europa, wooden vagina-stage, heartplane tattoos

hola comrades!!!

ok, most impo’tent: if you hadn’t noticed, afp & the ensemble are about to come to europe. like, wicked soon, in about two weeks.

i recommend getting tickets online if you know you’re going, you never know.
please forward these dates to ANYONE you think might want to know about these shows. that’s important, i am relying on the fanbase to get the word out on the street.

the dates:
Feb 4 - Electric Ballroom, London, London and South East
Feb 6 - Divan Du Monde, Paris, Ile-de-France
Feb 8 - Gaswerk Kulturzentrum, Winterthur, Zurich
Feb 9 - Fri-Son, Fribourg, Friburgnemn
Feb 11 - Le Bikini, Toulouse, Midi-Pyrénées
Feb 13 - Sala Apolo, Barcelona, Barcelona
Feb 14 - Caracol, Madrid, Madrid

tickets are on sale now for all these shows at:
http://amandapalmer.net/tour
buy in advance! some of these places are small and will hopefully sell out.

……………………………………….

TEA & SYMPATHY & PIANO in LONDON?

i’m heading to london early (around the 31st) and am actually hunting for a place to practice….
so if you live near camden and have a piano or a decent electric keyboard with speakers,
will you have me over for tea? seriously. i need to practice and am without gear. within close tube-range of camden would be great.
email beth and give her the scoop: beth (at) amandapalmer (dot) net.



………………………………………….

LODGING IN EUROPE

this has been working awesomely so far, so here we go again.
yes! yes. the danger ensemble and i are looking for crash pads throughout europe.

like our punk ass forefathers….doing it on the cheap and keeping it real - so we are looking for a comfy crash space for 5 sassy australians, possibly a hot tour manager/lighting designer and one lonely little AFP.
we don’t need a palace.. but a bed to rest our heads, get a cup of tea and check our emails would be AWESOME. (if you live near general humanity, life, stores, art and parties - we like that too. and we love pianos.)
we will repay you with love, merch and concert tickets (for you and whoever is helping out).
and will regale you of stories of how rock and roll it is to check your email all day when you’re on the road.

these are the cities and the dates we are looking for:

in or near Paris, France. - Feb 5th and 6th.
in or near Winterthur, Switzerland - Feb 7th.
in or near Fribourg, Switzerland - Feb 9th
in or near Toulouse, France - Feb 10th and 11th.
in or near Barcelona, Spain - Feb 12th.
in Barcelona or somewhere en route from Barcelona to Madrid, Spain - Feb 13th.
in or near Madrid, Spain - Feb 14th.

if you can help or know someone who can please email steven (at) amandapalmer (dot) net!  He loves you already.
if you write and you DON’T hear back, please don’t poke. we’re sending this call out so late that steven will probably be barraged. please be pateint.
thank you thank you.



……………………………………………

FOOD IN EUROPE

as for food, yes….we’re still hungry.
imagine that. you guys fed us brilliantly the last time around, and now i can’t even imagine not doing this.
we love you and will trade you love and tickets for food. and you can hang out backstage and drink our beer and wine.

if you can bring food to ANY of the shows, please e-mail food (at) amandapalmer (dot) net and we’ll give you instructions.
dessert foods kill us, so please don’t bring us cakes and cookies and evil foods.
last time around in europe, everyone brought cake and chocolate and we got fat.
loving the belly is one thing, but for christs sake, keep us healthy.



…….

that’s all for now in the touring department.

no, wait, one more thing.

we’ve confirmed support for london and paris and it’s a WONDERFUL band i’ve been itching to play with for YEARS.
they’re called detektivbyrån and they sound like a wonderful tripping movie soundtrack come to life.
they gave me their CD at a gig ages ago and i’m happy i finally snatched them…go listen….

http://www.myspace.com/detektivbyran



…………………….

in the life department, i feel incredibly productive.

i have no feelings.

i will have some feelings in the spring, maybe.

i took a bath last night.

it was 4 degrees outside.

when it’s that cold, my tub refuses to actually become warm enough to feel like a real bath.
the water is just not hot enough.

