i have grown so much. but it still hurts. why? (Patreon)

hey guys....

i've got a new song coming out tomorrow. (a sort of surprise one). watch for it. and the weinstein video is aiming at october 5th. and the end-of-the-month state of all things is being assembled. 

but.

this is a post i've been thinking about and wanting to write in some shape or another for a few months - it's been eating at me, but i havent had the time, because making art and answering emails and being with family always has to take precedence before muse-wanking. but also, man cannot live not by muse-wanking alone, and sometimes, the urge grows very strong.

also: i was supposed to start recording today (it's NEW REORD TIME in LOS ANGELES - i'll post more when i start) but i pushed everything for a day because i have a headcold. i wound up with a free non-day. first on my list was to get these thoughts out of my head, and into yours.

usually the way i fix shit in my head is to just talk about it, so that's what i'm doing.

i think it's the combination of things that've happened over the past few weeks that have just stuck in my craw...and i also have to say, it's nice to have this private corner of the internet to talk in. you're my patrons. you're different. i would never write this post for medium, or post it publicly on facebook, i'd be too afraid of the arguments i'd need to get into, the defensiveness...anyway. 

i begin.

i've been doing this indie music thing for a LONG time, pals. before the dolls signed with a major label (that dark and beautiful era of 2004-2008), i was already well-versed in how hard the industry was. i managed the band myself, booked the band myself, tried my goddamn hardest to get us onto a label. i still get angry triggers when i think of all the labels that wouldn't sign us. matador, mute, sub-pop, 4AD, kill rock stars, name an indie. i couldn't understand why. our band was doing so, so well. our shows were sold out. people loved us. we loved us. it made no sense to me. but the answers came again and again, if they came at all: we don't want you. 

i always took rejection cheerfully even when it hurt. i knew we had something golden...so it didn't matter. we had what was real. we had our band, we had the music, we had our fans. we had what mattered.

we also had a CD burner. it sounds like a joke, but that was the key. we burned our own CDs, and we sold them, and that's how we spread our music and made money.

we were becoming successful in our own way regardless of how many labels wouldn't sign us because we were too weird, or too goth, or too silly, or too female-fronted, or whatever the fuck the reasons were.

but.

but.

we were getting burned out (no pun intended, YOU try burnign 500 CDs a week with handmade-and-assembled labels in your fucking kitchen at 6 minutes a CD), and when someone finally came along saying "we will believe in you", i fucked on the first date. 

it made sense on paper, with roadrunner records, they had a bunch of weird metal acts that weren't famous, weren't pop, toured hard, worked hard, had amazing fans. surely they would understand that our band was basically one of the weirdo acts that just needed HELP. we needed help getting our records in stores. we needed help promoting those records. we needed someone to call the radio stations. we needed someone to find us a publicist in france when we went over there. i was maxed. i couldn't write songs and tour and do all of this myself, even WITH the internet. i tried. i needed five more versions of me to even come close. i knew i needed help. and they were the only ones who asked us out. we were desperate. 

and for the first record, it was great. they did the things. then for the second record (yes, virginia), they stopped doing them.

i write about this story so extensively in the book...i feel like i'm repeating myself here. i am.

so, ok, i'll try to skip to the now part.

i finally had it with the label being awful in 2008 and found a way to get off. it's a long good story. it involved minor espionage. you should read the book.

and since 2008, i have been relatively free of labels or any other kind of bossy middleman or entity that tells me what to do, how to do it, when to do it, why to do it, or whether to do it.

thus patreon. 

this is why i have been running around like a happy freak for the past three years, making crazy things as i get ideas with the help of a world-class team of people and collaborators...records as fun ideas, records as passion projects, records as jokes. 

just, you know, following my bliss, still drunk on freedom after all these years.

don't forget, you're looking at the girl who put out an EP of radiohead covers on the ukulele the MINUTE i was dropped from my label just BECAUSE I COULD. was it a great idea? HELL NO! 

it was a RANDOM IDEA! i loved the ukulele and i loved radiohead and mostly i loved the idea that i could do whatever the fuck i wanted after a label telling me no no no no no for four fucking years.

