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beds are burning - ALL the live videos {official Thing, again, for charity} (Patreon)
Content
photo above taken by nicola bernardi
{patron only}
HALLO LOVES.
greetings from darwin, australia.
this place is really...yikes. strange. dark. lush. human. a bit bleak. fragile. i am glad i am here, soaking up some local knowledge.....
it reminds me of a cross between new orleans, florida, bali, las vegas and a reservation with a casino somewhere in the midwest of america.
i went to the market this morning, witnessed two fights, and then a woman who's coming to the show came up to me a cried in my arms that she didn't want to die here.
oh, darwin. are you ok?
i have the feeling that the show tonight - my last in australia - is going to be incredibly powerful.
if you're coming, see you soon.
.....................
now....this is an Odd Thing, but having known you all for five years, this is a Good Thing.
if you've been following the bouncing-ball plot of me-being-in-australia-during-the-bushfires...it's been a zig-zag course.
back in late december, a bunch of patrons - mostly on social media, actually, in twitter and instagram posts - asked if i would please do a patreon "thing" and release the money to charity.
i had the launceston/tasmani project in the queue, but that wasn't goin g to come out for a while and it wasn't even "written" yet...so my first idea was just to do a live recording and filming of "beds are burning", by midnight oil. me and piano, and i had a few shows coming up where i could grab a camera crew for not a ton of dough. the tasmanian show was about to happen (as part of the MONA festival), and i had a filmmaker on-board already (sweet louke, who you will learn more about as i deliver his documentary). and a few days later, hamer hall in melbourne.
i will tell you something about me that you already know.
i tend to keep going, and i tend to follow my impulses until someone physically stops me, or i fall asleep. i also tend to get excited about new art and if nothing stands in my way, i go and go.
this is what happened with the "FORTY-FIVE DEGREES" record.
since i already had "time booked" in the studio to record the as-yet-unwritten tasmania confessional song, i decided we could probably do a slicker recording of "beds are burning" to go along with whatever live footage we got.
and then, and then, and then. then you know the rest...i texted missy higgins, who said she's sing on it, and i decided that maybe this could be an EP of four songs, and i came here looking for suggestions...and then clare bowditch put her hand up, and then fred leone said he'd play didgeridoo, and then the songs sounded like they needed drums, and brian was free, and then jherek said he's add some bass for free...and...this is how a whole record happend in just under two weeks.
the records is, in my honest opinion, pretty fucking incredible for a record made this quickly. it just got a STELLAR review in popmatters and all the artists are super-chuffed....
".....this feeling that the world has gone off the rails and up in flames, pervades the record, which, as benefit offerings go, is pretty powerful stuff. Instead of half-heartedly tossing in some studio asides and B-sides, Palmer, no slouch, immersed herself in Australian culture, spoke with hundreds of residents and citizens, and soaked in all of that context as she toured the country around Christmas. The record was recorded quickly and released quicker."
whole article:
here it be, if you missed it:
album artwork by sarah beetson
the album is now up for stream and download at bandcamp (linked below) and all digital music stores. all profits from the album will go to firesticks alliance.
and, reminder, i gave all patrons a download to the bushfire charity flash record, you can get your download link here if you missed it: https://www.patreon.com/posts/33848849
.............
BUT WAIT.
the story trundles along.
MEANWHILE....
well, there were multiple threads being created at the same time.
"beds are burning" needs a moment of history lesson before we continue.
i first hear this song when i was a teenager, and i didn't even know (until i was older, really truly) that midnight oil were even FROM australia and that this song was about aborginal land rights. i remember seeing the video on MTV. i rewatched it when this cover idea came up and everything made so much retroactive sense.
it's so funny. when we start to know what you didn't know.
these aren't things you understand when you're 13.
what also floored me was the number of hits this fuckin video had.
A HUNDRED FIFTY MILLION?????
thats like....HALF THE POPULATION OF AMERICA.
i found myself wondering what i don't know, still.
and....
the words:
Out where the river broke
The bloodwood and the desert oak
Holden wrecks and boiling diesels
Steam in forty-five degrees
The time has come to say fair's fair
To pay the rent, to pay our share
The time has come, a fact's a fact
It belongs to them, let's give it back
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
The time has come to say fair's fair
To pay the rent now, to pay our share
Four wheels scare the cockatoos
From Kintore, east to Yuendemu
The Western Desert lives and breathes
In forty-five degrees
The time has come to say fair's fair
To pay the rent, to pay our share
The time has come, a fact's a fact
It belongs to them, let's give it back
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
The time has come to say fair's fair
To pay the rent now, to pay our share
The time has come, a fact's a fact
It belongs to them, we're gonna give it back
How can we dance when our earth is turning?
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
..........................
this song was written (well, released) in 1987.
..........................
i am leaving a pause here on purpose.
............................
and, to lighten the load.....as you'll see in the melbourne footage, there is an inherent philosophical tangle of one of the lyrics.
how we can sleep when our beds are burning is an obvious one.
if we're going literal, yeah, you just can't do that.
however:
you can do ANYTHING when the earth is turning....because, well, basic physics.
and also: why how DO we sleep and how CAN we dance? is there a difference?
how CAN we dance WHEN...how DO we sleep WHILE, aie aie aie....and what was the difference between WHOLE and WHEN?
