An Evening With Amanda Palmer

An Evening With Amanda Palmer is an odd thing, because it’s at the MFA and the clean white walls, intersecting planes of glass and marble and steel, it’s so not the cramped and dingy confines of a club or bar where these things are supposed to happen. The opening band was Jaggery, they’re ok. Chick on piano and I think it’s her brother on drums, with a harpist and stand up bass. She does that heartfelt experimenty soul-baring lyric thing, punctuated with chirps and yelps and while I respect it I don’t think it’s really my thing. After them was this guy on an accordion and Oh. My. God. He was amazing. He’s got a really strong kinda raspy voice, halfway between Tom Waits and Adam Sandler, he did that Outkast song Hey Ya on the freakin accordion and it was one of those moments in my life I feel so privileged to witness, I would do anything in the world if I could share it with all of you. Then he did My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, declaring the audience participation rule that whenever he sang a word beginning with the letter B everyone would stand up, and remain standing until the next time he sang a word starting with B. And the amazing thing is everyone did it - the entire sold-out MFA auditorium stood up on “My bonnie lies over the ocean”, and everyone dropped back into their seats at “My bonnie lies over the sea”. And then he got to “Bring back, bring back, bring back my bonnie to me” and chaos reigned. His third song was not a joke, it was a genuinely good piece, he kept percussive time by stomping his feet, he played his accordion with only his left hand, and his right he was shaking a plastic bottle field with pebbles. I don’t know anything about this guy except he’s from Seattle, but, again, it was one of those magical performance happenings that seems out of place and out of time, out of all normal experience.

Amanda Palmer was great, she did half her own stuff and half covers, telling stories and snippets about her choice of covers like what it took to figure out the lyrics to a Regina Spektor song, and why you shouldn’t don’t bother with this particular Legendary Pink Dots album. My favorite was her rendition of Material Girl, burning it slowly with a girl on violin, and the song becomes something profoundly mournful. I’m not the biggest Dresden Dolls fan, and I don’t think I need to own any of their albums, but I’m so very happy that she does what she does.