From the Amanda Palmer tour. Credit: Instagram user Owl_Soup
Every seven years, Amy and I rise from our suburban lethargy and go to a rock concert. Last night we saw Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra at The Paradise, on the last night of their US tour.
Our consensus was: amazing performance (2 1/2 hours), both Amanda Palmer and band (including horns and strings!) totally committed to what they are doing, but not something we really know well enough to blow our heads open as it seemed to do for most others in the crowd.
Amanda Palmer at the legendary First Avenue club (home of Prince!) in Minneapolis. Credit: Instagram user Fotodog
I can’t really say much about the music that will be helpful. You should check out her “Theater is Evil” album (click link for free album stream), on which my favorite tracks are “Do it with a Rockstar” and “Want it Back.” She started out in Dresden Dolls, which you might know for their Cabaret-punk hit “Coin-Operated Boy” of about 2004. I’m not linking to any videos because they are all deeply NSFW.
What’s interesting is how I came to know about her: Twitter. I think it happened when I somehow saw her commentary earlier this year on Lana del Rey. She was apparently blown away by “Video Games” (which I love too) and then maybe didn’t like the rest of the Born to Die disc, but still dwelled at length on Video Games and did a few covers. I got to be interested in Amanda Palmer’s musings on Twitter and on the Kickstarter project she had going to fund what became her current album. And, as part of my project to live large and get me and Amy out of the burbs monthly, I got us tickets in June for the show last night.
From left: Josh, random hot Amanda Palmer groupie
This makes two artists I like a lot that I’ve heard about because of tweets on some random subject. The first was Robyn, last year, who I heard about because of a tweet by a defense/security writer. Amanda Palmer has quite an intense social media presence–just recently she happened to send a tweet about whether people had insurance or not, and it exploded into a discussion that went way beyond her own devoted followers. The fact that I heard about her (in her new incarnation), heard about the show, and became at least a bystander to this intense community of people following/loving/hating her–all through Twitter–is kind of cool. I am glad to be not quite too old to be able to ride part of this wave.