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

http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/227061643/dear-robert-smith-an-open-letter

I've done this a few times myself and it always spins the ol' head around.
Generally quite nicely put.

Will have to give that a closer reread but that beyond rules.

But Dan's going to hate what she's going nuts for in the final photo.

hahahahahahaha I did get to the end and go "OH COME THE FUCK ON"

but yeah, that pretty much exactly encapsulates why I still listen to The Cure (and why, in general, I think making fun of anyone for liking a "past-their-prime" band is the hallmark of an irredeemable dick)

Interesting.

Getting backstage at The Cure show at the Greek in Berkeley in '87 (I think) was the highlight of my life at the time.

hahahahahahaha I did get to the end and go "OH COME THE FUCK ON"

Seriously LOLing for real here.

"Amanda Palmer performs the popular hits of Radiohead on her magical ukelele" EP out tomorrow:

http://music.amandapalmer.net/album/amanda-palmer-performs-the-popular-hits-of-radiohead-on-her-magical-ukulele

fuck that

it seems like the only thing that poor instrument is used for anymore is for shitty covers

extra 'for' in that last one

fake plastic covers

I've spent quality time with Amanda. Never seen the Cure though. I would like to.

Always hated this woman, her music, her shitty graphic design & her terrible personal brand.

Jeez.

Anyway...

I never ever had this close a connection to any rock star, father figure, or (day I see it) hero type as so many people have done. To the extent that I wanted to follow them or be them (beyond the thought that I'd like that job yeah, sure)...

Even to the extent that I don't even have a default understanding of the mindset beyond appreciating how someone else might feel in the situation.

Anyway, nice letter, it's good to be happy.

my extreme distate for dresden dolls, that letter, her wordiness, etc, put me off listening to 'who killed amanda palmer' until now but I really like it, it's a good record.

She may not get a lot of ILM love, but getting crowdfunded to the tune of $1m is still something worthy of note, I would say.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amandapalmer/amanda-palmer-the-new-record-art-book-and-tour/posts/232020

also recently filled in for erykah badu as bathtub fodder

25,000 people pledged an average of $50... how

25,000 people pledged an average of $50... how

I was sitting next to the writer Neil Gaiman in a pizzeria today, and he was with this lady with tattooed eyebrows and a bunch of Bard kids who appeared to be shlepping them around.

Tonight I learned that she's Amanda Palmer, and they're married. Also that Gaiman is some kind of Upper Poobah Lightning Level Scientologist (son of former U.K. Scientology boss and Vitamin mogul David Gaiman), and that many suspect the $1 million was just poured in through Sea.Org (fancy Scientology people) as part of a pretty sneaky publicity stunt....

and now I guess I should be drawing the blinds or changing my display name or something

Also that Gaiman is some kind of Upper Poobah Lightning Level Scientologist

this is not true, although his family are still. (he was actually listed as supressive for a long time iirc). and anyone who needs to make up conspiracy theories abt Palmer's fanbase and social media aptitude has prob not read anything about her, or spoken to anyone who likes her, in the last five years.

What's a suppressive?

WTF Church of Scientology is in my iPhone! Just resumed scrabble game and "Hard" robot played ENGRAM(!)

^true

Wait hold on

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/rockers-playing-for-beer-fair-play/?hp

um

isn't that the entire point of funding your enterprise via Kickstarter, so that you can raise enough money for the things you want

on the flip side, this appears to be a "hey fan musicians, I invite you to play with me for a night on stage" thing and, as such, should be looked upon as a giveaway for amateur musicians rather than a solicitation for professionals

hahah goddamn musicians union folks are weird. DJP otm.

oh don't get me wrong, if she was doing this to drum up her core band she would deserve every bit of invective and more

What's the distinction your drawing there, though? "one gig vs a tour" or "horns & strings vs guitar/drums" or "a few songs vs the whole show"?

