This is not the internet. This is Amanda Palmer.

Amanda Palmer – Camden Roundhouse 12th July 2013

On Friday night (12-07-2013), I saw Amanda Palmer perform at Camden’s Roundhouse, a venue she last played back in 2006 whilst in The Dresden Dolls, her Punk-Cabaret band formed of her and drummer Brian Viglione (I wish I’d managed to see them together; the chemistry between them is said to be electrifying).

If you have never been to an Amanda Palmer gig, I recommend that you immediately find out where her next show is and book yourself a ticket. Unlike most gigs I have been to where there are one or two supporting acts who you don’t really know much about that are usually just something record label has stuck on the beginning of a performance to get people ‘in the mood’ (even if these support acts are worse than the Jimmie Moore Band from the 1998 film The Wedding Singer), Amanda’s show features numerous special guests that she invites herself; be it local talent, artist friends who happen to be in the area, or supporting artists who travel with her on the tour. Amanda also personally introduces each of her guests and more often than not performs at least one song with them making them a special and integral part of the show. Friday night’s show featured the talents of Jherek Bischoff, The Simple Pleasure, Bitter Ruin, Perhaps Contraption, Sxip Shirey, Tom Milsom and the beautiful Kate Miller-Heidke (I’ve been trying to get to a KM-H gig for a long time now but something has always gotten in the way, but now thanks to Amanda I’ve seen her!). Each one brought a little magic to the show and knowing that they had been personally invited almost makes it seem as though these performances are a gift to us, the fans.

Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra performed a mix of songs from their latest album Theatre is Evil intermingled with songs from past AFP and Dresden Doll albums. Performed excellently, there was a real mix of party inspiring anthems followed by tear-inducing super-intimate songs where as an audience member, it was as though Amanda was sat alone in a room with us, bearing her soul to us; intimate and personal. She kept telling us that our attendance at her performance genuinely meant a lot to her, more than we could know. Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but the experience shared on friday night felt so special that the feeling is most definitely mutual. Genuinely caring for her fans, Amanda places all of her trust in them. In us. She shows this in many ways; her blog where she shares her innermost thoughts and feelings; her spontaneous ninja-gigs in random locations, and at performances, by crowd surfing. On Friday night, she was carried around the entire room by the hands of her fans; myself included. It’s not done in a rock’n’roll “fuck yeah I’m this awesome” kind of way, but in a “I trust you; I’m part of you” way.

This connection with her fans is what makes her such an inspiration. I feel that her opinion on the music industry and her approach to it is best summed up by her incredible and critically acclaimed TED talk. You seriously need to watch this. Right now. Do it.

Amanda seems to base her interactions with her fans on friendship and trust. Before the term ‘celebrity’ was applied to them musicians were an integral part of a community. Someone who was one of the people, who could walk among their neighbours and bring joy to others through music. They were real people. Musicians nourished a community, lifting the morale and offering a distraction during difficult moments in time. I often think of the scene in the 1958 film A Night to Remember where the Titanic is sinking and the musicians begin to play to distract both themselves and the other passengers of their impending doom. It is a truly moving scene and, to me, highlights the importance musicians play in a community. When an incredible musician is discovered they of course deserve to get social status and recognition for their talent, but to become an untouchable, to become someone who disconnects themselves from their fans, become an idol to be worshiped? In my opinion, musicians have lost something along the way. Their fans are the ones who make them as big as they are. Some seem to forget this. Amanda Palmer is a real person. She does not claim to be anything other than that. She bares her soul through her blog. She bares her flesh through concerts and music videos. She hides nothing from anyone and is open about her opinions. This seems to get her into trouble more often than not, but I believe this is only because we live in a sugar-coated society where everything is looked at through rose-tinted glasses. People are scared of somebody who tells it how it is. Maybe we should all have some controversy in our lives.

There has been a lot of unnecessary media attention recently surrounding her Glastonbury performance. Or rather, what happened at her Glastonbury performance. During her set, one of her breasts made an appearance as she sang. The Daily Mail jumped on this and, as expected, made a huge deal of it by basing their entire ‘review’ of her performance on this ‘wardrobe malfunction’, completely ignoring that she is an artist who had just been performing to a crowd of thousands. Her encore on Friday night was a direct response to the Daily Mail; a song she hopes she will never have to sing again entitled ‘Dear Daily Mail’. This is slightly NSFW so keep this in mind.

Whatever your opinion of this woman is, at least take this closing thought with you. Amanda Palmer is possibly one of the more ‘real’ artists this world currently has. She is open and honest with her fans. They are her friends. She trusts them. Her fans trust her. She constantly replies to tweets sent to her. She replied to me when I asked if I could write this blog about her (originally supposed to be just a gig review, but I kinda got carried away). This is not an artist who has a relationship with her fans filtered through a record label, then filtered again through a Social Media PR team. It is an intimate relationship. You just need to read one of her blog posts to know she does not hold anything back and what her fans mean to her. This is what an Artist should be like. This is not the internet. This is real life.

