had paid a fortune to look amazing and were now getting fucking wet, especially the chicks in long dresses whose trains were now soggy and discolored. still, the smiles were wide and never peeled off, because when the cameras are on, you don’t stop that shit.

i never knew how this worked, and i’m sure there’s more of an art to it (someday i’ll ask a famous actor), but you’re basically supposed to parade casually and slowly down this long carpet and wait for the photographers on your left to yell at you if they care who you are. if they care who you are, they yell, you turn, preen and pose, and all the other photographers next to your yelling photographer will chatter and twitter and decide if you’re important enough for them to look away from who’s coming down the pike. it’s really, really weird. there were several red carpet “stations” throughout the night. the main one was the one when we entered, but there was another one inside the hotel, and one outside the NBC party later that night. at one point, i saw a german newspaper and they yelled at me so I went over and chatte with them in german (i think that’s where the below photo came from). i noticed a crew of bored-looking australian newspapers a few people down. mind you, they’re all behind a little waist-high cattle wall. i hadn’t been yelled at, but australians are generally friendly. i walked up to a woman, said hello, and started to chat up my upcoming tour dates in oz. the woman glared at me and hissed

“please back off. we’re only talking with the real talent here.”


oops. and ouch. i backed off, though of course my inner demon wanted to lean over the fucking cattle wall and hiss back in her ear that her mom sure had some real fucking talent last night. anyway. 

here i was, belly and all:

and as promised on the blog, neil took this picture of me pulling a dead amanda palmer on the carpet.
some tabloid picked this up and it would up getting over 75,000 hits on twitpic. i was proud.

while wandering around, i saw this chick with a Rock Love tattoo on her back.
the “Rock Love” tattoo was designed by someone on the dresden dolls’ forum (theshadowbox.net) ages ago, and a bunch of dolls fans got it tattooed on different parts of their bodies in fandom solidarity. 
so i asked her what her name was and what the story behind her tattoo was. she said her name was jenna and she found the picture “randomly on the internet”.
it turns out she’s from a television show called “glee”. crazy.
so many fucking famous people in one place.
there was a huge black dude at a table next to us and he had an awesome facial tattoo and i almost went up to compliment him.
he looked really familiar. 

i found out a few days later it was fucking mike tyson.

this was the joint. on stage, presenting an award for something or other, is paul mccartney, who was supposedly in some huge band in the 60s:

(p.s. just kidding, i know who paul fuckin’ mccartney is, at least)

i had never seen an awards show like this, even on TV. i think maybe when i was little i’d caught glimpses of the grammys and the oscars and i had a vague idea of the deal.
but mostly i was just enthralled by the strangeness of it all. it’s live TV, so the room was SUPER BRIGHT and lit for the cameras, and there were obvious political wars going on to our left and right as the tables were filled with industry brass and agents who were all pulling for their shows to win. it was like a giant, well-organized junior high school cafeteria, with the super-popular kids sitting in the tables closest to the stage. 

obviously, since it’s filmed live, there were commercial breaks. during the breaks, an announcer tells everyone that they’ve got about 4 minutes to mill around before getting back in their fucking seats.
during these 4-minutes, there is EXXXTREME POWER NETWORKING. all the agents and stars mill around, pollenating and trying to find people they know, doing the business of Hollywood.

i’d had no idea his show was nominated, and it was nice surprise to run into the only person i actually knew, adrian grenier from “entourage”…he’s also in a band called the honey brothers that i’ve played with a few times; the whole thing is a story for another day. adrian is one of a long list of people i have to indirectly thank for my engagement to neil, in a weird roundabout way. my great-grandmother’s ring (also a whole nother story) wound up symbolically blazing in this photo, which made me smile:

the bathroom was a SCENE and a half.

have you ever been to a bathroom in a nightclub when a bunch of chicks are cluttered around the mirror, frantically applying make-up with a fervor so intense you’re convinced that they’re about to walk out the door and be caught by the hollywood paparazzi on fucking national TV? well, there you go, these chicks actually were, and they were OUT FOR BLOOD.

there was a team of make-up artists (hired by the event, i assume) in a section of the bathroom who were there to fix broken nails, curl limp lashes, kill that frizz, and get rid of that damn shine.
i snapped this picture and posted it to twitpic, it was a hit. one of these women was famous, but i forget which one….lemme go check.

(the twitpic comments claim that one of these ladies is jenna fischer, one is julie benz from “dexter”, both from TV, i assume.)

note my stealthy cameo in the mirror:

please, please, you must read the telepromter for this photograph to make sense in it’s full irony:
(i almost got thrown out of the event for taking this one. apparently they’re very protective of the illusion.)


after about 12 awards had been announced, we got really bored.

i mean, it actually is boring, especially if you don’t know who most of the people are.

mo’nique, who’d i’d never heard of but immediately loved, gave the best acceptance speech, totally from the heart.
meryl streep also gave a really good speech, about being a vessel as an actress.

most of the speeches were really stock and predictable.                                   