I DON'T KNOW. if you can, you must.
maybe i'm being too distracting here.
but this was seriously bugging the shit out of me.
why did you do this, midnight oil?
i grabbed some bedsheets and spray paint to help the audience separate out all the WHEN and WHILE and CAN and DOs in the lyrics that are honestly, when you're trying to sing it live, worse than she sells seashells by the seashore.
here's the beautiful people of melbourne....
.....................
we hired a small, pro film crew to capture the footage of me doing this solo/ audeince singalong of "beds are burning" at hamer hall in melbourne (this was jan 22nd).....
but by then the engines of the album were already rolling.
so i figured: all systems go at one time, and why not? the worst thing that would happen is we would thing TWO things, with extra money going to charity. not a biggie, and i didn't think anyone in the patreon would argue.
(if you wanna, now's your moment, i'm all ears and listening).
................
the film crew did a great job capturing it.
but....(here we go again with the buts)....by the time it was all edited and ready to go a few weeks later, we'd gone so, so, so much further down the road than we'd ever expected.
we had a whole RECORD by then.
the film clip became a seedling afterthought...the fetal roadmap to where we wound up, with a whole 8-song record with fancy collaborators.
art is hard.
(wait.)
well....it's hard to go back and watch the clip in melbounre - i'd only performed the song live once before (a few nights before in tasmania) and it's riddled with bad vocals and small mistakes that make me cringe. the lighting in the hall is really bright. there are lots of things i wish i'd known and done differently. but it's still, all in, a pretty powerful and fun clip to watch, especially if you were there.
time rolled on, and i decided that if we were going to keep singing the song live, i might has well hand the camera over to whoever was around to see if we couldn't beat the melbourne clip. hard with an iphone, but somewtimes magic happens. jordan brought in a friend in sydney who filmed with a single camera.
so what do we have in the END?
well, we have FIVE DIFFERENT CLIPS of the song solo, in total....
MELBOURNE (hamer hall)
CANBERRA (canberra theater)
SPRINGWOOD (blue mtns theater) x 2 cameras, one jordan, one haylety
SYDNEY (enmore theater)
they're all below, and for now, i'm gonna keep them all unlisted.
i gotta say, none of these clips beat the footage i have on my phone of missy higgins laying down her vocal in the studio and me sitting behind the board getting goosebumps. i'll upload that one for you next. it's amazing.
but that's ART.
..................................
before i dump all this footage on you, i have one musing thought, and one ask.
sorry this "thing" post is so meta, but sometimes art and business and the internet are meandering, and this is one of those times.
first of all...to detour your brain in the correct cul-de-sac....i just got an update from MIA's patreon. she asked her patrons "what kind of posts they wanted".
this is what i responsed:
hey maya.
coming from someone who’s posted 16268 times on patreon and having learned stuff and also being a huge fans of yours, i’d say this: use this as your inner-family and your sounding board. you can think of it more as a workshop and less off a fan club. these people are here because they fucking love and support your vision, not because they want a piece of you. and because you’re you already, i doubt people want you to feel pressured to deliver them the perfect product. you’re not a product, you’re an artist, and your art isn’t a product either. it’s art. it can be really disorienting (or at least it was for me) to learn that patreon could be ANYTHING, even though i knew from the outset that is what it was. from the looks of the comments here people want all sorts of different things, and the only thing i think you can do wrong is just leave people hanging for too long and not post much.
this is a semi-private space space i would love to see you talk about process, post long rambling videos about politics that don’t need to be slickly edited, show and discuss how the music gets crafted and produced even if it’s a shitty iphone in the corner propped up with a sock, read your accounts of what it’s like to battle the industry, find out how you choose your team and your stage costumes, what you do when you get blood on them in a middle of a show....i mean, anything.
life. art, motherhood, process, collision, outtakes....anything. i want to see this process itself , and the fact that you have a community of people here who have your back, delight and uplift you as an artist and remind you that you. and do fucking anything you want without a superior and without permission. that is the end of my TED talk, haha.
............
i feel called to share this with you because...the patreon has taught me so much about trusting this group to trust me.
that's what this is.
you're here to support, and you trust me, even when it's messy.
so, i could have made this post a single line of text, with a single youtube link to the pretty-hifi and slickly edited hamer hall video and said:
"hey gang! watch me new video here (link!)! thanks for being a patron! all the profiut is going to charity! love, amanda"
and i could have said none of this, scrapped all those other videos and put them in a shoebox to die...and kept all the sausage-making a part of my team's inner workings without coming to you and doing a long rambling blog. i'm sure you'd still still be my patrons.
but i didn't. i don't.
i don't do that.
i do this.
......................
i am actually keenly aware that some people are frustrated by the constant stream of content.
"don't send me five videos! SEND ME ONE. GOOD ONE. ONCE A YEAR."
but i feel like those people should just not be on my patreon, or if they are, ignore/delete everything but the Althing posts.
this is what the patreon is for - to incubate, to share, to dig, to flex, to wander, to find. THEN, then, then we go to The World.
