such a pretty house & such a pretty garden (UkuleleHead #8…SUCCESS)

July 22, 2010

i’m so so tired.

by the time you read this, i’ll have crawled into bed with neil before waking up early to get to new york for a radio spot on WNYC (hoorah).

but…holy shit. holy SHIT. HOLY SHIT.

i thought this was going to go well but i had NO IDEA it would go THIS well.

ALL of the vinyl sold out within the first couple HOURS…we were floored.

all the hard work of #TeamChaos and Bandcamp paid off, big time.

there was a hot second of intense traffic at launch but ethan, shawn, and the other folks at Bandcamp kept things smooth (with sean keeping the fans in the loop via the box and @AFPwire, answering any questions they had). nothing fucked up too bad, twitter was aflame & the download spread like wildfire.

we also decided to do a free giveaway of a live piano version of “high and dry” that our friend @lauravogel recorded in NYC on the evelyn evelyn tour. if you missed it, grab it while you can HERE in exchange for a facebook post or a tweet.

before i talk too much more, i need to thank a handful of people who’ve been working tirelessly behind the scenes to make this one happen…

beth (@bethofalltrades), hayley (@hayleyfiasco), and (@indecisean) are the true unsung heroes of yesterday’s release triumph – these three guys have been my lifeline for the past few months, working day and night, gettin’ shit done and makin’ shit run. i couldn’t have done this without them.

for you music biz geeks that are feeling nerdy, there’s a great interview with sean and bandcamp up HERE.

……….

meanwhile….the promo’s getting hot. i did a great itnerview today with BBC wales in the UK,

and TODAY one of the songs is going to be featured on steven lamacq’s roundtable on BBC 6.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p4l4t

TUNE IN!!!

god i love y’all in the UK.

………………

the webcast yesterday was INCREDIBLE and also INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING.

for the webcast, i need to thank michael pope, who came up from NYC to film it, noah who jumped in and helped HARDCORE at the last minute, dazza and sara who were indispensable.

we were riddled with technical problems…if it could go wrong, it did. camera problems, power problems, mic and sound problems, internet connection problems.

still….we tried, we learned a shit-ton and it was awesome.

you can watch it, in all it’s falling-apartness, HERE.

steven mitchell wright acted as host and bartender….and a SHITLOAD of volunteers helped out, made noise, did sexy and made the space beautiful.

here’s steven and pope working on the running order….

as you can see, HIGHLY fucking organized….

the running order ended up being (i think):

creep (upstairs, on uke, to a frozen crowd)

do you swear… (upstairs to the crowd, on uke)

fake plastic trees (upstairs, on uke, in the corner jungle)

gaga, palmer, madonna (on uke in my bathroom, with the long sisters)

high and dry (on piano, alone in bedroom)

no surprises (garden, with toy pianos, cormac bride and mali)

double rainbow (by accident, my room, on piano with neil holding the sheet music)

idioteque (my room, piano and prepared piano, with mali and cormac)

creep (encore in my kitchen, with EVERYBODY)

exit music (alone on piano in bedroom)

the house was DECKED OUT in hawaiian finery, care of beth, hayley, casey (and her sisters danni and corrine) and the rest of the team….

beth took this photo during “ask amanda”. noah is photographing, hayley and kayla are macbook’ing, pope is filming, steven is asking, amanda is answering… and above it all, lee is making the movie of the movie:

i did “gaga, palmer, madonna” in the bathtub.

the long sisters dressed up as gaga, palmer, and madonna.

we made hand puppets. brigade-veteran liz helped dance them around:

neil was having a blast with his new camera app and took a load of beautiful photos.

all the rest of these are neil’s unless otherwise noted…..

this is corrine, as gaga, and danni, as madonna:

not pictured: casey, as palmer.

tons of people came into help, BTW…i’ve mentioned the core, but this webcast was HUGE and AMBITIOUS and it took a village. housemates steve and noah jumped in last minute to help with the tech details, art-intern ashleigh and chaos-intern rachel were our gal friday twins and did whatever we asked of them, beth’s pals mal blum and simon olsen (who opened for me at
my wellesley gig last year) helped hayley with an EPIC booze run, broken toy edrie edrie and ukulele-player/painter kayla oberlin were drafted to somberly read names during “idioteque”, ari barbanell and jared fine from the A.R.T. did an impromptu interview and slammed a drink on-air (respectively), and in total more than 20 well-dressed folks came to create a living, breathing backdrop to our webcasting madness. it was beautiful. it was chaos.

this is pope with the assembled webcast crowd (you can see len tower’s famous beard in the back right and in front of him, rachel, in her fantastic luau outfit she made herself out of a table skirt and a straw hat)…

we did a version of “no surprises” in the garden for two toy pianos with cormac bride on guitar and mali sastri (from jaggery) singing and playing a xanex housewife….

those two also joined me on my grand piano upstairs for a KILLER rendition of “idioteque” with the prepared piano parts.

mali played the loop on piano, i played uke, and cormac and i hit hit the piano with metal THINGS.
we’d asked the webcast audience to send in names of people they had lost, and a procession of the live audience joined in the song at the end, reading the names as they walked by the camera. it was moving, and beautiful.

neil took this of me…practicing earlier in the day……

and he took this wonderful shot of steven mitchell wright, our drunken roasted pig-on-a-spit host and beth, with her new bird tattoo….

beth, steven and KATRINA GALORE in the most amazing 50s swimsuit known to man:

neil took this one of the crowd….including walter sickert (and his huge inflatable monkey friend, shirtless), e. stephen with adorable youngest-reveler amanda s. to his left….