“i would like to thank God, my crew and wonderful team, and my sweetie, without whom I’d be nothing.”

neil gave me a great parody acceptance speech later that night when i was in the bath. i wouldn’t be nothing without him. but my life would not be half as wonderful. 

after a while, neil started crossing off categories to see how long we had left to go:

(i decided to ebay this baby and it just closed at $515. neil & i signed it and we gave the money to doctors without borders, who are representing in haiti. there’s another charity auction with a few days left going on right now on the AFP account, as well: handwritten lyrics to “gaga, palmer, madonna”…oh, and my old iphone…shit, now i’m realizing i’ve never formally promoted that ‘lil eBay of ours, either……..again, another day)


then we hit the parties.

standard bragging rights dept: 
i met robert downey jr, (childhood crush fulfilled), quentin tarantino (loud-mouthed weirdo in person, but i think that’s his schtick), t-bone burnett (awesome, awesome), neil patrick harris (doogie!, and his hot boyfriend), a bunch of the cast of high school musical (none of whom i knew, but one was named zach), and a bunch of other movie stars about whom i was clueless. 
i also ran into steven merchant who i knew from BBC6, and who is really tall and really awesome and who i really need to remember to mail a copy of the Evelyn Evelyn record.

i wore wicked high heels and my toe next to my big toe on my left foot still has a pinched nerve. 
bucking the beauty standard amanda?? eh?? eh?!? next time: sneakers. 

this is the other hot dress, the one that got very little spotlight due to its lack of tits…designed and loaned to me by the ever-wonderful kambriel, she calls it the “silk midnight bustle”.


(photo by heather selick, the kick-ass wife of henry selick, who made “coraline”). 

and here’s the one that got me D-LISTED (as “hot slut of the day”, rad: http://www.dlisted.com/node/35697#comments):

when we left the NBC party, we got yelled at by some photographers who wanted to get shots of me in the naked dress.
which was of course, stuffed into my uke case where the kambriel dress had been all night. 

“amanda palmer and neil gaiman!” they yelled.

“hi” we said.

“naked dress!” they yelled.

“it’s in my ukulele case. i could change back”, i said.

“change back!”, they yelled.

“ok”, and change back i did.

the shots of me changing wound up on the net, hooray for changing in public:
http://gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/go_fug_yourself/2010/01/golden_globes_amandapalmer.html


and this shot wound up winning me BEST and WORST dressed at the golden globes on the same site:

here’s where things start to heat up.

reading the comments over there (http://gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/go_fug_yourself/2010/01/globes_bestworst_012210.html, if you’re interested) is like a study in 3 different subjects:
online celebrity gawking, feminism, anti-feminism, and the power of twitter to derail a internet poll.

first off, what was i thinking wearing a dress like that??
i was thinking: “this looks hot. i’m not afraid to rock this. the photographers will think it’s scandalous, and people will hopefully think i’m ballsy. i may never go to a red carpet thing again, so i should WORK it.”
plain and simple.

why did i not shave?
because i rarely shave, and i thought this was a lovely time to do some feminine culture-jamming. 
god knows we need it.

although, in turns out MO’NIQUE showed up with unshaven gams! check it out. she’s a fucking sister and between that and her speech, i’m SOLD:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1244457/Precious-actress-MoNique-shows-hairy-legs-Golden-Globe-awards.html

(check out the text at the bottom? coincidence? I THINK NOT!!!)

what was interesting to me were some of the comments that went like this one:
“i can understand and respect somebody’s decision not to shave, but really, for the golden globes??? get your shit together and shave.”
this is like a man saying “i understand this whole equality of the sexes thing, unless it means i’m not going to have dinner on the table, made by fucking YOU, when i get home from work.”

double standard. 

one thing i noticed about this event and the parties was how RAGINGLY SEXIST it was. 
i don’t do too much political/feminist railing in my blogs. i usually leave that to other people.
but seriously, these parties could have been straight out of 1956.

everybody loves to dress up. but it’s so interesting that “dressing up” - in this context - means getting very, very narrow. 

so it is in hollywood, land of dress-up, and so it is that you don’t see a ton of movement there on the feminist front.

it makes matters worse that when you do pull a move that is slightly out of the box. then you’re really under the gun.
(julia roberts famously flashed some hairy pits at a paparazzi camera at a red carpet event a few years back and got a titanic load of grief for it, doubled by the fact that her dress was “old” - she’d already worn it to a premiere 7 years before - HORRORS….and my etiquette lesson continues….)


you can go in any direction to be “shocking” to this crowd. hell, they’re “shocked” by lady gaga smearing blood on herself at the MTV awards.
have they never heard of g.g. allin? annie sprinkle? throbbing gristle? (google it, kids. those are people worth knowing about).

once you step outside the mainstream, whether you’re doing something deliberately saucy (like wearing a naked-dress) or something “normal” - but outside the beauty standard (like not shaving) - you’re going to be accused by the peanut gallery of the same thing: FAME WHORING.

once again, it’s A LOT like high school. there was such a strict code of sticking to the party line, and one step outside said line could cost you your social life.
most important: if you stepped outside the party line, you would be accused not only of being a weirdo, but far worse: of being weirdo DELIBERATELY to get attention.

and to a certain extent, its true. you KNOW that by dressing expressively, you’re asking for grief. 
when you choose to do it all the same, you’re asking for a life of paradox, grey area and misunderstanding. 

so many of my fans know and understand this.

just like any kid who decides to fuck what his friends are doing and swim against the stream is signing himself up for a school career of getting shit in the hallways, any celebrity who decides to present themselves outside the standard box will be confronted for “acting out” to serve their own, greedy personal needs. 

a lot of celebrities go through phases where they duck under cover for a while, pop out and declare their independence and then duck again so they don’t drown in a cesspool of negative comments from the peanut gallery. 

most celebrities don’t dare cross the line.
why bother and possibly fuck up your career?

luckily for me, i CAN’T fuck up my career….not this way, not really. 
i don’t need hollywood to love or accept me in order to get work. my work is elsewhere.  
i’m in another world and i can risk it.

so if i can explain this (please lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood) in a nutshell:

i do this sort of shit BECAUSE I CAN.


