dresden dolls

Amanda Palmer and the True Fans

May 2, 2012 by krisis

On Monday it was Amanda Palmer’s birthday.

Amanda Fucking Palmer holding a keetar. Note how she and Lady Gaga are in many ways the same person.

I have written about Amanda before. She was half the astounding Dresden Dolls before she released a frankly stunning and sadly slept-on solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer? and then got intentionally dropped from her label, meandering off to make an album as half of a conjoined twin act, marry Neil Gaiman, and then dabble in the world of ukuleles and Radiohead cover songs.

It’s not the most linear or discernible path for an artist to take, but somehow Amanda not only makes it work, she acquires more new fans at every turn. Not just casual fans. Insatiable, intelligent, invested true fans. I say it is because she is so indelibly real, even when she is being completely ludicrous.

Back to her birthday. It was Monday, and it marked not only the start of another year in Amanda’s life, but the completion of recording a new album with her band Grand Theft Orchestra.

To celebrate, she created a Kickstarter campaign to fundraise for the album release, promotion, and supporting tour. She set the goal at $100,000 – pretty massive for a Kickstarter campaign – but did she have 5,000 true fans willing to chip in $20 each to help her get there?

She made the limit in seven hours. By the next day she had a quarter of a million dollars. At the end of day three she currently sits at the $400,000 mark, with four weeks of fundraising to go. There is an honest chance that Amanda Palmer may briefly become a millionaire before she creates all of the albums, art books, and USB record players that go with the campaign and travels the world with Grand Theft Orchestra to share her new music – and that will be a million dollars well spent.

I gave almost immediately, mostly out of principal. Based on the past few ukulele things I thought the record would be weird and indulgent and I would just be satisfied that I am supporting an artist I admire.

Then I watched this Kickstarter commercial, rife with clips of new songs … every single one of them amazing.

Now I have not only pledged in exchange for music, but I am going in purchasing an Amanda Palmer House Party for Philadelphia, which means after seeing her four times as the Dresden Dolls and two times solo I am now going to see her in a living room with about three dozen other people sitting on the floor.

(Not only that, but she inspired me to shattered a long-running streak of writer’s block, and I already have two peculiar new songs to show for it.)

Amanda Palmer isn’t operating from anyone’s model but her own, and she breaks the mold every time she dreams up a new project.

She is the new music industry. We are the media.

Happy Birthday, Amanda Fucking Palmer.

Music Monday: Tristan Allen, via Amanda Palmer

December 13, 2010 by krisis

Last night I watched an amazing webcast of original instrumental piano music from a teenager named Tristan Allen, who has his first EP out today.

The quality and control of it was just astounding. I have a very hard time paying attention to instrumental music, but last night I had no problem.

(“Pentagon” from Tristan Allen)

What’s so interesting, other than Tristan’s amazing abilities as a pianist and composer, is the story of how his album came to be. I love this story to death, and you should just go read Amanda Palmer’s version of it – part 1 and part 2 – but her blogs are way longer than mine, so I’ll summarize for you:

While Amanda Palmer, she of the Dresden Dolls, was recently in Boston rehearsing and performing Cabaret she randomly stopped in front of Berklee College of Music and asked three hugging teens if she could snap their photo. Though they didn’t recognize her at first, just as Amanda made her way down the sidewalk one of the teens chased her down, having overheard her talking about Cabaret.

This was Tristan. He was a huge Dolls fan and composer, and wondered if he could play a song for Amanda. One thing lead to another, and Amanda, Tristan, and his friends wound up in Amanda’s legendary Cloud Collective apartment with Amanda’s jaw on the floor, watching him play.

So, of course, being Amanda Palmer, she broadcasted him to the internet as he played and then created a Kickstarter campaign to raise 2.5x as much as he needed to record an EP, and then went into the studio with him to record, then last night threw him a record release party once again broadcast to the internet at large.

(You can stream the entire webcast on Ustream – Amanda plays a set before Tristan, who starts at about an hour in. His second or third song is where I began to be really blown away.)

Just take that in. Amanda Palmer just got out of a record contract. She was in a major run of a musical, promoting a new record, mixing another one, and planning a reunion tour for Dresden Dolls. And she took the time out to hear Tristan’s one song – and then fell in love with him and helped him make all of this happen. Oh, and recorded a duet with him.

(Watch it in HD on YouTube.)

Now Tristan has an album, at least a few thousand dollars put away for school, and a pretty fare name for himself heading into college applications.

Just amazing. Please listen to the sample and, if you like him, download his EP at any price you name.

Crushing On: Dresden Dolls

November 2, 2010 by krisis

Sometimes you find music that is so in tune with your own influences that it seems to be deliberately made for you.

The Dresden Dolls are that.

The Dresden Dolls

The Dresden Dolls are a two-piece band – hard, clanging piano from Amanda Palmer and the best drumming on the planet outside of Scandanavian death metal from Brian Viglione. Amanda sings in a smarmy, cabaret-influenced alto belt which over the years has become a third finely tuned instrument in the band’s arsenal.

Already they are completely up my alley. Then, it turns out the Dresden Dolls are influenced not only by cabaret and punk, but by Bertolt Brecht and David Bowie. They love winkingly nodding to unusual corners of pop culture, like covering the Maurice Sendak poem (and personal anthem) “Pierre” and – on Sunday night – covering an Auto-Tune the News song.

