Amanda Palmer Broke My Fiancee

(Belated blogging this, I know.)

I should explain first who Amanda Palmer is (her blog is also echoed here afplj). She is one half of the "Brechtian punk cabaret" act the Dresden Dolls. I first got into them because of this song:

which I heard played from a bike stereo whilst on a birthday ride for recumbenteer - as you do.

Cut to this year. Amanda more or less moved to Melbourne for three months to record an album. We first saw her new years eve (just after I proposed to Deb - yay!) at a party in an arts space in Kensington - she emerged from a cake at Midnight and we got to see rather more of her than we expected!!!!!


Soon afterwards, the Dresden Dolls reformed for a brief tour of the Australia, so I finally got to see them live for the first time. They were fantastic, really energetic, and far less shambolic than her solo shows.

And the next day... Deb bumped into Brian from the dolls on Brunswick street! They'd chatted for a bit when Deb said to him "you look a lot like Brian Viglione of the Dresden Dolls", he said "Yeah, that's me, I came over to chat to you because you're wearing a tshirt from the gig last night!"

Then in February and March, Amanda was joined in Melbourne by her new band, the grand theft orchestra. They retreated into a rehearsal space and soon afterwards to a studio to record.


At the same time they did no less than five shows at the Northcote Social Club. Deb and I made it to (only) two of these gigs. They were more like rehearsals for new material, trying them out in front of an audience.

So in the first three months of this year, I got to see Amanda play in various forms four times. Which is more times than I've seen her play prior to that.

But this doesn't compare to Deb... Deb is a member of the Melbourne Ukulele Collective, who got to play with Amanda Palmer at the Melbourne Ukulele Festival!

Here they are before the gig:

Deb is the one with the green wig on next to Amanda!

Here they are on stage:

Amanda signed Deb's Ukulele, which made Deb so excited she was squeeing at an incredibly high pitch for the at least three days afterwards. See, Amanda Palmer broke my fiancée ;-)

One More Amanda Picture

BTW, as is probably obvious, Amanda is heavy user of Twitter and the internets in general. This is way more interesting than some of my favourite bands who disappear for years at a time, giving no indications to their fans what they are up to or even when they're playing.

For example, one of my favourite bands, Snog, who hail from my home town, have a website that lists their tour dates from 2006 and have never had a mailing list. Even their myspace page hasn't been updated since last year.

Contrast this with Amanda Palmer, who must tweet at least 50 times a day, including pictures like this:


She even retweeted me the other day (warning, this tweet contains a picture of my armpit!)

OK, that's enough pathetic fanboy for one day :-)