so

fuck career suicide. 

nothing has ever felt like career suicide. it's felt like career joy, like life. the opposite of suicide. like a bid for more life, not less.

i've gotten to become the kind of artist i always admired: not the kind who wants to be famous, but the kind who puts life and love and family and friends and politics and everything in the same box as the art: no division, no compartmentalizing. folk. punk. the idea of us, all of us. 

but.

there's always been this small voice in my head that tells me i'm a true failure every time i pour my soul, my time, my energy and my entire team into a huge project (a record) and feel like the outside world just gives no shits. 

i felt it with who killed amanda palmer. the label did a terrible job with putting that album out. i switched management right before the album came out, they thre their hands up, and it was tears from day one. it was the nail in the coffin of that relationship.

they were honest.

they didn't want to promote it.

there was no coin-operated boy 2.0.

they didn't hear a hit.

i wanted to hit them all over the fucking head with the entire record and say THERE ISN'T A FUCKING HIT YOU ASSHOLES. THE ENTIRE FUCKING RECORD IS AMAZING. YOU SHOULD COME TO ONE OF MY SHOWS AND ACTUALLY LISTEN TO THE SONGS.

..........

but things sort of went from weird to worse when "theatre is evil" came out.

i had worked on the songs for that record for over 5 years. i had really slaved and put every penny and drop of blood i had into making it incredible.

i thought the songs (especially "trout heart replica", and "lost", and "the bed song", and "do it with a rock star") were some of the best i'd yet written. i was so, so proud of it.

and yet when it came out, the same thing happened.

as with "who killed amanda palmer", the critical reception was incredible, the reviews were stellar, the fans all loved the record, and it sold very, very few copies. it was also 2012 - the sales stats all over the world were changing. but still. i felt so dismissed. i was like: if my best isn't good enough, what is? 

..........

some of it is really boring dorky stuff: like management problems, distribution problems and all that.

i didn't talk about it much at the time - i also didn't have a private, patron-only blog at the time - but "theatre is evil" was released totally experimentally with a management staff who had never done anything like it before, and they were in way over their heads. nobody knew what the fuck was going on for a while.

i found myself so torn.

i was really proud of being independent, i was so proud of my fans, so proud of the kickstarter, but i was also so jealous of the artists around me who seems t have it easier. the regina spektors and the nick caves and the tori amoses, who just handed their record over to their labels and chatted about when they would do photoshoots and press and tours. 

i knew i couldn't know their actual stories of pain and woe (i'm sure they had them). talking with shirley manson the other night and listening to her stories at her live Q&A about how her labels dicked her over again, and again, and AGAIN, and again, just reminded me that my grass-is-greener was always what i suspected it was: bullshit.

but still.

i envied.

and now there's this record.

and not unlike all the records i've made before, i think this this the best one i've ever made (or am about to make). 

it's helped me to hear my friends say it, the ones who don't lie. these songs...they're good. they're real. they're really good. (espicially the couple new ones which you all haven't heard yet).

.................

i've had a problem for a while, which is that i need a distribution channel that actually works, and i've never found one that really cuts the mustard.

when you walk into a store and see a poster and a huge bin of spanking-brand-new nick cave albums ready for you to buy, front and center in the middle of the store, absolutely fucking none of that happens by magic. there is so much work and handling and wheeling and dealing that makes physical distribution work.

so i decided to reach out to some labels to see what they'd say about doing some sort of one-off distribution deal, a partnership for this album so i can make more headway into getting it into stores.

it was a painfully vulnerable step for me. but i've always said that labels aren't inherently bad. they're just people. i mean, roadrunner records was pretty bad. but i've never made a blanket statement that labels just sucked. some of my friends work at labels. 

and a lot of the labels that i went to were the same ones - the major indies - who had ignored or rejected the dresden dolls back in the day. 

that may be why it hurt so much and cut so deeply that - in a complicated nutshell - not one of them has interest in distributing this record. one label went so far as to kinda laugh.

..................

i guess i shouldn't have been surprised.

why am i still surprised?

