Concert Review: Amanda Palmer at Spiegeltent

Artist: Amanda Palmer
Date: August 11, 2008
Venue: Spiegeltent
City: New York, NY

Review by Karen Hester

Amanda Palmer at Spiegeltent was as expected – great music (lots of
slow songs), interesting clothes (bra, gold corset, ruffled skirt, red
stockings, magic marker smeared hands), digressive stories,
communicating through large hand-held signs (afterwards there were
audiences members wandering around holding ‘Hi’ or ‘and’), karaoke (to
Ben Folds song), ‘Creep’ on ukelele to end, which was around 1.30am
(sleepy grrrr DD and AP shows lateness).

Songs were Ampersand, Astronaut, Point of it all, Guitar hero, Runs in
the family, Icarus, Blake says, Strength through Music, Coin Operated
Boy, Half Jack, Mrs O, a Regina Spektor song, an obscure sentimental
song by an Irishman (“look, mummy, no hands” on the carousel).

Oh, and a song with lyrics by Neil Gaiman. They’re both Sinatra fans
and were discussing how you can’t do songs about lonely people sitting
in smoky bars at 3am anymore, it’s so cliche, and bars aren’t smoky,
and who does that anyway, so the late-night loneliness ballad instead
went “I google you…”

During ‘Ask Amanda’ we learnt that her favorite vege is broccoli, Neil
Gaiman was ‘fucking amazing’, and that we become one with the earth
after death.

Story of her plane ride to NY: sitting in back next to old Arab guy
(“he was in his late 100s”) who couldn’t speak English; lots of
confused attempts to converse, feeling of success when she realized he
needed a wheelchair, and further success when she helped him call a
phone number. He hand signed ‘is this home?’ when they landed and she
thought about it and realized the NY skyline was her favorite and said
‘yes’ and felt wonderful, like they’d shared a deep moment and she’d
come to an important realization, and she gazed into his wise old-man
eyes and leaned back in her seat and enjoyed the moment. And then he
reached over and grabbed her breast and squeezed. “Way to spoil the
moment, dude.”

Similarly, a sleazy older guy was there with his little goth-metal
son, and dad (we’ll assume) keeps on asking “do you think she’s hot?
man, amanda palmer is sexy.” I’m not sure if this is a usual
father-son bonding issue. He shouts out “You’re hot Amanda” and takes
out a comb to tidy up his comb-over.

Amanda wants to hand out her album at 5am in the morning the day it’s
released, for free, so keep an eye out if you’re an upper East
Coaster.

[This Flickr site] has some cool photos
[Amanda’s MySpace]

I also found this video (on Neil Gaiman’s site) of Amanda singing “I Google You”