I’m finding it increasingly difficult to get to gigs over the past few years, but this gig was a must-see. Evelyn Evelyn, a pair of conjoined twin sisters performing dark tinged cabaret on a variety of instruments. Their story is engaging, their entire act is something truly original and there is a lot of heart in this act. There are three shows at Bush Hall and they were sold out well before I could scrape up the cash, so I let it go. Then I find out that their performance at Koko is not sold out. I didn’t have a choice not to go, really. Let’s just have a look at them.

Unless you’re in the know here, you may be confused when I say the show didn’t happen because of the volcanic ash coughed up by Eyjafjallajoekull having prevented… one of the twins from performing. I’d been alerted to this fact in advance so I wasn’t in the least bit disappointed when I learnt that Amanda Palmer would be performing instead. In fact, the slightly panicked collection of additional performers to ’round out’ what would have honestly been a great evening even without them made me even more excited to attend what would certainly be a once in a lifetime thing. Great gig to lose your born-again gig virginity on, eh?

I hadn’t seen Amanda Palmer live before, and whilst I enjoyed her music and the way she wrote and her general artistic output, nothing was to prepare me for the full impact of Amanda Fucking Palmer live. Let me digress for a moment to cover the openers.

I got to the show early enough to see Bitter Ruin, who were phenomenal. I had that uneasy initial moment where I wasn’t sure whether I loved them or hated them and that’s the very reaction I know is going to result in a long time love and respect for an act. If I like something too quickly, chances are it’s a brief love affair that burns out pretty quickly. Every artist I truly love has hit me wrong at first and that says a lot about the way I love. And that’s another story for another site. Bitter Ruin are an extremely talented duo, completely unashamed and unhindered onstage, Ben’s bang-on guitar bumped up against flamenco and Argentine tango, depending on the song, and given the fact that those are two of my all time favourite music genres, he was always going to get under my skin. Then there was Georgia. What a set of lungs on this small, beautiful woman. She had the kind of voice you wouldn’t necessarily need to mic, pure power and rich, pitch-perfect tone, but then when she got angelic, chills happened. Actual gooseflesh. THEN BEN SANG. Curse your beautiful hides, Bitter Ruin. I’m hooked. Though the sound was incredible at Koko, Georgia said she had a sore throat and wasn’t at her best. (I’m having a little trouble imagining full force Bitter Ruin if that was not 100%.) This will give you some idea.

I don’t care if you have to miss a meal, buy their CD. Do not fail yourself.

Ahem. Now, if you like Robots in Disguise, you probably know they have a new single out called Wake Up. This is the video for it.

They wore the same outfits, I want you to know. I want you to know that because the cuteness was reaching Japanese levels. However, they performed acoustic and while I did adore Ann(e)’s acoustic hand drumming, it didn’t quiiiite work. It’s inexplicable, really. They were on tune, played their guitar and bass just fine, but they sounded less like Robots in Disguise and more like X-Ray Spex. That shouldn’t be too much of an insult to them if my radar is still correct, but the reason I like Robots in Disguise is because it sounds like the Wake Up video looks. It’s quirky, adorable electronic pop that transcends the pop charts and makes you want it like an imported t-shirt with a sugar sweet round eyed animal on it, even if it does cost £45. Stripped of the synths and insane atmospherics, it kinda missed the mark. I haven’t lost a shred of respect for them, though. In fact, Sue Denim’s Twitter implied that she learned they were playing the show only a scant few hours before they were on stage. So, unrehearsed, breakneck speed set and the new single played twice (for the latecomers?), it was still worth seeing.

Then. Melissa Auf Der Maur. I can’t even … Hang on. I need to compose myself.

Right, so Melissa, as you may or may not know, was once a bass player for Hole. I have to say, despite the music industry shit MADM has endured to get her independence, I hope she doesn’t regret the path she’s taken to get to make this kind of music. It’s still desperately underrated music but it’s totally original. She’s heavy rock without resorting to screaming or growling, letting her voice drift over the leaden bass and the driving sound her band makes. Now, they played this gig acoustic after five sleepless days and nights WALKING AND HITCH HIKING to London from Helsinki, on borrowed equipment from Robots in Disguise, and having played a rushed gig at the Jazz Cafe the night before to make up for their cancelled Cargo show. (See: #fucktheashcloud.) Even acoustic, you could get the power here and though the wall of sound was rather missing and the sound guy was left with no choice but to put her vocals forefront when they’re normally woven in and our of the music, bodies were swaying. She won over a crowd that probably had 5% overlap at best and the applause-o-meter gave a good level of how many new purchases she’s going to see. I HOPE. (Buy her music, you pirates. She’s totally indie. AND MADE OF ROCK.) A taster:

Then Amanda. She’d been making little appearances all night, each time a little more stage-ready in terms of clothing and makeup, introducing acts, telling the tales that led them to this gig, asking the audience for a 9 volt battery, letting us know the status of the patchy webcast connection and so forth, and she was always totally at ease, charming, funny, and you could sense her purposefulness and assertiveness as well as her humour. This was sort of the impression I had of Amanda Palmer all along and had this been the impression I’d left with, it would have been a good show. However, when she claw fingered her keyboard and opened her mouth to sing, my opinion changed somewhat.