..................

it wasn't just this happening, which i don't think i would have mentioned to you...this in itself wasn't worthy of bloggage.

it was the fact that at the same time, i took the final cut of the weinstein video to some major web outlets, asking if they wanted to premiere it.

this won't make as much sense until you see the video, but believe me on this one: it's good. it's more than good. it's unbelievable. i think it may wind up being the best - and most powerful - video i'll ever put out. 

is it because of the nudity?

maybe.

is it because of the super-political content?

i find that hard to believe. not a woman on this planet won't raise her fist in solidarity with this video.

is it...me?

.................

maybe it's me.

..................

so i'm putting it out on the internet.

i'm not using a press partner.

forget everybody. i mean: not forget everybody. remember everybody.

remember what is important. this. you. here. us. 

what's real.

why do i still keep thinking that if i just do it right, do it better, do it bestest, i'll finally get hit the wand of legitimacy?

that rolling stone and the new york times will finally call?

why do i keep losing my place?

i am the only indie musician ON THE PLANET who is release 15 kind of media and grossing thousands of dollars a month to pay her costs and staff and DO WHATEVER SHE THINKS UP. what more do i want?? 

fuck, i wrote a book about this!!!!

i gave a goddamn TED talk about it!!!

and even more fuck...that book was a bestseller and the TED talk has had almost 10,000,000 views.

and yet...i still find myself thinking tat all that should translate into something...more. i am doing what the buddhists call "grasping".

i know it when i see it.

......................

i remember listening to local bands in boston, back in 2002, talking about the WBCN rock and roll rumble (the local battle of the bands) and referring to it as the "prom". bands couldn't just ask to be in the rumble, they had to be invited.

i'll never forget my then boyfriend (who was in a band), leaning against a bar with a martini in his hand, nonchalantly, even cynically, asking his friend:

"hey eric, did you guys get invited to prom""

and eric saying

"nope. fuck them anyway."

....................

i'm 42 and i still want to be asked to prom.

and i know better.

music industry prom is where you get, like, metaphorically rufie'd and date-raped. 

..................

it was only in the past few years that i really came to understand how totally unique and lucky i am.

i truly think this patroen is HISTORIC. look at what i'm doing! look at what you're funding! look at what the fuck is happening! look at the money we're able to give to other artists, the charities, to other muscians!

why would i need anyone to authenticate that?

IT'S HAPPENING ANYWAY.

.............. 

in summary:

i've made a ton of great music that has been listened to by millions and millions of people. 

i am doing exactly what i want with my career.

i am making art with the people i love, on my own schedule, funded directly by a community i love.

why?

why does it still hurt?

fuck prom,

love, 

your artist, amanda.

p.s. we are still the media

p.p.s. i didn't want to bug you during the post itself, because it would have been distracting.

but you should read my book if you havent:

paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Asking-Learned-Worrying-People/dp/1455581097

audiobook (i read it aloud myself): https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Art-of-Asking-Audiobook/B00OQT8AG2 

and you should listen to all of these records. every one of them is fuckign fantastic. prom or no prom.

can you tell i'm in a very insecure pre-recording mood? you bet your ass i am.

.........

theatre is evil: 

https://amandapalmer.bandcamp.com/album/theatre-is-evil-2 

......

who killed amanda palmer:

https://amandapalmer.bandcamp.com/album/who-killed-amanda-palmer 

.......

radiohead: 

https://amandapalmer.bandcamp.com/album/amanda-palmer-performs-the-popular-hits-of-radiohead-on-her-magical-ukulele 

...................

ok

i love you.

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

1. if you’re a patron, please click through to comment on this post. at the very least, if you’ve read it, indicate that by using the heart symbol.

2. see All the Things i've made so far on patreon: http://amandapalmer.net/patreon-things

3. join the official AFP-patron facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/afpland

4. new to my music and TOTALLY OVERWHELMED? TAKE A WALK THROUGH AMANDALANDA….we made a basic list of my greatest hits n stuff on this lovely page: http://amandalanda.amandapalmer.net/

5. general AFP/patreon-related questions? ask away, someone will answer: patronhelp@amandapalmer.net