Gaming Crisis

I consider myself a casual gamer.  By this, I mean that I don’t play a game 24/7 and learn everything there is about it,  nor do I rack up hundreds upon hundreds of hours playing a multitude of games on a variety of different platforms.  I’m the sort of gamer who enjoys games that have the option to explore the limits of the virtual world – scaling mountains or swimming oceans just to see what’s there.  I’m the sort of person who, if the option is there, will spend an entire gaming session standing on a rock in the middle of the sea, casting a fishing rod and chatting to friends.  This sort of behavior generally means that I should be a perfectly happy MMORPG player.

For those who aren’t game-savvy, MMORPG stands for Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.  I have played a dozen of these in my lifetime; World of Warcraft (Beta through to the Cataclysm Expansion), City of Heroes/City of Villains, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic and finally Guild Wars 2.  These are the type of games I enjoy playing.  They are potentially limitless.

With that in mind, I think I’m going off MMORPGs.

I don’t know… I’m finding it increasingly difficult to log in to games at the moment, as it just feels as though I’m sat waiting for this awesome incredible game that hasn’t even been made yet.

All of the most recent games have been great. I adore Guild Wars 2 but none of my friends play it anymore as, like most MMOs, there’s not enough End Game content to keep us occupied. The game ends up being repetitive and boring. Plus, no-one plays it anymore. Did I mention that? So, I end up sitting there like a billy no-mates doing the equivalent of what I did back when I played WoW (before they brought in the Pandas).

I’ll describe the scene. My Character, Kib, was a Night-Elf Druid (technically he still exists, though I’ve not logged in for 2 years). I’m in Bird Form, hovering as high as I can get above the canals in Stormwind. I shift out of Bird Form and plummet towards the ground. Just before I hit the ground, I shift back into bird form. I keep repeating this action to see how close I can get to the ground without slamming into the street cobbles. Then I fly around for about 10 minutes before /sigh -ing and logging off.

The differences between what I did in WoW and what I do in GW2 are as follows:

• Instead of a male Night Elf Druid, I have a female Asuran Engineer
• Instead of Stormwind, it’s Lions Arch
• Instead of flying, I clamber to the top of one of the ship houses and throw myself off it
• Instead of trying not to hit the floor (well, I still try and not hit the floor), I aim to fall into the deepest part of a pond

I don’t know what all this plummeting to my (character’s) potential death says about me (it’s probably best not to think about that) but the result is the same; increasingly I find that MMO’s have become, well… boring.

I’ve dabbled with Rift and I love it. It’s got a good class system and the combat can be dynamic but it just feels like it’s missing something.

Maybe it’s because Rift seems to hate my PC. With Guild Wars 2 and WoW, I can run my graphics settings on high/ultra. With Rift, however, I’m lucky if I manage to run it on medium. Mobs, NPCs and other players take a long time to load in reasonably (not even high) populated areas and sometimes it just bugs out and refuses to work altogether. I know I need to update my PC, but Rift is quite an old game now and it surprises me how much trouble I have in playing it when newer games seem fine.

I also don’t actually care about the story or the people in Rift. I cared in WoW, I cared in GW2, but Rift… who cares? I didn’t ask to be brought back to life by the gods to fight a holy battle against a demon dude from another planet. Normally that would sound awesome but I can’t help but go ‘meh’.

Rift doesn’t seem to have grabbed me like other MMOs have. With WoW, I used to get very real withdrawal symptoms; I still do, now and again, even though I’ve not played for nearly 2 years. In the beginning, it was the same with GW2 but I played it to death on release and felt that I’d done everything I wanted to do after a few months. But I don’t get that longing with Rift, which is probably reflected in the fact that I’ve never managed to get a character above level 30. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I need to make the effort and push through to max out a character. Maybe only then will I get what the game is trying to do. Then again I may get bored again and end up committing gaming suicide like a frustrated Tim Bisley drowning a flailing Lara Croft over and over (incidentally, something that is far too horrific to consider doing in the new Tomb Raider….and far too easy).

As for potential future releases, Wildstar looks fun but again, I don’t think it would keep me interested. Elder Scrolls Online looks like an exciting return to Tamriel but I’ve not even finished Skyrim yet! Also, we’ve got to wait a whole year before release and by then, who knows what I’ll be doing.

Of course, I’ll still play Rift. I’ve invested some time in it now and the MMO-er in me can’t let that go to waste. I do have a PS3 but get sad when I complete a game. I think i have been spoiled by the seemingly endless worlds of MMOs.

Maybe I’ll finish writing this and read it back and tell myself “what a load of bollocks – you love that game!” and become an uber-l33t haxx0r wit al teh shinies… maybe. Until then, I’ll carry on fishing (almost max-skill in Rift now… at level 30… just sayin’) and reminiscing about how the world of MMO gaming used to be.

What do you think?  Are you feeling the same as I do? Feel free to let me know in the comments below, or by voting in my poll.

Related articles

• Did WoW Kill a Genre? (nerdfarmblog.com)
• Response: Are MMOs too easy? (totemploppin.wordpress.com)

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