Amanda Fucking Palmer is a rockstar.

Okay, you AFP fans knew that but I really had no way of knowing this until I got into a building and within earshot of her gigantic balls of rock. Even when she fucked up the lyrics, restarted songs with a laugh and some blue streaks, totally missed entire chords or indeed verses, I DID NOT CARE. And neither did anyone else in the crowd. She had us all from jump and we were all rapt, all eyes forward, letting themselves be pulled along the AFP highway, laughing in all the right places, screaming and clapping their hands raw in other places, reacting as though it was a private audience with each cluster of people that had gone together, or each person there alone. The level of intimacy she raises with her audience never falters and is never shattered. She makes every person feel like they’re in on the joke, part of the family, a necessary component for the total output, not just the receptors. She’s ablaze with show business in the truest, most important sense and she’s got that all but inexplicable element you find in people like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Thom Yorke and yes, Lady Gaga. Show fucking business. Rock stars. Legends well before they hit the dirt. That’s what I mean. That she doesn’t make the kind of music or play the kind of game you need to in order to be scooped up and ass raped by a major label may prevent the mansion life but it lets her make her own money (especially having been recently liberated from her indie label contract) and above all, allows her to do exactly the kind of music she wants/needs to make and throw herself around the world, staying with people she’s never met, interfacing on a real level, getting participation in her shows on every conceivable level, which fosters the kind of love and loyalty you don’t get when you’re being whisked off in a limo.

Amanda Palmer live at Koko, London 22/04/10 by Dead By Sunrise photography

I don’t know how to begin to cover the little moments of magic in the show. You can pretty much watch any YouTube video of her performing live and get an idea of some of the kind of engaging moments you’ll get from her on any given night, but it seems more important for this blog for me to try to cover how, by virtue of her performance, she can transform anyone with a healthy level of respect for her into someone who understands what all the fuss is about, and actually thinks it’s not enough. I will, however, make special note of a few moments: Jason Webley made an appearance “from the airplane” and sang and played guitar and accordion on each of two tracks, with which Amanda sang along. These were Evelyn Evelyn songs and the harmonies were flawless. At the end of the night, after the encores and performances with Georgia and Ben of Bitter Ruin and a smashing cover of I Would For You by Jane’s Addiction with Melissa Auf Der Maur on lowwwww acoustic bass, she led a Sex Pistols karaoke of Anarchy in the UK complete with words on a giant screen and a stage full of pogoing audience members.

Amanda has got a sort of honesty box thing going on with her new single on her website, which is her first release without a label. You can download it for free, and then pay what you think it’s worth. She said during the intro before she played it live that she thought that was the way forward. If that’s the case, and I hope it is, then only the artists who are as talented, engaging and impressive as her will be able to make a living at it and the rest will fade into obscurity.

A footnote: Amanda’s husband-to-be, Neil Gaiman, was at the show. I’ve been a fan of his work for (gulp) twenty years now, and a fan of his since the first time I met him about five years after I discovered him. He’s always been truly gracious, gentle, attentive, patient and he’s always put his fans at ease and made them feel valuable. I’ve seen this in action from the point of view of someone interviewing him, from the point of view of a fan who’s waited for ages, and from the point of view of someone going to cons for professional reasons, working with some of his colleagues. He’s never, ever faltered and he still hasn’t. He stayed with Amanda after everyone had gone and signed things for fans until the last of us was gone. I gave him one of the dolls I’d made, with a hand drawn tag, and he was incredibly sweet about it I was actually rendered speechless. I could barely ask him to sign a tag, and by the time I got in front of Amanda, I hadn’t recovered, so I said nothing. I’d put all of my contact details on the tag, in this fit of self-assurance and the opportunity for the kind of self-promotion necessary to make a go of anything in the arts. Today, however, I feel a bit skeezy about it because it’s so contrary to my nature it’s unreal. I made mention of trying to self-fund surgery (ugh, I do not want to talk about that) and that almost made it worse. I know I’ve got to carry on like that but I wish it hadn’t been with something I’d placed in the hands of someone I’ve admired for so long and someone who’d turned a switch in me during her performance that very night. A purer gift would have been closer to the mark, but I can’t undo it now. I hope the doll made them smile at least.

To sum up: These are independent artists I’ve just talked about, some more starving than others, but all in need of continued support to be able to do the things they do. Please do buy their music legitimately, especially those doing self released work. Here are your sources. Follow these links to their other spaces and faces and tweets.

Bitter Ruin: http://bitterruin.com/
Robots In Disguise: http://www.robotsindisguise.co.uk/
Melissa Auf Der Maur: http://xmadmx.com/
Amanda Fucking Palmer: http://www.amandapalmer.net/

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