Why I like Amanda Fucking Palmer… and Thank You

Amanda Palmer is one of those artists that I ended up getting turned onto a little bit late. By all rights, I should have been a fan of The Dresden Dolls in the early 2000s. A large portion of what was in heavy rotation on my computer and CD player at that point in history was Boston and indie… but for some reason The Dresden Dolls didn’t really pop up on my radar. I know I knew they existed, but for whatever reason I never sought out any of their music when they were active. Not really sure why.

Instead, I was introduced to Amanda Palmer by some internet sharing.. First from an Australian friend, Fiona who had shared a link to her Oasis music video and second from my friend Darius who had written a blog post at one point to the effect of not really caring for the punk cabaret aesthetic and had linked off to Amanda’s Leeds United video.

While I was certainly drawn toward the music, I have to admit… what captivated me the most about her is that she’s just another person off the street… a creative one that’s figured out how to do what she wants in life and just fucking does it. That I find admirable. It’s evidenced in her online presence. When she blogs, it’s open and honest… and quite honestly, no different than any other regular Joe blogger I know. She just writes about things like her experiences on the road, she responds to criticism publicly, she’s been transparent about the business aspect of things.

So, why am I suddenly talking about this?

I had the opportunity to see the closing show of the Evelyn Evelyn tour at House of Blues on Saturday evening.

Let’s back up for a minute to explain a few things. First of all, who/what is Evelyn Evelyn? Conjoined twin sisters that are characters that were created and performed by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley with a rather tragic story. The Evelyn Evelyn project raised a considerable amount of controversy, in my opinion due partly due to the fact that Evelyn Evelyn was introduced to the wider public as a real people that Amanda and Jason had discovered rather than a character that they created and partly due to the fact that their story was so outrageously dark and depressing. Amanda and Jason were accused of being exploitative and insensitive in the choice of using conjoined twins for their character. I read a great deal about the Evelyn Evelyn controversy, but in the end largely abstained from making much of a comment about it until I was able to see it for myself.

When Evelyn Evelyn came to New York City the week before last, I was too broke to afford tickets despite rather wanting to see the show. One of the things that Amanda often does with her shows is to give away tickets on Twitter, so on the first night I entered the contest to win some… and won a ticket. Trouble was, I misread the time that the show started and it happened to start shortly after an already scheduled appointment I had… and there was no way I was going to be able to get there on time. So, disappointingly, I had to tweet back to pass them on to someone else. I entered in for the next few nights shows, and not surprisingly didn’t win them. So, at that point, I’d given up hope of seeing the show before it closed.

However, I was in Boston this weekend for Drupal Design Camp which coincided with the last show of the tour. I entered in to the contest for the Boston tickets, and quite surprisingly won a pair. I managed to convince DJ to come with me, despite vocalizations of his skepticism that this was going to be any good.

The show opened with Sxip Shirey, who immediately became one of my new favorite performers. His music is mainly made up of harmonica and other assorted random things that make sounds… things like, a marble in a bowl. His music extremely odd but quite beautiful. He opened with stories of Brooklyn and I Live in New York City, which for obvious reasons I loved, despite feeling incredibly awkward that I was in Boston and in a venue that was across the street from Fenway Park. Admittedly that’s a bizarre way to feel considering that I doubt much of the crowd cares about baseball and Brooklynites have typically been Mets fans ever since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.

Sxip Shirey’s set gave way to the Evelyn Evelyn set, which was a quite impressive feat of watching Amanda and Jason play piano, accordion, and guitar… each contributing one hand to playing. The set didn’t lay out the entire story of Evelyn Evelyn (for that, listen to the album particularly the tragic events tracks), but it laid out enough for someone new not to be entirely lost. Since the set was more focused on the music, and less on the story… it was decidedly less dark than I’d anticipated.

There was a brief intermission, then Jason Webley came out and performed a few songs on his own, then Amanda joined him and then she did a few songs on her own, and they closed with an invitation to an afterparty and a drinking song.

All in all, a really awesome show. I just wish I had the money to buy some merchandise and give back toward all of their efforts… but for now, all I can say is thank you for the tickets to the show. It was a wonderful experience.

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