want some irony?
i DID shave for the boston pops show a couple of years ago. 
why?

because of MY MOTHER. the pops was a huge deal to her, a giant deal locally, and i sort of wanted to make her happy, in my own, strange, non-sequitur way.
why did i think that this was any different? i dunno. i change my mind, i create my own weird standard as i go along and i make random decision every day. then i stick by them. 

i also pointed out recently in an interview that i NEVER would have had the balls to do this 10 years ago.
but here’s why: the public didn’t know me. i didn’t have ten years worth of cred under my belt.

now, when i pull shit like this, i have a legion of fans and friends who know who i actually am, what i actually stand for, and where i’m really coming from.

i’ve made a career’s worth of decisions to steer away from certain kinds of mainstream success. 
now i’m IN CONTEXT. 

i could talk for a lifetime about the laws of fame and celebrity, but this blog is getting long. 
you ain’t heard the last from me on this topic.
stay tuned for life.

in a nutshell, if you’re headed out:

CHANGE IT UP, FEAR NOTHING, RESPECT THE UNEXPECTED, HARM NOBODY.

love,
AFP.



p.s. in international news, i wound up, TOTALLY ACCIDENTALLY, at a french music awards show (featuring fucking jay-z, rihanna, beyoncé, mika - who ROCKED - and a bunch of other crazy famous people) about a week later. my friend hal ritson from the young punx managed to get this before french security came after us with their oozie-baguettes:

BELLY!!!


p.s.s. SEE ME LIVE BEFORE YOU DIE: mont-de-marsan, vienna, melbourne, adelaide, sydney, bangalow bay, brisbane, wellington, christchurch, auckland, london, edinburgh, glasgow, dublin, paris, amsterdam, hamburg, berlin, köln, antwerp, and SO many more to be announced soon (SO STAY TUNED)! tickets and more info at http://www.amandapalmer.net/afp/upcoming-shows



Cross-posted at MySpace

mes amis, j'arrive! j'arrive! (bordeaux, etc!)

my french friends….!
please send this to anybody you know who lives in the south of france!!
i am now in FRANCE for shows at the end of THIS month (january). i’ve got so many exciting things planned while i’m in town.


for starters, i will be playing two headlining shows in bordeaux and mont-de-marsan, get your tickets now!

January 26
Théâtre Trianon
Bordeaux, France
BUY TICKETS!

January 28
Café Music
Mont-de-Marsan, France
BUY TICKETS!

i will also be at the MIDEM conference speaking on a panel called “New Models at Work-The Artists’ Perspective” on january 23rd from 10:05-10:55am in Auditorium Debussy. more info HERE.i will also be doing a NINJA UKULELE GIG AT THE CONFERENCE!!!
sometime on saturday afternoon (the 23rd).
i will make sure i play somewhere ANYBODY can come see (not IN the conference, which is expensive!!!)
please follow me on twitter @amandapalmer to get the details on that day, it’ll be announced around noon!

bises
x
a


————


mes amis français… !

svp envoyez cela à tout le monde que vous connaissez dans le sud de la france !!

je viens en france à la fin de CE mois et j’ai tant de choses à faire pendant que je suis là.
liberté ! fraternité ! nudité !


VOICI LES INFOS !!!!

January 26
Théâtre Trianon
Bordeaux, France
BUY TICKETS!

January 28
Café Music
Mont-de-Marsan, France
BUY TICKETS!

je serai aussi à MIDEM à une table ronde qui s’appelle “new models at work - the artist’s perspective”, qui aura lieu le 23 janvier de 10h05 à 10h55 à l’Auditorium Debussy.

JE FERAI AUSSI UN CONCERT GRATUIT NINJA SUR LE UKULELE A MIDEM !

ça veut dire que je vais annoncer un lieu à la dernière minute et puis envoyer un message sur twitter pour l’annoncer à tout le monde. ce concert sera dehors et vous coûtera rien. je jouerai pendant quelque temps et puis je rencontrerai qui que ce soit. je vous signerai les seins si vous voulez.

ce concert sera DEHORS de la conférence — il fera pas partie de midem, qui coûte cher !!!

svp suivez-moi sur twitter - @amandapalmer - pour avoir les détails ce jour-là (le 23), l’annonce aura lieu vers midi !

bises
x
a

webcast tomorrow/i need a place to stay in melbourne AUS

i owe you a giant mega real-ass blog, what with getting engaged and posing dead on the red carpet at the golden globes last night. BUT scheduling calls if you missed the memo, miss @bethofalltrades and I will be webcasting TOMORROW (Tuesday) at 5PM EST. it’s a Post-War Trade-themed webcast, so we’ll be auctioning one or two of our most popular items (signed and nommed) as well as GIVING AWAY things like BPAL scents, slap bracelets, eyeshadow sets and magic eight balls. plus there’ll be some uke-playing, a ton of ASK AMANDA and, as always, wine. please come. it isn’t a PARTY ON THE INTERNET without you.

now for the rest: if you’re not from australia, you can most likely ignore the rest. i’ll try to post again tonight or tomorrow.

pronto:
I NEED A PLACE TO STAY IN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
i also need a KEYBOARD to borrow for the duration - an 88-key digital piano type-thing with built in speakers or an amp.
weighted keys if possible. if you don’t have a seat and stand i can grab. i’ll cover any transport and cover you with free tickets and merch and love, of course.

dates: between around february 11th & feb 27th (give or take a few days, possibly).

ideally, your classical-piano-playing great-aunt just died (not that that’s ideal, but…you know) and i can use her house before the estate salesmen come.
or you know of a flat sublet, or own a huge shining-like hotel and can give me the top floor.

i plan to write and play/bang on piano, so in the best of all worlds i can make noise at NIGHT.
i need hella privacy, so a house share/flatmate thing is only in the cards if i have a lot of space and closing doors.

it does not need to be free, but i’d ideally like to not spend an arm and a leg and be somewhere homey.
musts: reliable internet, proximity to CBD or brunswick street/fitzroy (or somewhere else super cool).