*you're

If she's doing a "let me bring out enthusiastic fans at each show to do a song or two" thing, then who cares

If she's doing a "let me fill out my band for the majority of my set with people I don't have to actually pay" thing, she should fuck off

i had never paid any attention to this person until this musician thing, which is shitty. but even shitter, she apparently was dating (pre-gaiman) someone who was a recovered drug addict and relapsed, and she faked a suicide attempt to show him how hurt she was by it, and recorded his reaction to finding her and thinking she had killed herself, and used it on an album. he later committed suicide. how is this person real?! that is stomach turning.

holy shit, is that for real

http://youtu.be/h57XWrFNGs8

5:10

this woman, holy shit

I hated this woman anyway for being a total shit to my friends when they were doing Weill cabaret, this is next level

ennh, she was 18 and the "gf fakes a suicide" -> "he commits suicide" connection doesn't ring true for me. It is so fucked up that she'd put that recording on an album, though, oh my god.

and christ, pay your musicians. Amateur vs. professional who the fuck cares. More like "I am blessed with a worshipful fanbase now let me exploit you for cheap labour"

haha Owen I think we're pretty much on the same page here with minor deviations

like... always?

he said here.

ennh, she was 18 and the "gf fakes a suicide" -> "he commits suicide" connection doesn't ring true for me. It is so fucked up that she'd put that recording on an album, though, oh my god

yeah i wasn't making the connection that he committed suicide because of her, it was more of an aside. but faking suicide is horribly abusive behavior, and using the recording on an album implies she has no remorse about it.

If she's doing a "let me bring out enthusiastic fans at each show to do a song or two" thing, then who cares

If she's doing a "let me fill out my band for the majority of my set with people I don't have to actually pay" thing, she should fuck off

― DARING PRINCESS (DJP), Thursday, September 13, 2012 2:18 PM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this is OTM. I think if one of my favourite bands put out a call for people to show up and play either a track they already know or jam out some psych a la Suzuki's Network, I'd jump at it and not expect payment. However, if it was "please learn my entire set, be present at a rehearsal, play for the entire show or at least when and where I expect you to" then I would find that a very different proposition indeed.

The string/horn sections she pulled together for the immediate post-Kickstarter mini-tour thing were all fans who opted in. They were asked to learn two songs I think, and turn up in time to soundcheck - and they looked like the happiest damn fans on earth onstage (as well as actually being really good).

i had never paid any attention to this person until this musician thing, which is shitty. but even shitter, she apparently was dating (pre-gaiman) someone who was a recovered drug addict and relapsed, and she faked a suicide attempt to show him how hurt she was by it, and recorded his reaction to finding her and thinking she had killed herself, and used it on an album. he later committed suicide. how is this person real?! that is stomach turning.

She's also ableist. I think she's an asshole.

You guys don't understand, she's an artist. You can't be an artist and an asshole at the same time, they're like matter / anti-matter.

(If I listen carefully, I can probably hear DJP's reaction to that from across the Atlantic)

I think a lot of the greatest artists have been complete and total assholes, and she's certainly living up to that. But women get given a harder time for ~not being nice~ and the level of assholehood required to be a ~great~ artist, so I try to cut female rock stars some slack on that count, i.e. The Courtney Love Clause.

The problem is, I've never heard any work of Amanda Palmer's that actually inspired me or blew me away in the way that I require ~great art~ to do. Which may well be my failure to appreciate it. So it's complicated.

Oy oy oy, that Evelyn Evelyn thing. I would have no problem if it was a Victoriana/Steampunk concept album about conjoined twins, really, but... positioning them in the contemporary world? Pretending that you rescued them? Giving *quite* such a distressing backstory to the record? DRESSING as them?

Yeah, that thing Nicole posted, that was the thing that really just crystalised a lot of the floating discomfort I'd been experiencing about her and her schtick. But, like I said, it's complicated.

but faking suicide is horribly abusive behavior, and using the recording on an album implies she has no remorse about it.

I've not knowingly heard an amanda palmer record but she reminds me so so so strongly of girls i used to know -- there can be this sense that making art around something shitty that you did is a way of working through it, the experience and your own behaviour? I mean, to me it is a terrible thing to have used that recording on an album that you release and get money for, but I can sense the edges of the logic that leads to it. Also i do not think her behaviour can be held responsible for his later suicide.

