Stars I Hate

His absolute lack of remorse or even reflection over all this just makes me rage.

Decca wrote:Oh, the tattoo isn't supposed to be Rihanna. It's just a random beat-up woman. Because that's better.

In addition to being a vile piece of scum, he has to be one of the biggest morons I have ever heard of. He can't even pretend he's sorry.

I know, right? Like, that's just your average tattoo design and means nothing. He is so gross.

Amanda Palmer: still a twat.

Ms. Palmer also said that she could not afford to pay the extra musicians she requests, a string quartet and three or four sax and brass players. The cost, she said, would be around $35,000 for all the tour dates.

They have these things called "backing tracks" nowadays. You record the sound in advance and play it during your show! It's actually pretty common, especially for smaller bands without much support, because they're on tiny labels/unsigned and not famous enough to raise a crapton of money through Kickstarter.

I fucking hate the notion that if you love something, you're supposed to do it for free. Any decent musician has already spent countless unpaid hours practicing.

Poubelle wrote:

Ms. Palmer also said that she could not afford to pay the extra musicians she requests, a string quartet and three or four sax and brass players. The cost, she said, would be around $35,000 for all the tour dates.

They have these things called "backing tracks" nowadays. You record the sound in advance and play it during your show! It's actually pretty common, especially for smaller bands without much support, because they're on tiny labels/unsigned and not famous enough to raise a crapton of money through Kickstarter.

I fucking hate the notion that if you love something, you're supposed to do it for free. Any decent musician has already spent countless unpaid hours practicing.

I know nothing about Palmer and her music. That said, I had a bias towards disliking her because I found Gaiman's writings about her and their relationship too twee to stand (I'm not a regular reader of his blog but have engaged on an archive dive there in the past, I believe right around the time of one of their weddings). I can still like him because I like his fiction but I find the "WE'RE ODDBALL ARTISTS LIVING OUR ART" tone annoying. So not knowing anything about her but their "kookiness", I find her irritating. And her open letter in response to this criticism (here) also bugged, possible because of my automatic reaction of "you are engaging in a debate, not writing fiction for which you may make stylistic choices to convey tone or athmosphere, so use fucking capital letters you goddam hipster".

I should maybe actually listen to her music and form a fairer opinion but I haven't been able to get past my initial impression of her basically being one of those annoying characters from Rent (my tangental feelings on THAT are summarized very nicely by the sadly departed David Rackoff here: here).

And I know her stans get defensive if you bring up the point that she's married to a multi-millionaire, but fuck it, that's relevant to me. We KNOW she's not some starving artist, so her whole "it's all about the music" hipster, boho, "who needs money to CREATE" vibe, is so obnoxious and contrived. It's fine for her to live in the lap of luxury, but the rest of the music community needs to honor the starving artist cliche, I guess.

Poubelle wrote:

Ms. Palmer also said that she could not afford to pay the extra musicians she requests, a string quartet and three or four sax and brass players. The cost, she said, would be around $35,000 for all the tour dates.

They have these things called "backing tracks" nowadays. You record the sound in advance and play it during your show! It's actually pretty common, especially for smaller bands without much support, because they're on tiny labels/unsigned and not famous enough to raise a crapton of money through Kickstarter.

I fucking hate the notion that if you love something, you're supposed to do it for free. Any decent musician has already spent countless unpaid hours practicing.

Not only that, but she made $1.2 MILLION on Kickstarter for her album and there is no Earthly way that thing cost a million bucks to produce. She's not Kanye West. She most certainly has the money to pay for the musicians.

Even Steve Albini, who is almost equally whiny (but twice as bitchy) as Amanda Palmer, thought this was a load of shit and obliquely called her a Juggalo:

I have no fundamental problem with either asking your fans to pay you to make your record or go on tour or play for free in your band or gather at a mud pit downstate and sell meth and blowjobs to each other. I wouldn’t stoop to doing any of them myself, but horses for courses. The reason I don’t appeal to other people in this manner is that all those things can easily pay for themselves, and I value self-sufficiency and independence, even (or especially) from an audience.

He tries to walk back from it after Stereogum started talking about it, except by the end of his clarification (also in the Stereogum post I linked) he's back to insulting her again. Oh, Steve. Never change.

And I know her stans get defensive if you bring up the point that she's married to a multi-millionaire, but fuck it, that's relevant to me. We KNOW she's not some starving artist, so her whole "it's all about the music" hipster, boho, "who needs money to CREATE" vibe, is so obnoxious and contrived.

She even admitted in the NYT interview that she just didn't want to pay the $35,000 it would cost to pay musicians for the tour. Given the money she raised via kickstarter, that disgusts me. She could easily take that out of the $100,000 she is "paying herself" for the tour and still have made plenty of profit.

The woman asks fans to make food for her so she doesn't have to go to the falafel place. Like, those are her exact words. And then she says its okay if they spend 100s of dollars because they get to spend time with her.

Shes an asshat. Like even forgetting all the problematic things shes said and done and her whole attention seeking drama kid vibe, she is just an asshat.

Do you get to pretend you're a 'struggling musician' when you're married to someone as successful as Neil Gaiman? I mean, I'm not suggesting he has JK Rowling money (though he very well might have and more power to him if he does) and I'm not saying that she should be living off him or anything like that, but it just doesn't sit well to be saying that you're going to pay people in hugs when you're clearly not living in a one room shack somewhere and living off tips.

Plus, in this economy, if you can't afford to be paying people then rethink your shows. I mean, if she's trying to do something different, then fine and while some people will be delighted to get the chance to play with her, it just feels wrong considering who she is and how long she's been doing this.