HOOK ME UP!
email mah team - Us@amandapalmer.net - with any info you got. (pictures, address, general run-down of the situation).
if it sounds like something that’ll work, we’ll be in touch with you ASAP.

thank you thank you
for the rest of you in melbourne: expect ninja gigs and weird happenings up the ass.

xxxAFP

p.s. ADELAIDE: working on possibly adding a second show AFTER the spiegel…somewhere weird. i’ve been having people send ideas. you should e-mail Us@amandapalmer.net with the subject line of “ADELAIDE VENUE” so we can investimigate. i’ll tweet as soon as/if we pick a place…


awesome art by emi boz


p.p.s. ain’t seen them up’n’comin’ tour dates, yet? January 19
Party on the Internet! [WEBCAST]
Boston, Massachusetts
Watch live at approximately 5-9PM EST on partyontheinternet.com

January 26
Théâtre Trianon
Bordeaux, France
BUY TICKETS!

January 28
Café Music
Mont-de-Marsan, France
BUY TICKETS!

January 31
Arena (Big Hall)
Vienna, Austria
BUY TICKETS!

February 26
The Forum Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 4
Spiegeltent
Adelaide, Australia
BUY TICKETS!

March 7
Sydney Opera House
Sydney, Australia
TICKETS COMING SOON!

March 8
A & I Hall
Bangalow (Byron Bay), Australia
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 10
The Zoo
Brisbane, Australia
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 12
Bodega
Wellington, New Zealand
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 16
Al’s Bar
Christchurch, New Zealand
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 17
Kings Arms Tavern
Auckland, New Zealand
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

April 23
Bush Hall [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
London, England
14+ (under 18yrs with an adult)
SOLD OUT!

April 24
Bush Hall [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
London, England
14+ (under 18yrs with an adult)
SOLD OUT!

April 25
Bush Hall [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
London, England
14+ (under 18yrs with an adult)
SOLD OUT!

telling The World

dear The World,

we are going to get married.

love,
amanda palmer and neil gaiman

cross-posted to neil’s blog

WHAT TO WEAR?? and tour dates.

in most important news: i have NEW TOUR DATES and if you can help me spread them around, please, please do.
as you know, i have absolutely no help from the record label now, so i’m on my own promoting these shows. 
in the states it’s easier and the word spreads faster, but in places like france i really, really need help:

AND please, please buy tickets in advance. 
if you’re not in these areas…the best thing you can do send these tour dates to other folks you know who live there.
it’s just us, people.

January 19
Party on the Internet! [WEBCAST]
Boston, Massachusetts
Watch live at approximately 5-9PM EST on partyontheinternet.com

January 26
Théâtre Trianon
Bordeaux, France
BUY TICKETS!

January 28
Café Music
Mont-de-Marchsan, France
BUY TICKETS!

January 31
Arena (Big Hall)
Vienna, Austria
BUY TICKETS!

February 26
The Forum Theatre
Melbourne, Australia
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 4
Spiegeltent
Adelaide, Australia
BUY TICKETS!

March 7
Sydney Opera House
Sydney, Australia
TICKETS COMING SOON!

March 8
A & I Hall
Bangalow (Byron Bay), Australia
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 10
The Zoo
Brisbane, Australia
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 12
Bodega
Wellington, New Zealand
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 16
Al’s Bar
Christchurch, New Zealand
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

March 17
Kings Arms Tavern
Auckland, New Zealand
Ages: 18+
BUY TICKETS!

April 23
Bush Hall [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
London, England
14+ (under 18yrs with an adult)
BUY TICKETS!

April 24
Bush Hall [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
London, England
14+ (under 18yrs with an adult)
BUY TICKETS!

April 25
Bush Hall [w/ EVELYN EVELYN]
London, England
14+ (under 18yrs with an adult)
BUY TICKETS!



beautiful art by @AiriZombie

meanwhile….
mother of FUCK.

if i leave one more thing in the back of a cab or in a restaurant in new york, they’re going to start a museum of recovered items. 
i can’t wait to visit it, and see all my stuff. 

so far nothing tragic, but i’m leaking energy like a tanker with a iceberg-sized hole. and i can’t even blame it all on the drinking. half the time i’m sober and just going way, way too fast. 
my brain is on spin cycle and my soul is in the wash, but nobody added detergent. nothing’s getting clean. need. yoga.

in better news, neil loves me, and i love him. so really everything feels ok. i reach out to him in the middle of the night and whatever is missing can be missing, because he’s there. i’ll shut up after i say it one last time: i love the man more than i can say. every day i can’t believe how fucking lucky we are to have found each other. 

the private evelyn evelyn show the other day was a huge success (we held it at the slipper room and gave tickets away to people who sent in drawings of conjoined animals, via twitter)…the twins have gotten exhausted from all of the meetings in new york, but they’re holding up. they can’t decide whether they like sushi or not. jason thinks they hate it. i think they’re warming up to it. they disappear frequently on “snack breaks” and we have to go hunting for them. they almost got caught shoplifting a twix bar from a duane reade. they will not talk to men who have beards or mustaches.
they’re also becoming more active on twitter (@evelynevelyn), even though they still haven’t mastered the use of the “@” symbol. they’re TRYING. jason and i are so proud of them.
i’ll post a whole blog on them, the secret show they just did, and all the exciting news (and album artwork!!!!) sometime soon. first things first. 

