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

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.

I try to see her side of this - I have a friend who crowds the stage with on-the-spot audience volunteers to clap on this one song & he loves it & so do they & it's often as much of the audience as can fit on the stage; that's not my style, but if people are into it, who does it hurt - but paying musicians who play with me is extremely important to me and to the survival of the craft as craft. I know there's people who wanna flex some "in the digital age the craft belongs to everyone and is no longer a craft it's ~a way of life~" or something but really that is nonsense - specifying that you want musicians who can really play means you want people who've sacrificed to learn their craft to now sacrifice for the betterment of yours. Having said all that, confidential to my singer buds, the check's in the mail lol

i'm definitely not saying that her behavior was responsible for his suicide! and i don't know the timing of when she used the recording of him in her music, but if it was after his death and he didn't consent to it being used, that's just completely callous and gross.

also who fakes a suicide and leaves a recording device on!!?? like "lol PUNK'D! gotcha!!"

I am obviously not expressing myself well.

I think that being a truly great artist requires in some senses a certain amount of sheer bloody-mindedness (for lack of a better term) that can read like being-an-asshole. And women get criticised a lot harder for sheer-bloody-mindedness in a way that men are not quite so penalised, because that sheer-bloody-mindedness violates the ~always be nice~ directive that women are supposed to live under.

It's not that ~great artists~ get a "get out of being an arsehole free" (though lord knows that card gets handed to male artists like e.g. John Lennon an awful lot.) I think it's more that halo effect whereby if you believe someone to be a genius, you are more likely to call that sheer-bloody-mindedness an "artistic temperament" instead of just "being an asshole."

If I believed more in Amanda Palmer's genius (which I don't, given the art of hers that I've heard) I would be willing to wade into the argument more. But at the moment, I'm kind of more with Cis. I'm actually glad that she exists, and that there is a space for her, and obviously she means an awful lot to many people.

But there are many, many artists who are seriously distasteful human beings (hello Anton Newcombe?) and yet they get judged on their art and the quality thereof, not on the things they've put their partners through in the name of art or something.

There's an unfortunate feedback loop here too; my objections to Amanda Palmer began when she crashed the stage at a cabaret show friends/castmates of mine were doing in support of our production of "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" and literally took over the stage from them, apparently to "sing the songs correctly" (quote may be misremembered), then ramped almost immediately up to 11 when I saw the Evelyn Evelyn stuff. Then I heard the music and didn't connect to it, but by that point it would have had to have been the most amazing music ever to surmount the barrier of ill will I'd already constructed towards her.

Her being an asshole probably wouldn't matter as much if her music was any good, but for me it's mediocre at best.

WCC otm, with a Christmas bonus for "the Courtney Love Clause".

jjj did play one Dresden Dolls song for me that I really liked but I have no idea what it was and no real desire to track it down

xp Is she "ableist" or just tactless, using a conceit in an abstract arty way without connecting it to real people in that situation? I'm wary of labelling someone a bigot based on one fairly strange situation. But I do think that when you're that visible on Twitter you get a lot of shit and probably get too defensive when it comes to valid criticism because you're used to fending off assholes. Personally I like her, I like her songwriting and I like the way she wrestles with her own exhibitionism but I don't give her a free pass.

Well the first I heard of her was back in Dresden Doll days, when she went to war with their label over them insisting that she lose some weight and reshoot a video because she had a (tiny) visible belly in one scene, and she basically mobilised her entire fanbase in this really inspiring and empowering (bleurgh hate that word) wave of body acceptance until they backed down, and shooting down the unrealistic expectations of womens' appearances in the music biz which just made me think YOU GO GIRL.

So I was predisposed to think that her intentions were in the right place, right up until the EvelynEvelyn thing - and it wasn't even doing the thing in the first place (which was a bit ick) but her reaction towards the criticisms, and basically using twitter to abuse the people with disabilities who had brought up the issue in the first place (who were actually fans!) which was just... um, you've changed.

Like, in the former case, the whole "Fuck you, this is my art" was totally and completely the sheer-bloody-minded right thing to do. And in the latter case, "Fuck you, this is my art" was, um, rong rong rong.