I have no idea who this woman is, but she sounds horrible. It's easy to say people shouldn't think about money when you yourself have a shitload of it.

Oh God she chaps my ass. As a Bostonian, she's been chapping my ass for years, so it's nice to see the ass-chapping being shared with the world.

Its disingenuous. These musicians may very well love to play with her for free, whatever, but I do not think that is why she is doing this. Shes doing it because she can get away without paying them. That is gross.

Her whole schtick is disingenuous. The reason she has stans and was able to raise over a million bucks via Kickstater is because her band was signed to a major label which could promote them and support them. She didn't get to this level of fame being an indie artiste.

To be honest, I didn't know who Amanda Palmer was until she got together with Neil Gaiman. And the more I read about her, the more poorly this relationship reflects on him.

The more I read about her, the more poorly this relationship reflects on him.

Thank you. I thought I was the only one whose appreciation for Gaiman & his work has dimmed CONSIDERABLY during this, their very public, our-love-is-so-special-let-us-show-it-to-you-the-little-people-for-your-admiration relationship.

I appreciated that it confirmed what I thought of him after reading him for the first time years ago: self-involved hipster asshat. I'm sorry, he's an undeniably talented writer but I can only take so much of it before I roll my eyes and go read something else.

Kiran wrote:The woman asks fans to make food for her so she doesn't have to go to the falafel place. Like, those are her exact words. And then she says its okay if they spend 100s of dollars because they get to spend time with her.

This really irritates me. Like, her only two choices in the world are to eat cheap falafel or have volunteers cater. Thos are not your only two choices. You are not about to starve. If you keep weird hours because of the shows and it's hard to get food at night so you want someone to cook for you, fine. BUT FUCKING PAY THEM FOR IT. The idea of asking fans to spend hundreds of dollars to cater a meal for a sucessful musician married to millionaire really burns me up.

I also didn't like her arguement that musicians are open to playing for free because this one time an opening band asked her to sing a song with them for free. You can do it because YOU ARE MARRIED TO A MILLIONAIRE and your kickstarter raised A MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. Like, you are not going to fail to make rent because some band asked you to sing a song. In fact, if you're all about being an indie artist, you should WANT these musicians to get paid because that means you're supporting them and hopefully helping them succeed. Or at least making sure they can buy some good groceries this month or pay the elctric bill. So that maybe one day they can reach the level of comfort you're at. Even without being married to a millionaire.

I was at HMV today and her cd was at the front of the new releases section, sandwiched between the latest Now Thats What I Call Music and the Killers. That is not the same as a new emerging band. She needs to own up to the fact that while she is not Adele, she is well known, she has her fanbase, and she makes a good living at what she does.

lisa wrote:

The more I read about her, the more poorly this relationship reflects on him.

Thank you. I thought I was the only one whose appreciation for Gaiman & his work has dimmed CONSIDERABLY during this, their very public, our-love-is-so-special-let-us-show-it-to-you-the-little-people-for-your-admiration relationship.

I hate her so much it made me hate him, and I used to quite like him. But the idea that he likes her enough to marry her just totally harshed my buzz on him and his work. She's awful, straight up.

I keep hoping that he has some type of tumor. Rational, I know.

I understand the annoyance, but not quite the level of animosity. It would be one thing if Palmer promised compensation and then stiffed people (that would be unforgivable), but she asked for volunteers and was upfront at the beginning that it would be without pay. If musicians have an issue with it, then... don't volunteer. I've seen posts from musicians who are volunteering, and if they know what they're getting into and don't have a problem with it, why should anyone else?

Also, imho, it's irrelevant who she's married to and how much he's worth. Maybe in another career path (like politics), it would make a difference, maybe not. But as a musician, if she did use any of Neil Gaiman's money to fund her record/tour, she pretty much automatically loses credibility as an artist. She'd never be able to get anyone to help finance a project of hers again, without the help and control of a record company. Lana Del Rey apparently used her rich daddy's connections and gets flak for it all the time. Using a spouse's money wouldn't be any different.

As for her cd being in the new releases section, I saw that in my local record store too and that has more to do with it coming out this week, rather than her being a new act. The Killers aren't a new act either. From what I've seen (and she is infamous for oversharing), Palmer seems to really appreciate her fans and acknowledge her luck.

I think you misunderstood me. My implication was its getting a push that an unknown truly unsupported wouldn't get. I'm well aware shes not a new act, I used to be a fan.

I think for me its more the icing on the cake, along with the general entitlement shes shown. Add in her general pay attention to me behavior (announcing her own engagement on ONTD) which I find wearisome, and stuff like that time she started a side project where she played conjoined sexual abuse victims or the time she and Margaret Cho pretended to rape Katy Perry on stage I am just completely over her.

I just don't think it's fair that she uses the fact that people like her and genuinely want to do nice things for her to not pay musicians when she could find a way to make it work. And at least acknowledge the fact that you are in an incredibly priviledged position, which is why you can get people to actually want to do stuff for you for free. She mentions in a post that she used to pass a hat at free shows she'd do back in the day. Can't you at least do that to pay for these musicians?

Musicians are always having to fight to get paid (the number of times my Mother -who is a professional musician, has been asked to play for free is a bit hilarious at times.) and it just seems to show a lack of awareness and professionalism to ask people to play for free when she technically has the means to do it. You have people putting in the time to rehearse new music and then perform, shouldn't that be worth something? It seems insulting when you consider that she is paying other people money for various things they are doing for her show and her album.
She abuses her privilege as someone who has influence and that is what is so disappointing.