it’s been a week of fancy fancy people. new york will do that. last night: jason, neil and i ate with kyle cassidy, photographer extraordinaire, cynthia von buhler, the artist who’s doing all the illustrating for Evelyn Evelyn, and the writer peter straub, who’s a freind of neil’s. kyle dubbed us #tableofawesome. i met today with a director names sarah benson, from soho rep in new york, to jam and talk projects. 

and don’t ask why, but breakfast yesterday ended up with me showing john cameron mitchell, the creator of hedwig and the angry inch, all of my dress options for the golden globes red carpet walk. 
i will not tell you which one he picked, i might influence you. but here we go:

red-carpet-arama….please weigh in. today i bought SHOES which will go with almost all of these. otherwise, plain black heels.

i am not shaving. 

i got these shoes as well. they will go with almost anything here, esp the gold and copper dress…:

DRESS-OFF 2010!


1. my freind kambriel’s “stormy weather” flapper dress:


2. another dress from kambriel…it’s a gold coaty dress made from ancient fabric her grandmother bought in china:


note the pretty bustle in the back….

3. a couple dress options from my friends at skin graft, in LA….both with detatachable shoulders:

4. and this one….

5. the new years outfit, by elena (will swap out the boots for heels):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tender_buttons/4241731123/in/set-72157623131837926/

with coat…but here you can see the skirt…


AND, last but not least…
6. this wonderful girl jessica in LA offered to look into some antique rentals and she found THIS baby….
so i’m having her hold it…

front:

back:

slip underneath it.



ok people.
WHAT TO WEAR???

have at it.


xxxx
AFP

how to play tchaikovsky in the style of the punk cabaret.

i can’t honestly tell you why i decided to do this.
i think my initial thought was: “hoh, shit. i’m playing the boston pops again…i should really do something classical and force myself to sit down and practice.” =
i never, ever practice the piano. i fucking hate it. i hate. hate. hate practicing the piano. HATE IT. REALLY HATE IT.

for real: that is why i wound up with this job, dude.

when i was a teenager, my mother bribed me to take classical lessons. seriously. she offered to raise my allowance by a couple dollars a week if i would do it.
thanks, mom, for caring. i probably would have tried the same thing.

but i was a stubborn, stubborn, little twit.

i would sit there in the lessons, looking blankly at the weird squiggly notes on the page in front of me, and i would simply CHEAT during the lessons and watch the teacher playing the part.
I would try to capture it in my mind and then play it by ear. i refused to look at the sheet music, and when i was supposed to tote this music home, i simply WOULDN’T. i just didn’t practice.
I HATED IT. is this clear?

i remember one time a teacher told my mother to buy me a metronome to keep by the piano.
i was told i had to practice with the metronome.

i was not an extremely violent child. i think i was normal-violent. you know, typical sister hair-pulling and stuff.
i did not throw things or hurt people (very much) or have massive temper tantrums (well, after the age of 4 or so).
i was relatively mellow.

but i swear to god, that fucking metronome made me want to wage war on the entire planet, with nuclear power.
it’s tick tick ticking in my ear was the equivalent of someone laying your hung-over head on a metal plate while hitting it repeatedly with an anvil.
i just FUCKING HATED IT.
so one day, when i was sitting in the living room at the piano and supposed to be practicing something-or-other, and the metronome was just tick-tick-ticking it’s relentless tick-tick-tick of doom, i grabbed it and flung it across the room. it smashed against the empty fireplace and never tick-tick-ticked again.
i felt really, really guilty, but also shame-free, like i’d been taken over by an alien force.
as far as i was concerned, that olive-colored metronome was a Tool of the Devil and i’d done a Good Thing.
i don’t even remember my mother getting angry. i think maybe she gave up after that.

when i got to college (and at this point, i was pretty determined to be a musician when i grew up), i developed a catholic guilt about the fact that i was so lazy and i decided to take up classcial lessons while i was there. i tried. i really did. i tried to practice, i forced myself into a basement practice room a few times a week and turned beethoven’s “pathetique” into a long classical whip with which i destroyed my laziness. but still, i hated it. i liked having this powerhouse piece of classical music under my belt and i liked playing it, but i also had this deep sense of unsettled “why the fuck am i doing this? to prove what?”
i would count those lines ad infinitum and try to make sense of the squiggles. to this day, you will hear me muttering “every good boy deserves….” as i try to deduce what note is what when looking at a treble clef.
i’m just retarded. do not ask me why i cannot rememebr that B is in the middle of that music staff. i just can’t. i can listen to any song of the fucking radio and immediatly play it by ear but i cannot remember that that little note in the middle of that little staff is a fucking B. oliver sacks could probably tell you why.

anyway, in college i would go off onto massive tangents of improvisation during my supposed practice time, but i was finding it difficult to write any songs in those years.
after i graduated, i never gave another thought to learning or playing a classical piece, until this last year.

something in me stirred and i decided to re-discipline myself. at the london show this past summer (the union chapel one), i kicked my own ass to play a little bach piece.
i’ll dig that up and tweet it.

and for the pops, i simply wrote them an email saying “i want to play a concerto”. keith wrote back with a bunch of suggestions from mozart to rachmaninoff to tchaikovsky, and i listened to everything and tried to determine what the easiest and most bang-for-the-buck would be.

