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Amanda Palmer gives a TED talk: The art of asking.

Don’t make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot Bride!), she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.

Alt-rock icon Amanda Fucking Palmer believes digital content should be free, and that artists can and should be directly supported by fans via a “patronage” model.

Is it any wonder?

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Before there was “Ironic,” there was “Too Much Time on My Hands.”

Remember Alanis Morrisette’s 1995 song, in which she lists a whole bunch of unfortunate things and for each one asks “Isn’t it ironic?” None of the things she sang about was ironic, not in the least, and scores of educated people who understood the meaning of irony railed about it. Standup comics wrote extended and very funny bits about how little irony the song contained.

Flash back yet further to 1981, to the release of Paradise Theater by Styx. The second single off the album was “Too Much Time on My Hands.” Here’s the opening lyric:

Yeah, I’m sitting on this bar stool, talking like a damn fool,
Got the twelve o’clock news blues.
And I’ve given up hope for the afternoon soaps
And a bottle of cold brew.
Is it any wonder I’m not crazy?
Is it any wonder I’m sane at all?

I’m sure you see the problem in this. Here’s a guy, being driven mad with boredom. It’s surprising that he’s not crazy; i.e. it is a wonder that he is not crazy. You’re supposed to ask “Is it any wonder that…?” when what is happening would naturally be expected, when it is not a surprise. If he were doing it right, he should be asking, “Is it any wonder that I am crazy?” The answer to the question should be, “No, that is not a wonder.” So, he’s using this turn of phrase incorrectly.

The whole song runs this way, and thus the whole song drove me pretty much insane.

Apparently though, I was the only person who was bothered by the lyrics. The song “reached #9 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and #2 on the Top Rock Tracks chart for one week” (wikipedia).

Being a faithful Styx fan, I wanted to like the song. And it was a hit on radio and TV, so I couldn’t escape it if I tried.
Thus, I had to come up with a way to deal with these problematic lyrics without breaking my mind.

What I did was this: Every time Tommy Shaw sang “is it any wonder?” I made myself hear it as “isn’t it a wonder?” — swapping in words that were close enough that he could possibly be singing them, but flipping the logic so it worked.

I’m so tired of losing, I’ve got nothing to do
And all day to do it.
So I go out cruising but I’ve no place to go
And all night to get there.
Isn’t it a wonder I’m not a criminal?
Isn’t it a wonder I’m not in jail?

Amazing, no? This was such a relief to my logic-obsessed 10th grade brain.

And the thing is: The reason I was able to come up with this lyrical solution was that I had a lot of time to think about it. That is, I had too much time on my hands.

Isn’t that ironic?

Let’s start again and you can tell me all about what you did today

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Frightened Rabbit are a band from Scotland, and I love both their sound and the poetry of their lyrics.

Of their songs, this is (so far) my favorite:

They’re on tour now in Europe, coming to the US in October. They’ll be in Pittsburgh on November 2.

I’m buying some tickets, so let me know if you’d like to come along or meet us there. Such fun it will be!

You know I feel alright

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Over the weekend I watched A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles’ first film. I’d seen it before, years ago. Watching it now, I was happy to see it was as silly and plot-free as I remembered, but in many ways it also surprised me.

  • The movie has lots of surreal moments — jumps and shifts that are sort of goofy but maybe a bit more than that. John in the bathtub and then gone; the band in the train corridor and then running outside the train; John cutting the tailor’s tape. In the time between when I first saw this movie and now I’ve seen more film, particularly French film and film by bona fide Surrealists, so now I see better where the influences came from.*
  • The music is of course amazing — but it’s even more so if you believe the movie’s producer when he says in the DVD extras that the band wrote the songs in the few months between when the three-picture deal was signed and when the production started shooting. The title track wasn’t even written until near the end of production, and it was written overnight. Makes my all-nighters look like wasted hours.
  • The lads fell down a lot, especially George. And then they bounced back up and kept going, like Weebles. I mean, watch the opening sequence below: Happens 8 seconds in. Doesn’t that look painful? They do it a few more times during the movie. How George’s hands weren’t too bruised and scraped to play guitar I can’t understand.
  • I knew that footage from the Beatles movies and TV appearances were the source material for the visuals in The Beatles: Rock Band, but I didn’t appreciate how closely the game mirrors the footage, and sometimes improves on it.

Next in my queue: Magical Mystery Tour. Yeah, I know, it won’t be as good. Still, must be done.

BONUS: I came across this while seeking out a suitable clip. Nicely done.

* My brother suggested that I should watch the Monkees TV show again, to see if I have a similar renewed appreciation for its surrealism. Excellent idea. But I was always a big fan of the Monkees, so it’s hard to imagine I could like them more than I already do.