amanda palmer's open poem to jonathan chait (and other crimes)

AP's assertion:

the minute YOU make black and white rules about how other artists should value their own art and time, you disempower them.

is totally OTM, but it's an argument for the prosecution.

Free Jherek

Owen's comment on the piece is worth reading; it's the second one.

xpost She trotted out Gaiman for one novelty tour, and I believe in a recent interview with her - AVClub? - she said she's not going to do it again.

Well, it's all the points I made in this thread (minus yesterday's food poisoning, general biliousness) (plus a couple of genuine positive feelings that I leave out round here)

Which piece is the comment on?

Owen, I hope she responds to you. I bet she does. I think, for better or for worse, her transparency works in her favor, even when folks disagree.

I think after all of these "some of your friends are already this fucked" sorts of Albini-y debates, most people still have no idea of the real costs of recording, touring, publishing, whatever, and have no idea what a pretty prominent artists like Palmer actually pulls in. Or the costs, time, effort, etc. to even get to a level like Palmer's. I'm finding the whole discussion as educational as anyone.

It's funny, I don't really care about her hypocrisy so much as the horrible logic she uses to defend it. She loves the glorious experience of mingling with fans while they give her food and perform with her on stage? Great! But what the fuck does that have to do with NOT PAYING THEM?

the food thing is fucking unreal

I wish I could afford to donate to dozens of my favorite artists, if they ever came asking.

Can't she just say "hey i'm really lucky to have a fan base that loves to spend money, cook food and perform on stage with me. what a life of riley i have" instead of going on about her artistic freedom?

I gave a package of gummi bears to the Dead Milkmen back in 1993.

And a tie to the drummer from Skankin' Pickle ('96)

Just writing that down for tax purposes.

Kind of lolling at how AP has effectively removed the middleman and gone straight to having fans make food for her, that is gangsta

I think the two may be intertwined in her conception/business model. She recognizes that her fans support her artistic freedom, and they in turn value her artistic freedom enough to shell out to support her.

none of this has anything to do with "artistic freedom"

It just says a lot to me about the difference between people's expectations of ~what touring is like~ based on rock biogs and rockumentaries etc. and the actual experience of scrabbling from gig to gig without Tour Support and trying to get fed, even when you're on a major label tour, that stuff doesn't trickle down to support bands.

(It's always eye-opening to see which ~big stars~ as headlining bands make sure their support acts get a slice of the catering and which ones don't. My estimation for Kathleen Hanna went up 100x when she brought round a platter of their food into our dressing room. Things like that do make a difference. As compared to which bands actually make you pay a buy-on to get onto the tour in the first place, oh boy don't get me started...)

(I don't begrudge her that or anything, it's just hilarious and does speak very directly to her viewpoint)

She might as well go whole hog and start issuing stock

Giving a musician a place to crash or a meal is one thing: expecting to be paid for your other music while "fans" support you with their musical efforts for free is entirely another. It's an elitist, classist exploitative model that would even piss me off a little if she were an extraordinary talent. As it is...

Nah, Bowie's already done that.

Money=artistic freedom.

My estimation for Kathleen Hanna went up 100x when she brought round a platter of their food into our dressing room.

I know the little things count, but this was a pretty modest expenditure on her part magnified by the fact that it comes from someone famous and the fact that many people wouldn't do half as much, however modest.

The Bowie stock worked out really well for him, didn't it? I think he was able to leverage sales/transfer of that stuff for a bunch of cash.

there are worse things for people to spend money on than rock cabaret and worse ways to get money than begging fans of your rock cabaret, but christ just admit you're taking rock cabaret fans for all they've got

Ween used to print right in their record sleeves that they wanted fans to bring food to their shows

She trotted out Gaiman for one novelty tour, and I believe in a recent interview with her - AVClub? - she said she's not going to do it again.

they did a five-date co-headline tour. occasionally he gets up at her shows to read a poem or talk a song bcz they think it's fun, doubt that's going to stop.

Money=artistic freedom.

Money=economic freedom, this has way more to do with her budgeting priorities than her music

Man I'm glad my touring has been with well-funded choirs, I've basically come out the other side ahead every time I've done one by smart per diem management.

man the BSO must have spent a SHITTON of money on us to bring us to Europe

must have been half a million dollars

I gave a package of gummi bears to the Dead Milkmen back in 1993.

I gave a couple of Tylenol to the drummer from Ned's Atomic Dustbin. I think that's the saddest thing I confessed to here.

also, can i just say the phrase "crowdsource food" is blowing my mind

So Albini has retracted the "is an idiot" stance but describes her Kickstarter breakdown as "a Moebius strip of waste".

he never said "is an idiot" tho

Pretty much everybody on earth has a threshold for how much to indulge an idiot who doesn't know how to conduct herself, and I think Ms Palmer has found her audience's threshold.

i mean you can romney that if you want

let me get this straight, this amanda smith person used kickstarter to raise money and spent it on drugs for robert palmer?

"If your position is that you aren't able to figure out how to do that, that you are forced by your ignorance into pleading for donations and charity work, you are then publicly admitting you are an idiot."-Steve Albini, 1776.

xpost You're thinking of Amanda Jones from the movie "Some Kind of Wonderful," whose boyfriend hung out with James Spader, who dressed like Robert Palmer and did drugs.

New Shellac MP3: "I Built That"

Shellac... mp3? does not compute

they're not THAT cool

lol 1st responder to Owen has no idea what he/she is talking about

I can't speak to vinyl costs... but I do remember when a friends band released a 7" in the early 90's, they paid almost $5/unit then.

fucking REALLY. I released an ungodly # of 7"s in the 90s. if costs had been anywhere near 5/per I wouldn't have released one.

$5/per is totally reasonable in 2012 funky art-piece 7" terms, I'd even go as high as $10/per.

Girl says $100/per. Anybody else still wanna imply an asshole for saying she's "grifty"?

i’ve played a ukulele to hundreds of people on a beach for hours, for free

*imply I'm an asshole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmzN1p5q2sY

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrvzfwBTLA1qme01j.jpg

i’ve played a ukulele to hundreds of people on a beach for hours, for free. time to die.

xxp to aero yeah, getting vinyl done in the 90s was so cheap even my shitty-ass local band put out a couple of 7"s, and we were able to order so many for so little that I've still got a big box full of them in my attic.

Girl says $100/per. Anybody else still wanna imply an asshole for saying she's "grifty"?

no she doesn't, she says $25 for vinyl + packaging + a handmade arts&crafts piece in each of the four packages, if the orders come to pressing 300 copies each of 4 different singles

If there was someone on the beach playing ukelele for hours, I would happily pay them to stop.

The letter she links to has this interesting bit:

Artists are feeling desperate. I confess, I have found myself giving free performances in order to get ahead and perhaps have something notable to put on my resume. You'd think that this would help, but it doesn't and in fact it's made my position worse. Volunteer opportunities have effectively lead to more volunteer opportunities. Very very seldom have I found it leading to compensating gigs.

I think this is really at the root of all the 'devaluing' talk. If you want to do this cos you like AP, that's great. But if you want to because it's 'good exposure' or you think playing music for free is like interning at a job, then you are really buying a line. Not that anybody here has specifically said such things, but on various comment boards, I see "Oh, you have to pay your dues just like a film intern or whatever" and the person who said that is obviously not a musician.