Amanda Palmer In Los Angeles

The good news was that the show itself was AMAZING! (Many pictures below – good thing I brought the big lens and know how to use the manual settings on the Canon.)

You can look at some of the examples I give about why I think Amanda Palmer (AFP) is a most incredible individual. If you’re rolling your eyes and muttering, “He likes her?!” then it’s OK to just skip this and I’ll see you tomorrow. I understand that we all have different tastes and opinions and things particular artists or music or subjects that I get passionate about might be things you couldn’t care less about. No worries!

The bad news is that the venue (First Unitarian Church on 8th Street, near Wilshire & Vermont) apparently had some issues. (Looking at Twitter comments from others, this is an ongoing problem with this venue.) I don’t know what happened, but the show that was supposed to start at 7:30 didn’t start to nearly 8:30. We were expecting the doors to open about 7:00, they opened at about 7:45. (I don’t know exactly when they opened, we were standing in line a block away.)

The good news is that even after the late start, our event ran waaaaaay long. This was good news if you wanted lots of fascinating discussions, readings from her new book, favorite musical pieces (okay, so it was just three of them), and a surprise that just knocked our socks off. The show was supposed to run about 1:30, followed by everyone getting a couple of seconds each to meet Amanda and get their books and other items signed. It actually ran well over 2:30, pushing 3:00. That meant…

The bad news is that I didn’t get to meet her or get my (already signed for sale by the bookstore) copy of her book personalized. It was nearly 11:30 when they started setting up for the signings, and we were pretty much at the back end of a line of hundreds of people. My best guess was that it could easily be 1:00 AM or later before we got to the front of that line. While I have no doubt at all that Amanda stayed and signed until the last person was done, and I love her for that, The Long-Suffering Wife and I couldn’t stay that late. (For the record, her first tweet after the show was at 1:25, and it was “LOS ANGELES – my god. sorry we destroyed you with a three-hour show that was supposed to be two hours tops. but…life. and wow.”

The Long-Suffering Wife, while not a big fan, was a sport and came along, skipped dinner (traffic sucked) to get there “on time”, stood in the line on the sidewalk for nearly an hour, and sat through an event that was much longer than either of us had expected it to be. She appreciated Amanda’s personality and how authentic and dedicated she is — but she’s not a fan of the music. So, my thanks to her for soldiering on and coming along anyway.

This is one of the special guests, Jamy Ian Swiss. He was described as the book’s Doula (a sort of midwife), taking 120,000+ words written almost as a stream of consciousness exercise and helping to shape and trim it into a book.

Our first view of Amanda.

She started with “In My Mind” on the ukulele, which was wonderful.

I never lose my wallet…

I’ll be a good defensive driver…

Planting tulips and vegetables…

Then we got two songs, off stage where the baby grand piano was. Another issue with the venue was the sound system, which was marginal at best. The staging was dark (as the photos show), so between the dark, the so-so sound, and the fact that she had disappeared down front off stage, all I heard of the second song was a lot of noise I couldn’t even recognize.

But then…

Then she had them turn off the lights completely, only the emergency “EXIT” lights illuminating the hall, and she did “The Bed Song” and ripped all of our hearts out. That’s something I’ll remember a long, long time.

Then we’re getting readings from the new book.

Then a discussion segment as Amanda got asked some very pointed questions.

The answers were not always simple. This was not “The Tonight Show” or “Letterman.”

This was the special guest who was doing the interviewing. (Bob?) A well-known, long-time blogger who writes a great deal about the music industry? I know I saw it in an e-mail or blog or tweet from Amanda, but for the life of me I can’t find it tonight, despite my extremely awesome google-foo. But I wasn’t there to gather material for a report, I was there to experience the event.

Jamy came back out. It turns out he’s a magician, and a good one. We got one really good trick shown to us – after his mike died and Amanda had to pull hers off and put it on him.

Finally, a most amazing final piece before a brief Q&A session. (We were already running so long it wasn’t even funny.)

Amanda read a section of her book (pages 290-293 if you’ve got the book). I found it to be gut-wrenching, particularly in light of all of the shit that’s been going on with women in science and women in writing and publishing and women at conventions and women in gaming all being doxxed, threatened, harassed, and drowned in some of the vilest spew that the internet can deliver.

In short, at a really low time in her life, on her birthday, in Seattle with her husband, Neil Gaiman, Neil set up a massage. When she got there, before they started, the masseuse confessed that as a struggling musician herself, she had often written some of those horrible, vile, angry, disgusting, hateful rants aimed at Amanda.

And then that masseuse from Seattle, Courtney, came up on stage.

It sounded like Amanda hadn’t been brave enough to take this particular leap and read that passage at that show, but Courtney came down to LA to be at this show. Their discussion was emotional, shall we say.

Then Courtney, the struggling musician, sang for us, the most haunting version of the first two verses of Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” that I have ever heard. Stunning, absolutely stunning.

Amanda promised to let us know online how to get more music and information from her. I’ll pass it along when I see it. You’ve to to hear her voice, really.

Then it was a quick Q&A and the mob moved toward the book signing area. We looked at our watches and bailed to get our car.

Twenty-two hours later and writing this has taken me right back there. With all of the feelings involved.

All I can add is this — if you ever get a chance to see Amanda Palmer live, take it, or you’ll regret it.

Wow. Can’t wait for the next time I get to see her.