........
so this is my ask.
if you have time, flick through all these videos. then comment, and rank / pick the one(s) you think i should make public. i'm pretty sure it's the hamer hall one, but the one from the blue mountains also has incredible energy.
and this is also a nice little peek into all the venues and the sorts of crowds i've been playing to for the last few months...it's like a mini-postcard from each live stage.
i'll come back here in a few days, read all the comments, and pick the strongest contender to go to public youtube.
if everybody feels ambivalent or this just seems too boring, no boggire. the hamer hall clip is strong enough to post out without much to-do.
i love including you all in shit like this. it makes me happy.
it's a big part of what i was hoping would happen when i started this patreon.
...................
also: this is indeed an official thing, but it's a charity thing.
the $$ from this thing is going to cover the melbourne film crew (and jordan's pal in sydney, which was a minimal cost) and the rest of it is all going to go to firesticks alliance.
i cannot wait to tally the amount of money we will have made for them by the end of tour...between this, the album, and the prints we have been selling at the shows (and online! see below if you wanna get one).
we done good, everybody.
and....don't forget.
the fires may not be making headline news anymore, because rain came, but it's just the start of the fire season and we cannot get complacent. the reason i chose firesticks as the target charity for these patreon-things is because i wanted something that would sustain and sustain. the money from this record will continue to flow to the charity next year and the year after, and they'll use this dough to educate people about cultural burning. this is just so GOOD.
i may not be a super-rich celebrity able to drop $500,000 on the bushfire efforts, but i am a super-community-driven artist who gathered together the energy of 15,000 from all over the globe to help out our asutralian brothers and sisters....and that feels, in the wise words of lizzo, good as hell.
i love you all a lot.
without further do: here's the clips....
#1 - melbourne - hamer hall, arts centre melbourne
photo by mandy hall
filmed by an entire crew with multiple cameras, includes a whole intro.
WATCH:
https://vimeo.com/393763418/c353b271e5
.....
#2 - canberra - canberra theatre
filmed by michael mccomiskey on iphone
WATCH: https://vimeo.com/394295250/556f966a65
......
springwood - blue mountains theatre
photo by brigitte grant photography
WHAT A SHOW THAT WAS, BY THE WAY. had to sneak in that ukulele picture :)
........
WATCH video 1 filmed by jordan on iphone
https://vimeo.com/393763954/f305c31055
WATCH video 2 filmed by hayley on iphone
https://vimeo.com/394193090/d4b1bf74c8
.....
sydney - enmore theatre
photo by ashley mar
filmed by jordan's friend baz on full-sized video camera ....
WATCH:
https://vimeo.com/393762868/17d6e825dc
......
LET ME HAVE IT, EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!
.............
one
last
reminder:
BEDS ARE BURNING LIMITED EDITION CHARITY POSTERS
artwork by sarah beetson
reminder - we have posters of sarah's amazing artwork up for sale for a very very limited time....and all profits also go to FIRESTICKS, the charity we are currently giving to. you can pre-order this on all three afp merch shops and they'll begin shipping out to you in a few weeks.
you can order from the UK/europe, states and oz:
................
i do not imagine that my story, our story, with australia, the bushfires, and our connection as artists and audience is going to end here.
don't forget, it may have slipped out on the record, but i have yet to thing and tell the entire story of the tasmania song. that one is a heart-heavy one, and it needs a real moment.
("but you already put it out amanda!")
( it doesn't matter. i can do what i want. this is my patreon and i am a liberated artist. HA!!!!)
it's a long, long, story, that song.
and for that one, i think i'm going to need to find a charity in tasmania that we can bat some of the profit towards.....
something to do with literacy, sexual assault, and aboriginal rights, and perhaps where the three possibly intersect. if you have an idea, i'm all ears, tasmania.
let's keep helping.
that is going to keep us all afloat.
we can help.
x
a
------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 (at least up until a few years ago, this desperately needs updating) on this lovely page: http://amandalanda.amandapalmer.net/
5. general AFP/patreon-related questions? ask away, someone will answer: patronhelp@amandapalmer.net
UPCOMING SHOWS:
Sat. Feb 29th - DARWIN, NT - Darwin Entertainment Centre
Sun. March 8th - MELBOURNE, VIC - Forum - BUSHFIRE BENEFIT WITH NEIL GAIMAN AND SPECIAL GUESTS (ALMOST SOLD OUT)
Thurs. March 12th — Fri. March 13th - AUCKLAND, NZ - Auckland Arts Festival: Hollywood Avondale (ALMOST SOLD OUT)
Sat. March 14th - CHRISTCHURCH, NZ - The Piano
Mon. March 16th - WELLINGTON, NZ - St Peters Church, Wellington Fringe (ALMOST SOLD OUT)
Thurs, june 11 & friday june 12th - NEIL GAIMAN & AMANDA PALMER w THE BOSTON POPS! at symphony hall
ALL TICKETS: https://nointermission.amandapalmer.net
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