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 AMANDA PALMER talks to JODY MACGREGOR about using Twitter to keep in touch with her fans.
Before Amanda Palmer played her official show in Sydney last month she performed a semi-secret ‘ninja gig’ outside the Sydney Opera House. Everywhere she tours she’s been staging these happenings, announcing them sometimes only hours beforehand on Twitter and her blog, then turning up with a ukulele and playing for her fans.
“I was expecting that with the late notice and the ominous weather, because it was kind of raining off and on, that I would maybe get 30 or 40 people,” she says of the Sydney gig. “I think we got between four and 500. It was pretty impressive. We gathered on the steps of the Opera House and I told stories and took questions and called Neil Gaiman on speakerphone and let everyone talk to him and had a party.”
It’s handy having a famous author for a boyfriend. It’s also handy learning to play her songs on the ukulele, since she doesn’t have to tote her piano around for the more impromptu shows. Was it hard to adapt her songs to a new instrument?
“Hard to play the ukulele?” she laughs. “No, it’s really easy. Took me like 10 minutes to learn.”
As well as organising surprise shows, Palmer uses Twitter to chat with her fans and even raise funds. Realising she was spending another Friday night in front of the screen doing not much of anything, she started a club for all the losers spending Friday night on their computers. She called it Losers Of Friday Night On Their Computers. Hundreds of people joined and a club t-shirt – based on a drawing uploaded by Palmer and sold through a website – made more money in that night than she made in royalties from her last album.
“I think it’s the fact that it’s so condensed and it’s so immediate and the fact that you don’t have to be beholden to what is going on completely,” she says of Twitter’s appeal. “For instance, I don’t read my entire feed and I don’t consider myself responsible for reading everything that my fans write in on my Twitter feed, because I just wouldn’t have the time, but I scan it when I feel like it and pick up on conversations when I feel like it and when I have the time and the energy. I don’t feel like I’m being a bad friend and ignoring something essential.”
Twitter also limits its posts to 140 characters, which turns every conversation into a parade of witty remarks, like the Losers’ slogans, ‘Don’t stand up for what’s right – stay in for what’s wrong’ and the even more succinct ,‘There is nothing for you out there.’
“There’s something very, very wise about limiting what people can say to you because I also read my fan mail, not all of it and not all the time, but as soon as people feel like they have access to you they can go on and on and on … and write you 15-page letters about their life stories. Which is great if you have time to read all that, but you don’t if you’re actually working, so Twitter really just condenses things down to the essentials.”
AMANDA PALMER will be playing at the A&I Hall, Byron Bay, on Wednesday Mar 3 and The Zoo on Wednesday Mar 10 – and possibly other shows. You should stay tuned to www.twitter.com/amandapalmer and www.amandapalmer.net to hear about them.
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