I originally heard about the Dolls from our friend Chaz, but didn’t really get the point of their vicious cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” Then, 2006, we were headed to Bonnaroo and I saw their “Yes, Virginia” on the Bonnaroo artists rack. What the hell?, I thought, and picked it up.

That album became one of my favorites of the decade, and yielded perhaps my favorite song of the decade, “Backstabber.” Virginia transcends punk cabaret to be an awesome pop album filled with hyper-catchy singalong anthems with a subversive bent, like “My Alcoholic Friends” or “Mandy Goes to Med School,” a catchy tune about being a back-alley abortionist.

Sunday night at their 10th Anniversary Concert they played “Backstabber,” “Mandy,” and just about every other song I love, and ended with “War Pigs.”

This time I got the point.

Recommended mix-tape: “Good Day,” “Coin-Operated Boy,” “Girl Anachronism,” “Backstabber,” “My Alcoholic Friends,” “Shores of California,” “The Kill”

Filmstar and The Substitute People

August 6, 2010 by krisis

I want to tell you about one of my fantasies.

(Don’t worry, it’s work safe.)

I fantasize about being a substitute person.

If you don’t know what that means, you clearly don’t watch Elizabethtown as much as E and I do. At one point, Kirsten Dunst’s Claire – a perennial second-place finisher in a life and love, muses:

60B!

You and I have a special talent, and I saw it immediately. We’re the substitute people. I’ve been the substitute person my whole life. … I like it that way. It’s a lot less pressure.

I’ve always had the fantasy of being the substitute person, but it took Claire to put words to it. Usually my fantasy goes like this:

A musician I really love – let’s say, Amanda Palmer – is in town, but they are touring without a certain band member – usually a guitarist or harmony singer. I’m at the concert, and when they start to play one of their big hits they stop and ask, “Does anyone know the [guitar/vocal/cowbell/whatever] part to this song? [I raise my hand.] You do? Come up here and try it.”

And then I get up and, of course, play the solo or sing the harmony to perfection, because I am obsessed with it. And then they ask me to sit in for another song. And another one. And then I hang out with them after the show and they fall in love with me.

Sort of like Courtney Cox in the “Dancing in the Dark” video.

I’m sure you have a similar fantasy, even if you aren’t a musician. Maybe it’s about stepping in with a sports team, or filling a hole on a big project in your office. It’s the opposite of the Actor’s Nightmare, where you’re stuck on stage with no idea what to do.

The allure of the fantasy is that we’re the substitute people. Just like a substitute teacher, no one is expecting us to do much more than fill a hole. Then, when we are amazing (or, at least, more amazing than adequate), they fall in love with us.

Having the substitute fantasy doesn’t mean you don’t like your life. I love being half of Arcati Crisis. But, every time I listen to E’s Filmstar demo record I catch myself thinking “I could walk right up and play all of those bass parts, if they needed me to.”

Well, two weeks ago life put my fantasy to the test when I wound up behind a microphone at a Filmstar rehearsal with a brand new bass hanging off my shoulder.

To make a long story short, Filmstar found themselves without a bassist, and I was called on my flippantly mentioned substitute-person fantasy of playing with the band.

I did know their songs pretty well – well enough to noodle along to their EP. Well enough to play bass on all fifteen of their songs? I didn’t necessary know every key, chord, and rhythm.

Oh, and there was the little detail of my not having played bass for seven years.

I decided that didn’t matter – I wanted to be their substitute person. E asked me to fill in on a Thursday. My new bass arrived on Friday. I arranged all the songs for myself on Sunday. I knew all fifteen of them for rehearsal on Wednesday.

We played every one.

This photo of me playing bass is nine years old, and this is as big as you're ever going to see it.

Was I awesome? No. Am I a bassist? Not by trade. But as a substitute person I was solid – I showed up able to fill the entirety of the hole in their lives, probably better than they anticipated I could.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep substituting with Filmstar, or if I’ll keep loving it. At some point a long-term substitute becomes your permanent solution, and surprising adequacy turns into lingering disappointment.

I’ve decided i don’t want to think it through that far. For the moment, I’m living my fantasy, and playing in an awesome rock band with my wife.

Sometimes we get we want in the most unexpected ways. What’s your substitute people fantasy? Have you ever got what you wanted?

I laugh until my head comes off (Amanda Palmer’s “Idioteque” debuts)

June 11, 2010 by krisis

See that Radiohead lyric in the title? That’s my past two days. Work + House has reached absolute critical intellectual mass. Whatever that means.

I love Amanda Palmer, even if I don’t always love everything she does. When she said her next release would be an album of Radiohead covers on ukulele I was beyond skeptical.

The skepticism has ended – behold, her cover of “Idioteque,” released literally minutes ago.

I love it. I just love it. I’ve always loved the song, but the icy, withdrawn version on Kid A has never totally connected with me. Amanda’s sounds instantly familiar, as if it was the version I was hearing in my head all along.

For more on her upcoming album hit her “Idioteque” blog post; of note:

[buy “Idioteque for] a minimum donation of 40¢ (9¢ going to radiohead and the rest to paypal)

the album will be available … for a minimum donation of 84¢…some stuff i’d like you to know about that 84¢:
– 54¢ of it is going directly back into radiohead’s pockets (the cost of selling my covers of their songs)
– the remaining 30¢ will be going to paypal to cover the transaction fee

There is no physical release beyond a limited edition LP, and anything beyond the minimum donation for digital is 100% gross profit for Amanda, which will help her recoup her production costs.

Is this the new model of indie music? I hope so, as it’s exactly what I would do. I guess we’ll see soon enough.