droppage & dollage
Things That I Need To Tell You About But Will Not At Least Not In Great Detail:
1. how cabaret is going (incredibly well, and almost over).
2. how my recording with tristan is going (fucking awesome, and his record release party will be in boston on december 12th, save the date mofos)
3. how the preparation for my forthcoming australian tour and album release are going (great thanks)
4. how it went taking the house band from “cabaret” into the studio to record an indie-rock soundtrack starring ME (pretty rad)
5. how i recorded a song with lance horne for his new record (also rad, and hilarious: the song is called “i hate the little prince”)
6. how with all this happening i have barely had time to pee this week, but actually honestly i have, and you’ll read about that below.
so
to begin with, that last blog reminded me Why.
after reading all the comments, i realized that part of what is wrong when i post too much information (“I HAVE TOUR! I MADE RECORD! I AM ATTACKING YOU WITH INFORMATION THAT NEEDS NO RESPONSE UNLESS IT IS TO SAY YAY AMANDA YAY!”), everybody reads it but nobody responds and i don’t know who’s listening (or reading). then i post something like the blog the other day and read all 300 comments and remember who the fuck you all actually are (and every time i read a “long time reader first time commenter” comment i assume there are OTHERS LIKE YOU lurking endlessly out there). and i like getting all your stories back: your foibles and your deaths and your tallnesses and fatnesses and skinninesses and outgoingnesses and ingoingnesses and the rest of y’alls weirdnesses. i need to read – i think – more than i need you to read about mine.
blog bait.
two days ago, @_superkate_ bravely took my computer to the computer hospital to have more memory installed, and i was promptly informed that the logic board was fried and i probably wouldn’t see my computer for a week.
do you know what this does to amanda palmer?
apparently, it cues her to promptly drop her iphone in a toilet, which is precisely what i did that same morning after scurrying into my bathroom to pee while still wearing my outdoor coat. the phone slipped from the coat pocket straight into the toilet and somewhere in the backlog of blogs is the descrption of the slow-motion horror scene that played out when i dropped my blackberry in a scottish porta-loo a few years back. it was the same blur of PLOP OOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO as my hand dove into the mire to save my poor child. hoorah for mac – the phone remained illuminated even when submerged in pee. it is now (under the advisement of my tech-god @indecisean, and many others on twitter) recovering quietly in a bag of risotto on my heater in the kitchen until tomorrow.
so i have no phone and no computer. i’ve been writing phone numbers down on pieces of paper, fielding important calls on lee’s cordless telephone, and generally feeling fantastic as i walk around with nothing in my pocket AND no waiting 12,198 emails to come home to. the reckoning will be painful, but the reveling is blissful.
i’m slightly sickened by how (i can now see) my brain has been re-wired to think in 140-character quips, and how i view the landscape with hungry photographer eyes. it’s not bad, it’s not good, i just know now.
now. now? i am writing this blog on an old mac i bought from noah, my housemate, for $200 as a sacrificial tour mailing-list depository at the merch table (chances are you’ll see it at the merch table, with casey, on the dolls tour). i’m writing it in a sticky and will send it via gmail to sean, who will post it. this blog will have no pictures when i sent it to him – because i have not taken any and all the pictures that might have been interesting are In Risotto (which is like In Flagrante Delicto for iPhones) – but surely some goodness will be plugged in by the time it makes its way to you.
i spent the day rehearsing songs by the dresden dolls. the dresden dolls are my band.
we’re about to go on tour.
this entire week i’ll be rehearsing with brian from 2-5 pm, then heading to the theater for my 6:15 call and performing “cabaret” every night with two shows on friday. i’m also playing a solo show on wednesday and we’re going to record the whole band (and me) live, singing the songs of “cabaret”. the gig’s sold out, but expect a recording to surface sometime in the spring. the two boston dresden dolls shows are close to sold out (night one is closer to maxx than night two, apparently people like our first record better). you can RSVP/get tickets for night 1 at http://bit.ly/DD112rsvp and night 2 at http://bit.ly/DD113rsvp
dear.
it never ceases to surprise me when someone tells me they love my music, but don’t know the music of the dresden dolls.
for those of you who need a primer (and maybe you guys can comment with some favorite dolls clips)…i don’t really know where to start….but here:
the dresden dolls is two people.
me and brian viglione, who is the best drummer in the world (and i’m not kidding).
here we are:
photo by lisa gordon (may 7th, 2002)
we met almost 10 years ago, on halloween night, october 31st of 2000, right upstairs in the house i still live in.
i was throwing an art party, and played my shy little angry songs on piano. brian had been brought over by a guy we both knew, sean setaro. he saw me play piano and knew in that instant that we would be a band. i didn’t take much convincing. a year later, we were getting ready to record our first record, and then we went on tour, and we got sort of famous in some places, and then in 2008 we decided to take a break.
if you do not know my band, you need to know my band.
the band is REALLY REALLY FUCKING good.
i was musing about how to pepper you with various clips of the dresden dolls Doing What We Do, and decided that the video for “girl anachronism” is still a classic and a good start for the uninitiated.
this was the video clip (we didn’t have youtube back then children, it simply lived on our website as a file) that someone sent to trent reznor, and he thought it was so good he invited us to come tour with Nine Inch Nails, which we did, in 2005.
here it be. it’s still pretty rocking after all these years, now with OVER A MILLION VIEWS:
this video was shot at my house by michaerl pope, who was living here at the time, using almost every available apartment space and our garden, for about $5,000 (which we borrowed from Ron Nordin, one of the bands earliest, and ongoing, patrons). in retrospect, we owe a lot of our success to this clip…it also impressed the shit out of roadrunner records, who were the only label who would sign us.
wanna see something cool? mr viggie rehearsing for tour playing “girl a” just last week from his place in NYC (shot by our friend ronnie):
anyway, back to the story…from 2000 until about 2008 i slept, ate, breathed, and sweat nothing but the dresden dolls. i toured non-stop until i fell over in a pile of emotional exhaustion.
now, sitting at the piano and rehearsing all of our old songs has been like taking a weird nostalgia-laced amphetamine.
all of these songs live in my motor memory, and some of them i haven’t played AT ALL in any form for 4 or 5 years.
today brian came over and we talked about what to play on tour. we started re-kindling our Rock Love.
remember rock love? this is what rock love looks like:
and we’re going to rehearse here, at my house, like the old days. we’re on the top floor instead of the basement, so now instead of zea banging on the floor to tell us to shut up, it’s going to be casey banging on her ceiling. and tomorrow night, we will do what the dresden dolls do: talk for a few hours, play for a few hours, and then eat for a few hours.
happy almost-birthday, us.
when my phone stops being in italian rice (and i considered that it might come out of the sock with culture shock, saying “EHH!!! pronto!!!!” and grabbing it’s balls at me) i will send pictures.
also, i want to tell you about my favorite band. be prepared.
xxxx
AFP.