Like I said, it's complicated.

At the end of the day I see the creative act as being somewhat unassailable. That is: anybody who can write fifteen fantastic songs has pretty much assumed a eternally defensible position. Even situations where I've personally been specifically and unquestionably "fucked over" by a fellow musician, I have a persistently sympathetic attitude toward the person who at the end of the day has to pull inspiration out of thin air.

That said, you've got to write those fifteen fantastic songs to get that magic ticket, you know?

Hmm, I'm not really sure where I was going with that last post, I'm just gonna stop now. I'm trying to respond to "why do I accept asshole behaviour from a Courtney Love and not an Amanda Palmer" but I don't really know. I'd definitely be calling out Elvis Costello if he was pulling this shit

Because Courtney Love has written Pretty On The Inside, and Live Through This and Celebrity Skin and Amanda Palmer and Elvis Costello have not, is generally my response to those kinds of things.

But these things are relative, and subjective.

I don't dare look back through the thread to find out, but has she done NFTs yet?

shhh, dammit

I would buy an NFT of her eyebrows

she called a fucking advice column a “conversation salon” come on

-welcome to The Advice Bureau
-uh its just a roomful of ppl talking over each other
-yes. great, isnt it?
- how do i get advice
- lets table that for now, hmm?

is 77 a salon?

Thinktank

a toilet that you shout into

In hearings that to a song but I can’t think of what song it is

a toilet that you shout into

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, January 20, 2022 5:15 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is with great pride that i present to you... The Internet

i went to two conversation salons earlier today, except they were called meetings. she should like set up a zoom room or google hangout and charge people to enter and watch her check her email.

It's over

https://amandapalmer.net/posts/a-joint-statement-from-me-and-neil/

if they couldn't make it work, who could?

did they ever try to monetize couples therapy?

I assumed this happened already, didn’t they literally stop living in the same country

lmao

I guess they just grifted apart

^ omg

All time excelsior

hall of fame shit

Actual spit take

Holy shit I cackled like a witch at that.

Lmao

https://www.facebook.com/100045146024077/posts/pfbid02Z9jqz9XfMPDkdTctzDtFBNoE8Hqbtu2WZQAuwdi5TUrFjYSujiogC9YTwDXBFFPel/?mibextid=cr9u03

Regret to inform you all that she took a powerful lesson from Sinead O'Connor as well - it's the same lesson as always: never wonder "Am I the asshole?"

Am I not your asshole?

when every lens is a mirror

i’m so tired of rolling my eyes at her

i enjoyed the subtle but great running joke about amanda palmer on Deadloch (Australian murder comedy/satire series on Amazon)

is this post available to schadenreade somewhere publicly?

it didn't work on mobile but did on desktop (although I can imagine you balked at the URL!)

As I sit here with tears in my eyes, I find my complicated feelings about chat GPT getting even more complicated.
🤖🏳️‍⚧️♥️🤷🏻‍♀️
https://i.imgur.com/znvUQWH.jpg

It's been so long since whatever Amanda Palmer did to make so many people (including me) dislike her that I've got to admit ... I don't remember what it was. But I saw her years ago with the Dresden Dolls, and fair's fair, the band was good. They reunited/played at Riot Fest yesterday, and while I wasn't watching them, specifically, I caught a bit of their set, and ... it was pretty good again? They brought out Melissa Auf der Maur for a Beastie Boys cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzrJW-8CCHE

yeah they are touring. I hate them. I love Melissa auf der Mar though.

I don't even think that highly of the Beastie Boys tbh but no I am not clicking on that, are you fucking crazy

I will not encourage such behaviour

happy new year!

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/03/three-things-with-amanda-palmer-putting-a-cold-stone-around-my-warm-neck-i-remember-what-i-endured

He also used to tell me: “Say less.”

Maybe this is the New Year New Me but that piece isn't actually that bad. Excluding the stick thing.

the bit about having her future boyfriend (and his publicist) meet her in the park only for them to find what she was doing pretty cringe is something