Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra

Last night we were lucky enough to bag some last minute tickets to see a pioneering, female member of the music industry/scene and this thing we all do called life. The lady I’m talking about is Amanda Palmer, who also goes by the name Amanda ‘F**king’ Palmer, and is married to sci-fi/fantasy author Neil Gaiman. Formerly of the Dresden Dolls and having done some solo work, Amanda is now touring, recording and playing with her Grand Theft Orchestra.For those of you who don’t know her music but recognize her name you may know her as the artist who made $1.2bn through a kickstarter project to fund her album after the record label dropped her for only selling 25,000 copies. There was a lot of controversy around this in the media because of Amanda’s ethos of asking people to perform for free at her gigs as warm ups and special guests, but she explains her stand point well in a recent talk she did at TED in February. So to the gig…..WOOOOOOOOOOOW! I’m pretty sure this was the best gig I have ever been to, both for performance aspects and this overwhelming feeling of being connected to both the performer and everyone else in the room with me (when you’ve watched the TED video you’ll understand). Throughout the night Amanda introduced an array of special guests to the stage, many of whom only did one song as there were so many of them. We heard music and saw performances from: Perhaps Contraption, Tom Milsom, Bitter Ruin, Katie Miller-Heidke and the cast of Limbo. I don’t think there was one second of quiet from the moment these guys hit the stage at 8pm and the show finishing at 11pm.Amanda was electric, she talked to the crowd, got into the crowd and rode over the crowd. Security didn’t look too happy with all these antics, but we loved it. One of the highlights of the show was Amanda’s penultimate song, finished only an hour before the show started which addressed the Daily Mails recent review of her Glastonbury performance, or rather not of her performance but of the fact that her boob escaped from her bra. not once did this tiny review mention anything about the music or the performance, therefore she wrote them a song. We’ve filmed it and popped it on our YouTube, but please be warned, there are scenes of nudity (not that you can see it very well because my camera is rubbish!) All in all, Amanda and her Orchestra are amazing, as are all her lovely friends and guests that she’s collected on the way. If you get the chance to see her live please do it, the recorded version really doesn’t do her justice.-TWSHFind out more about Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra:Website