i got the music and started practicing in early december. neil and i were holed up for a week and i tried to practice a couple hours a day.
i had hooked up with my piano-playing friend, murray barg, in boston, and he had helped me slog through the sheet music to make sure i wasn’t getting any notes wrong.
and for the tempo, i simply watched youtube clips of van cliburn kicking the shit out of it.

i soon realized that in order to play this piece (tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto), i would have needed to start rehearsing in 2008.
there was just no fucking way.
no way.

i thought for a second about calling the pops and having them pull it from the program (they really wouldn’t have cared, the symphony doesn’t rehearse that shit until THE DAY OF THE SHOW. FOR REAL).
but i couldn’t stomach it. i felt like a complete loser.

i looked back at the piece realistically and decided that i could probably master the first few minutes, and even then it wouldn’t be at tempo, and it would be sloppy as fuck, and i would have to push and pull the tempos.
but even then, i decided to do it.

i called my friend lance horne and asked him to learn the rest of the piece. (thank cthulhu for lance).

beth planted the obnoxious cell phone and created the velcro tear-away windbreaker of garish doom. (thank cthulhu for beth).

and then i simply spent a few hours a day in my apartment in boston, for the rest of december, practicing that shit.
i don’t think i’ve ever, ever in my life practiced something so much.
at the end of the day it wasn’t even about the performance anymore. the performance became an afterthought.
it was more like a test of my own will.

…drum roll….

the result, ladies and gentlemen (and thank god someone caught it & posted it, whoever you are….thank cthulhu for you too).



the result is what i would call pure, unadultered punk fucking cabaret.

fake it til you make it, people.
nobody’s keeping score.

xxxxxxxxx
AFP

p.s. about to hop on a train with the evelyn twins and jason. we’re taking them to THE BIG CITY for their mini-show next tuesday and for endless business meetings. i just posted about a twitter ticket-giveaway for TWENTY PEOPLE so if you wanna come, check out the details HERE.
then i’m off to LA for the golden globes, where i’ve been informed i will actually, no fucking shit, be walking the red carpet with himself.
i am not sure how much i am supposed to care about what i cam wearing so i am bringing two pairs of pants in case one gets dirty. seriously, whats the deal with shit like this?
i need to ask my sister, who, even though she lives in EUROPE, still reads US magazine. she’ll know. nobody’s found bjork’s email. swan dress, not likely.


Cross-posted at MySpace

still life with author and chainsaw

holaaaaa


sitting at home right now, up late and unable to stop working…700 more emails to answer and a huge tour to prepare for that won’t even happen for a few months.

i feel like i’m stuck in a rusty cuisinart. moreover, i just decided to take two days away from home and new york to go to the golden globes with neil, who got nominated for coraline.
this is awesome but also means my brain turns into more of a reduction sauce for a fancy squash dish.
rg.
anybody have bjork’s email? 
i want to ask if i can borrow her swan dress and maybe trick it out with some sequins and blood.
that plus my armpit hair will make sure they never invite me back to hollywood.



lee has a cold and i have a full house of guests right now, jason webley is here…and so are the evelyn twins. they refuse to sleep in a real bed and instead insist on sleeping on the floor on four thick carpets with sleeping bags (don’t ask) and so i trip over them every time i have to walk from the bed to the bathroom. they’re so weird.they’ve been trying to use twitter and jason and i have been encouraging them, but it’s slow going. more on that noise later. it’s been a trip. they’re practicing hard, though, and jason and i are helping them with their piano songs and stage outfits for this spring. we’re all excited to bring them on tour. the london tickets are selling well (each night is over half sold out„„get tickets HERE). for those who were confused, the order of the night is jason, then me, then sxip, then the twins. you should not miss this fucking show.
tickets are also going up super-soon for some other cities so be sure to watch the dates and follow the AFP news twitter…

mostly i’m just spaced-out, full and tired. i have a life hangover the size of 2009. 
literally and figuratively; i feel like i haven’t been genuinely hungry in a week but i keep eating…since mealtime still comes.

and re: hangover…
i cannot give enough thanks to all the folks who came out to the new years show at the pops….it was fucking incredible.
i haven’t prepared so much for a show since….i don’t know. a long time. probably since the dresden dolls’ roundhouse DVD shoot, which took
months and months to put together. 

we pulled it off….mostly.

i did go ONE MINUTE over the curfew, which of course cost their unions thousands of dollars. (oops.)

and i spilled champagne on the stage (sorry.)

the pops were fucking RIGHT ON. i developed a twitter relationship a few days out with the bassonist…
i mean, how rad is an orchestra that has a guy with a twitter name like @BigGayIceCream?
keith lockhart led with aplomb, we got rave reviews in the boston globe and boston herald, and generally kicked ass all over the place.

the best bits of the night were the tchaikovsky (which i fairly butchered even after those dozens of hours of practice), “missed me” (which i’m still hoping will surface on youtube),
“hurt” (the NIN song. i’ll embed the clip up at the end of this blog), and “pokerface” (yes, “pokerface”, the way your mother never intended it). 
stay tuned, all will be explained.
the clips are still spilling in…filming was verboten but things are creeping up onto youtube. i’ll post them as they come, with photos and stories behind all.


for now, some other photo highlights.



symphony hall, all decked out….

this outfit was hand-sewn by elena sanders, and looked fucking amazing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbane/4236387522/in/set-72157622993984815/

the pops & AFP

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/coma_high/4234360248/


i convinced neil gaiman, who is actually quite a good musician but doesn’t tell anybody, to play the chainsaw on “missed me”.
he was fantastic. here he is, sporting his instrument. he was a right bastard about the tuning (he’d wanted a european chainsaw tuned to the key of G, 
this was an american chainsaw tuned to the key of DESTROY)

his hair is always doing the most incredible things. i think i might love his hair more than himself.