Like WCC says, it's complicated - because there've been these girls I knew who would have been so happy to grow up into Amanda Palmer, the very phenomenon of her existence is dear to me -- even when she does stuff like the Evelyn Evelyn project, which was frankly repulsive.

I think I'm probably misreading you, WCC - your first paragraph seems to suggest that there's a minimum level of assholehood required to be a great artists? But your second suggests that if she was a great artist, she'd get a reduction in effective assholehood?

in short, Great artists tend to be assholes, but assholes do not tend to be great artists.

wait what abt me

that cites one of her crimes as using the "r-word" in a song .... like 15-20 years ago, when it wasn't the same kind of horrible insensitive dick move it is now ...

Ummmm, yeah it was.

― emil.y, Friday, November 22, 2019 7:38 AM (five hours ago)

Even 11 years ago, as someone pointed out upthread ... it was "edgy" but still socially acceptable. Dunno what kinda historical re-write you are aiming for, or maybe it's a UK vs. US thing, seriously do I need to pull up pages of ilx search results to prove you wrong? Because you are wrong.

god she is giving all of us a bad name
she is the worst!!

It's definitely a US vs UK thing; we had a bunch of on-board fights about it

Aha! well, it's definitely not a battle I want to spend any more time on that's for sure

low stakes in the grand scheme, but 'who wants to fly me across europe so i don't have to get up early' is a+

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJ7FeqOXUAI99Yw.jpg:small

The perfect ending to this story would be for one of her lunatic fans to pick her up in some crappy homemade plane and go down in the Channel/North Sea.

Etsy Airlines

Oh god, oh god, the Honduran immigrants story.

(A thing can be socially acceptable and still a horrible insensitive dick move but)

AP is pretty clearly a dickhead whatever, witness a pattern of behaviour that, yes, exists on a continuum from embarrassing and tone-deaf to quite shit to repulsive, but has been pretty consistent for a long time

Having said that I’m in the same boat as most ilxors ito only really knowing her through the lens of this thread and latterly Twitter (ie “look at this fuck”) and was only recently subjected by a friend to a clip of some horrible song of hers - seeing her greatest hits being revived on social media has elicited some very grim chuckles I have to say

hadn't heard that story before:

My crew once pulled our van up to a really poor Miami neighborhood and we found out that our couchsurfing host for the night was an 18-year-old girl, still living at home, and her family were all undocumented immigrants from Honduras. And that night, her whole family took the couches and she slept together with her mom so that we could take their beds. And I lay there thinking, these people have so little. Is this fair? And in the morning, her mom taught us how to try to make tortillas and wanted to give me a Bible, and she took me aside and she said to me in her broken English, “Your music has helped my daughter so much. Thank you for staying here. We’re all so grateful.” And I thought, this is fair. This is this.

A couple months later, I was in Manhattan, and I tweeted for a crash pad, and at midnight, I’m ringing a doorbell on the Lower East Side, and it occurs to me I’ve never actually done this alone. I’ve always been with my band or my crew. Is this what stupid people do? Is this how stupid people die? And before I can change my mind, the door busts open. She’s an artist. He’s a financial blogger for Reuters, and they’re pouring me a glass of red wine and offering me a bath, and I have had thousands of nights like that and like that.

which honduran immigrants story? why am I looking into this trainwreck?

oh there it is

'i have exploited thousands and thousands of people'

On 16 November 2010, Palmer hosted a non-legally binding flash mob wedding for Gaiman's birthday in New Orleans.[128]

Lol that mookieproof one is gold!

Even 11 years ago, as someone pointed out upthread ... it was "edgy" but still socially acceptable. Dunno what kinda historical re-write you are aiming for, or maybe it's a UK vs. US thing, seriously do I need to pull up pages of ilx search results to prove you wrong? Because you are wrong.

