This goes out to my good friends Justin and Peter, two of the biggest fans of Amanda Palmer I know. A link to a post on The Lefsetz Letter showed up on my twitter feed, and it basically restored my faith in famous musicians being generally nice people. Lefsetz posted an email he was sent by Ms. Palmer which read as follows:
From: Amanda Palmer
Subject: re-Please Drop Memy label-dropping game has become very fun. please pray for me.
it’s a lesson in how the future of music is working -
fans are literally (and i mean that….literally) lining up at the signing table after shows and HANDING me cash, saying “thank you”.i had to EXPLAIN to the so-called “head of digital media” of roadrunner australia WHAT TWITTER WAS. and his brush-off that “it hasn’t caught on here yet” was ABSURD because the next day i twittered that i was doing an impromptu gathering in a public park and 12 hours later, 150 underage fans – who couldn’t attend the show – showed up to get their records signed.
no manager knew! i didn’t even warn or tell her! no agents! no security! no venue! we were in a fucking public park!
life is becoming awesome.also interesting: i brought a troupe of back-up actors/dancers on the tour (we were only playing 300-1000 seaters) and had no money to pay them, so we passed the hat into the crowd every night. each performer walked from each show with about $200 in cash. the fans TOOK CARE OF THEM. they brought us dinner every night, gave us places to sleep. (i couldn’t afford to put up that many people in hotels). all sans label, all using email and twitter. the fans followed the adventure. they LOVED HELPING.
so?
the times they are a-changing fucking dramatically, when pong-twittering with trent reznor means way more to your fan-base/business than whether or not the record is in fucking stores (and in my case, it ain’t in fucking stores).twitter is EVERYTHING that you explain in your rants: it is a MAINLINE insta-connection with the fans. there is ZERO middleman.
my fans hung out with me all day on twitter today while i unpacked weird tour shit, fan art, gifts and paraphernalia that usually just ends up in my closet or in the trash and took pictures of it for them.xa
So there you have it. Twitter is now doing for musicians what MySpace was doing for up-and-coming acts four years ago. All without label interference or corporate bullshit. Thank you, Amanda Palmer for being a woman and artist of the people without sacrificing talent or resources. Rock on.
The Dresden Dolls – Sing [iTunes] (YSI)
==TJ==
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Amanda Palmer, musings, The Dresden Dolls