speaking of incredible things…
the night itself was a mad mix of people and opening bands and mayhem out in the lobby, half of which i couldn’t see.

but i did manage to sneak down to the dining room (right before i played) and do a quick song with miss tess and her back-up band….
this is us attempting “makin’ whoopee” with her band figuring out the song as we went along….(this dress was handmade by kambriel of http://www.kambriel.com)

this is lance, holding my leg during dress rehearsal earlier in the day….



singing “hurt”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tender_buttons/4241733473/


me & the crewe singing “mein herr” from cabaret.
the boys in drag were a huge hit…..

the dress rehearsal for “leeds united”….


stealing keith lockhart’s thunder and conducting the orchestra during “coin-operated boy”….

but all told, this was my favorite moment of the evening……


while the orchestra struck up “auld lang syne” (to which, i must admit, i knew not a single fucking lyric), i took a minute off, located and kissed my doxy on the stroke of midnight (or close, i think it was 11:59).
this photo was taken by the geidts, from the balcony.

i love this man so much. i really do.


TWO THOUSAND AND TEN FTW.
i hope all your new yearses were as good as mine.

i used to hate fucking new years. i could never find a genuinely good time. the hangover was never worth the party.
this one was.
my house and the cast of the show stayed up til 7:30 am, bumping to a mix that becca darling made of michael jackson and beyonce.


AFP’s 5 simple steps to enjoying new years forever more

a) join a band
b) go solo
c) fall in love
d) secure boyfriend for new years
e) find a national orchestra to sit in with. 

works every time.


xxxx
a

p.s. if you’re in NEW YORK, follow me on twitter right quick. 
i’m about to announce a way to get a spot to a totally private evelyn evelyn party that jason and are throwing during the day next tuesday *somewhere awesome* in manhattan. 
there will be no tickets sold and we’ll only give spots to about 20 people. follow me HERE. also, if you’re in NYC and have a weighted, 88-key keyboard we can borrow, email hayley at amanda palmer dot net.

p.p.s. as promised, NIN’s “hurt”, with the pops (arrangement by lance horne):




Cross-posted at MySpace

"if you want to get rich and screw, start shooting hoops"

so. while i’m holed up in my apartment practicing tchaikovsky with my fucked-up heater in fingerless gloves & losing my mind, i figured i’d give you something to read.
this was today’s lefsetz letter:

…………………………………..

Did the Beatles plan on dominating the world?

No, they just wanted to escape a life of drudgery in Liverpool.

But their music became a mania.  Suddenly, not only were they rich and famous, they had innumerable groupies beckoning.

Like Tiger Woods.

When the Beatles hit, even into the heyday of Led Zeppelin in the seventies, if you wanted to get rich, you were a rock star.  Baseball’s reserve clause had not yet been broken.  The NBA did not yet have Magic and Bird, never mind Michael Jordan, it was almost a sideshow.  As for golf…  Arnie Palmer was a swinger, but he was more about endorsements than lifestyle, and at the time, nobody wanted to be icy, pudgy Jack Nicklaus.

No, you wanted to be like the English cats.  Or the players from San Francisco.  Who’d practiced for years so they could now get up at noon, do drugs and get laid seemingly whenever they wanted.

It all came down to the music.  Jimmy Page didn’t pick up the guitar with a desire to be famous.  No, music was a calling.  And after seeing the Beatles on “Ed Sullivan”, boomers picked up instruments, took lessons.  They did not get plastic surgery to appear beautiful, take media training so they could expose themselves well.  It was all about the tunes.

It hasn’t been about the tunes in eons.

Sure, there were starmakers all the way back to the days of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis.  But what drew us to the stars of the classic rock era was the seeming lack of manipulation.  Playing by no rules, creating opuses sometimes an album side long, these musicians put the music first.  Unlike athletes shilling for Aqua Velva.

Things turned bad with corporate rock in the midseventies.  Too calculated, it was supplanted by disco and then in late ‘79, the whole business imploded, only to be resurrected by MTV, which evidenced completely different values from the FM radio that preceded it.  Suddenly it was all about image.

And now MTV might be dead, but conventional wisdom is image triumphs.  That’s what TV wants.  That’s what the magazines want.  That’s what TMZ and Perez want.  Radio was something you listened to.  All the foregoing media enter through your eyes.

So right now, Mariah Carey might be parading around Aspen, but she’s not staying there based on her new album’s sales, they stink, she’s living off the past.  Even Alicia Keys.  All these heavily-hyped artists, the Cliveisms, they’re built for stardom, but today stardom doesn’t permeate every nook and cranny, and so many are turned off by the hype, and music sales suck.  And seemingly the more popular you are on the hit parade, the fewer people want to see you live.  Dave Matthews hasn’t had a radio hit in eons, but he was the biggest tour grosser of the decade.

But, of course, Dave Matthews has been around for fifteen years, he was the beneficiary of the old game.  What about new artists?

What about new artists?

If you want to be a “rock star”, be an athlete.  Or a tech entrepreneur.  That’s where the money is.  And groupies like money.

If you want to be a musician, you must flush image down the toilet, be three-dimensional, write from the heart and make yourself accessible to fans.

Yes, today’s musicians are the opposite of the titans of yore.  As opposed to being crafted with no edges, sculpted to perfection like Janet Jackson, who also can’t sell a record, they’re lumpy, with warts, they’re completely human. And they write about their humanity.  And they make themselves available on Twitter and other social media.

I’m not talking marketing.  This isn’t so much about selling as a redefinition of what a musician is.  Sure, first and foremost you play music.  But how do you get an audience?