so i boil two pots of water on the stove plus the kettle and i run back and forth between the bath and the stove for the entire
duration of the bath and it’s a whole activity.

i can’t even take a bath without doing something else at the same time.

something is wrong with me.

but.

i have written over 500 emails in the last 4.5 days.

i have played the piano.

i have broken 3 bass strings in 2 days.

i have done my dishes.

i am on fire.

but it’s freezing here, dudes. it’s just unfair.

jason webley came for a visit. we emailed TOGETHER.
we did take a break and got some dim sum and looked at the dead fish in chinatown and walked around and ran into an amazing old lady in an antiques shop who showed us her photo
album for 45 minutes. she used to tour with her sister in the late forties and early fifteis. they played guitars and wore dresses. she had a picture of her and her sister with FRANK.
i wanted to quit everything and stay with her forever. there is no evidence of their group (the hickory sisters) on the internet. they only toured for
six years and then came back to boston (in the early 1950s) to run their parent’s store. and she’s still there. she’s 85, i think.

………………………………………………………………………..

olga, who designed the lovely amandapalmer.net site, made me a necklace of wooden wings because i coveted hers so badly.
but i decided it worked better as a belt (or as we’ve been callin git around here, a vagina-stage) and beth took a picture of it for me.

i get mad compliments on it.



…………………………………………………………………………

hayley wrote:
I was wondering though, if you ever got your New Years Eve kiss. At the Grand Ballroom last year (NYE 2007) you mentioned that you are always on stage at midnight and that it is frustrating because you never get to kiss anyone (while everyone around you does) - This year’s show was post-midnight so maybe you got lucky? ;)

afp answers:
um, no. i didn’t. another year.

…………………………………………………………………………….

katie wrote:
there’s been a few rumors floating around the interwebz; is it true you were in a porno when you were younger?

afp answers:
TOTALLY true. kim airs, who ran a great local sexuality boutique for women called “grand opening” used to host an amateur porn film night at the coolidge corner.
there would be a bunch of entries and all the tapes would get burned after the screening. my friend sandy and i made a great lesbian porn called “voodoo dykes”, in around 2000.
my screen name was Conni Lingus. hers was Jumbo Lila. it was terrible, and great. i have a copy of it somewhere. when i’m feeling really desperate for attention in
my late hundreds, i’ll post it to the internet for laughs.

……………………………………………………………………………………

Steve wrote:
On the subject of questions, tattoos and the interpretation of art: where, oh where, did the heart/plane/arrow/pen symbol on “Yes Virginia” come from and/or what does it mean? I really like it, am considering getting a tattoo of it, and don’t want to find out after the fact that it’s a Crip tag. Not that I think you’re gang affiliated. Just curious.

afp answers:
it’s not a crip tag, dude. i drew it myself. we call it the “heartplane” logo when using it on things.
i like to think of it as an interpretable symbol that combines the battle spirit of art and love.
there’s a picture of me drawing in the Virginia Companion….let me see if i can find it…..

ah, here we go.
it was on the NIN tour, (you can see the little NIN tour book on the table).
brian took this picture.


and there’s a few other lovely tattoos on the dolls site featuring said drawing….
all the dolls tattoos live up at http://www.dresdendolls.com/closet/couture/index.htm, by the way, and if you have one, you can email it to beth (at) amandapalmer (dot) net


(david)


(amanda)


(meghan)


(emily)


(leigh)


(shelly)


(amy)


(hayley)


you’ll be in fine company.


………………………..

love
afp

very many lots of THINGS.

well. i am full of feelings today, but i am not going to talk about them. fuck it.
i’m home after a really wonderful trip to new york and am collecting evidence to show you how amazing new years was, for those of you who missed it, which is a lot of you.

today, i am simply going to get all these THINGS that have been accumulating.