― sarahell, Friday, November 22, 2019 4:05 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, yes and no; it was fairly uncontroversially considered a slur and not just "edgy," but also, even in the most mainstream of mainstream you had stuff like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JL6vKB5qMU

even in the most mainstream of mainstream you had stuff like this

Notably changed to "let's get it started" for radio.

well, yeah, it's radio

woah I had no idea that was the real title

^^^ I didn't know for years myself, not being a buyer of Black Eyed Peas albums. And frankly "Let's Get It Started" is a better title/song - it made its adoption as a Jock Jam not just totally appropriate, but inevitable.

I never knew there was a cleaner title tbh. The r-word version was the one I remember from MuchMusic.

pffft that's not how you get it started

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgOk1p1aHqE

^^^ I didn't know for years myself, not being a buyer of Black Eyed Peas albums. And frankly "Let's Get It Started" is a better title/song - it made its adoption as a Jock Jam not just totally appropriate, but inevitable.

this thread is something

oh my god if you have access to Amanda Palmer's patreon please please please send me screenshots of what's inside this post pic.twitter.com/tAtuWP5hZR

— Jane (@JaneOst_) November 23, 2019

Twitter user Jane is delirious with joy at AP’s shitposts

Sounds like ilxor material

I got to the end of that thread and as stupid as it still is, I'm still just so happy about the eyebrows.

I want to say Black Eyed Peas changed the song midstream, which is to say, after it had already gotten some traction. I saw them right around the time the album came out (they were touring with/opening for N*E*R*D), and I absolutely remember them introducing the song by talking about its original title and explaining why they were changing it. (The Black Eyed Peas show was awesome, btw, not going to lie. So much better than the headliners, who not only iirc sucked, but did so while performing standing on a picnic table.)

So Laura updated her Twitter thread this morning:

It turns out there’s more. From the Tim Ferriss show in April. “I can’t stop thinking about how I want to win her over, and change her mind, and force her to love me, and connect with me, and see the light. It’s almost bordering on a mental obsession.” https://t.co/WOuNhE1Md7 pic.twitter.com/1cFEpex0iP

— Laura Snapes (@laurasnapes) November 23, 2019

Or I should say yesterday morning.

what a weirdo

"almost"
"bordering"

"The fact that that's my Achilles' heel, that's the bear trap that my leg is in right now, speaks a lot about what I am"

no shit lady

i think cancel culture has gotten out of hand and overblown but I'm happy to make an exception in this case, what can we do?

The feature-not-a-bug part of all this is that if it weren't for her periodic outbursts of horribleness I would have forgotten all about Amanda Palmer years ago. So I guess it works for her on some level.

i didn't know she was married to neil gaiman

she is a sociopath

is she in the CATS! movie? She really should be/have been.

no, because I'm going to be hella stoned when I see that and I don't want her fucking with my buzz

Amanda Palmer = George Costanza

https://youtu.be/egwXofQqQ18

In most of the fan comments on AP's tweets there's all this praise for her honesty, which I guess makes me realize that honesty is not something I seek from artists.

“honesty”

The Lena Dunham of music

man she is so much worse than lena dunham and the only thing they have in common is that they are women narcissists

AP abuses power the way that a televangelist abuses power afaict -- with a facade of phony goodwill and a megaphone that is granted by sad needy sycophants :(

i don't even know if it's conscious or not but it reminds me of gaslighting a bit, like she's clearly someone who gets cornered on an issue and lashes out (cf firing her employee after concerns were raised about her use of the "n" word), and when she doesn't have devotion from someone she feels threatened and uses this facade of goodwill and understanding (creating some level of plausible deniability) and turns unwanted attention towards this person who doesn't like her. she also reminds me of the stepmom from fleabag.

yes, she exhibits the behavior of an abusive person
Deny
Attack
Reverse Victim & Offender

something about the niche adulation she receives and exploits really grosses me out the way that Morrissey's racism is worse to me than, say, Ted Nugent..a sense of trust with their feelings that their fans have

ok then the Ma Anand Sheela of music

xposts

LL otm