How do you get friends? Real friends?

It’s very difficult staying alone in your room, not interacting online.  If you want to be part of the community you must venture out, whether it be into the real world or cyberspace.  You must make yourself available.  You must be ingratiating.  You  must be open and willing to share.

Who does it right?

Taylor Swift.  Her songs couldn’t be more personal.  They’re not bland statements denuded to the point where they can be sung by and related to by everybody, rather they’re distinctly her.

John Mayer tweets his personality.  Go to http://twitter.com/jOhnCmAYer and read, you’ll end up thinking you truly know him.  Furthermore, on his blog he stood up for James Cameron, who called a fan an asshole (http://www.johnmayer.com/blog/permalink/5379).  Mayer didn’t believe it was a fan, but an e-Bay whore.  But the point is, Mayer took a stand.  That’s how you grow your audience, by having a personality, just like them.

Will musicians ever become rock stars?

Not like the athletes.  The athletes have got all the money and all the TV time.  If you want to get rich and screw, start shooting hoops.  And isn’t that fascinating, no one thinks they can play in the NBA without a wealth of court time, but people think they can succeed in the music game without paying their dues whatsoever.

And athletes don’t succeed by revealing their inner lives, they make it via their robotic skills.  The opposite of musicians.  And did you ever think that whoring yourself out to corporations works for athletes but not musicians for this very reason?  Because it’s not about who athletes are so much as how skilled they are at their sport?

In other words, if you’re pursuing the rock stardom that’s bandied about in public today, you’re pursuing artistic and commercial death.  A “rock star” today is someone who’s winning in the commercial world, which is the opposite of art.  A true rock star is beholden to nobody.  Hell, these athletes play for a team, or their sponsors.  Which is how the major labels killed music.  Because you were playing for them instead of playing for yourself.

Sure, eventually new acts will grow and dominate.  But the ascension will be very slow.  The rocket to outer space paradigm of MTV is history.  Shit, isn’t that the point of reality TV?  Anybody can be famous for fifteen minutes?

You want to be famous for much longer than that.

Old thinkers will use the old tools.  Radio and TV.

You’re not opposed to those, but you focus on a direct connection with your fan.

Do your friends abandon you willy-nilly?

Of course not.

Then again, you think twice before you screw a friend, before you cancel plans.

So put your fans first.  Establish trust.  And practice.

Because it begins and ends with the music.

………………………………………

HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH
and
DOUBLE AMEN 
and
FUCK YES 
and
i would have said it about the same way, but i’m busy making music. 
thanks bob.

xxxxxxxxxx
AFP




ps. the lefsetz letter is a bloggy letter written by bob lefsetz about the music industry, tech stuff, pop culture, skiiing, and bob lefsetz’s personal neurosis.
he’s ALL ABOUT THE CAPS LOCK. 
CAPS LOCK FTW.
anyway…i take no responsibility :)
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter, 
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1

pss. (shhhhhh) somewhat-secret new years eve tickets discount info, if you wanted to come but were too poor: http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=10476.0


Cross-posted to MySpace

all i want for christmas is burning love

hola comrades!!!

i’m currently at home, practicing away for my show on new year’s eve with the pops. those of you who haven’t gotten your tickets yet, you still can, HERE!

those of you who have: i can’t wait to see you all, hopefully dressed to the nines; i’m talking ball-gowns and tuxes…..do it up, people…have fun with it!

secondly, in boring business: there are NEW TOUR DATES UP!

i am playing solo in france (in bordeaux - mmm, wine - and in mont de marsan) and in vienna at the end of january!
also, my australian and new zealand dates for feb/march are coming together! 
also, the first few LONDON Evelyn Evelyn shows (that will be ME, JASON, the TWINS and sxip shirey!!) have been announced!
go, go go to the tour page to get tickets and info and buy tickets!!!!


so……….um………would you like to know what i would like for christmas?

i’ll give you a hint…it is not a pony….



….it is not a hot british studmuffin waiting to make sweet love to me in a comfy cosy bed 
(well, wait a second, i sort of already have that. skip.)



it is not my own personal jesus, mary and joseph “precious moments” plush creche set….




….it is not even word peace!



no!!!

though all of those things are nice, they would be difficult to arrange.

so, i will tell you.
it is not unlike what i asked for for my birthday, and it costs you no money, just a few minutes out of your life to be slightly creative.


here is what i would like.


1.
do you have a record album that you REEEEEEEEALLY like? 
could be anything!!….maaaaybe even…oh i dunno, a record about astronauts and love and stuff with a pretty dead girl on the cover?

make sure it isn’t ILLEGAL to copy this music, because everybody knows what the law says!

2.
now, do you have a blank CD?

great!

3.
do you have some sharpies or some other colorful permanent markers???

great!

4.
do you have a computer that can burn CDs?

great!


you know what to do!!!!!!!!


go for it and please go hog-wild making your hand-decorated CDs as cool and pretty as you can!

(and if it’s especially pretty, send it to art@amandapalmer.net so we can see!!!!)

phew!

that’s it!

i sure hope you can find some music out there to put on that CD! 
so many things are illegal to copy nowadays, it’s really a bummer!

though…we all know that if you copy music it’s really awful for the artists of the world, because they HATE it when terrible people like you
flaunt the law and copy their record albums for their friends and loved ones for christmas!

and now for my final trick, here’s a nice christmas card to go along with your totally legally burned CD!!!






print it out, sign it and give it to someone you love!!!

AUTOMATIC JOY!!!!!!!!!!!


all my love,

AFP