1. FREE HUGS.
one of the girls who was giving away free hugs in harvard square the other day when i had my nice little public weepfest read the blog and wrote in.
apparently they are a legitimate organization. who fucking knew:
http://www.freehugscampaign.org

2. SEAN’S DOG & ALL OTHER DOGS AND FOUR-LEGGED THINGS IN NEED OF HELP
it has been brought to my attention that my friend sean (indecisean on the shadowbox) - who many of you know as one of the secret internet ninjas behind my myspace/facebook pages - has been trying to collect votes for an animal shelter called the addison humane society, where he got his beautiful dog, stella. apparently they could really use the help and are filled to the brim with animals who need help and love. all you need to do is follow this link and click and vote. sean’s story and the link to vote are up HERE: http://www.thesilentorchestra.com/achs.html

3. MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT OF U.S. TOUR CAUGHT ON YOUTUBE.
this is us, in aspen, colorado, playing to like 32 people. we decided to go for broke and make people sing “the rose”.
no joke, we have proof.
my favorite part was steven miming slicing his wrists during “some say love, it is a razor”.
classic:


4. JASON WEBLEY MAKES AN AMAZING TECHNO SONG.
i am not shitting you, we heard this in the northwest and we made it the end-of-tour anthem.
so. amazing…..”do you want to throw the discus FAR?”


5. ASK AMANDA:
ana wrote:
I am so sorry to hear that people you lived with in college are dead. This might be too forward of me, and I would totally respect your choice not to answer, but what happened to them?
afp responds:
i lived in a house called eclectic. strangely, lots of people that went through there died after moving out. my boyfriend, matt booke, died during my sophomore year over christmas break.
it was heart failure, or something slightly more mysterious. he was an incredible artist. it’s his voice you can hear in between the songs on who killed amanda palmer. my friend chuck also died shortly after we graduated. aneurysm. another girl who lived with us, shannon, drowned while swimming. my step-brother, karl, who was my idol - he played bass and was a writer and a painter, also lived there (but 6 years before me) died when i was 21, a few months after matt booke died. he died of a neurological disease often referred to as lou gehrig’s disease that struck him randomly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis). that was also the year both my grandparents on my mother’s side died. 1996 was a deathly year. thanks for asking.

natalierose wrote:
I was really, really disappointed to hear that the sheet music book for WKAP won’t include stories, etc. about each song the way the Dolls companions do. Was it a time thing? Or is this album too personal? Or at least too recently personally…
afp responds:
all of the stories and additional information that i felt like sharing is actually up on whokilledamandapalmer.com. a lot of the songs don’t need stories. they just are.
i had thought for a while about combining the Neil Gaiman book (which, btw, ended up simply being titled WHO KILLED AMANDA PALMER) with the sheet music.
but that seemed silly. people who want sheet music don’t necessarily also want to put 100 dead photos of me on their piano’s music desk, it makes things bulky and hard
to turn. and certainly, not everybody who wants 100 dead picture sof me won’t necessarily want sheet music that they probably can’t read. if you have a specific question about a song, ask. post a comment. i’ll probably answer you. but if you simply ask “so what are astronaut, leeds united and guitar hero about?” i’ll ignore you. just listen to the shit, man, or go join the conversation over on songmeanings.net. i love reading that site. sometimes people are so right. and sometimes they are so, so wrong.

6. POST-WAR TRADE….
check out the new shit up at Post-War Trade… we are discounting some items that have been around a while and we’ve added some amazing new handmade THINGS, including the infamous Text Me t-shirt. also, orders of $75 or more get free US shipping… now check out this HOT shirt (hot girl not included):


and some other cool things….
the 8 ball!


these resin pendants have been flying:


and i think we have a few left of these cuffs…


we’ll be adding a ton of new stuff to the site soon, will post photos of STUFF when we do.

7. RANDOM PHOTO DEPT.
one of my favorite shots from this entire tour….
mark & tora during the climax of “have to drive”:

(photo by lazyinternet: www.flickr.com/photos/lazyinternet/3103519387)

some amazing photos from LA….
neil. reading.


the intro.




blake says.


guitar hero.




lyndon.


zoe.


the crowd.


ella. ella.




leeds united.


lonely little afp.


………………..

stuff-be-gone!

feelings later.
fuck that shit.

LOVE
AFP