Concert Review- Amanda Palmer & Grand Theft Orchestra at the Middle East 7-31-12

[ceciliatan]

Hey, Generation X, I’ve got news for you. We’re forty-something, guys.

This fact was carried home to me tonight upon leaving the fantastic live show of Amanda Fucking Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra at the Middle East Downstairs. You see, to leave the place, you have to climb a flight of stairs. Apparently, my 45-year-old knees can stand up (and pogo) for four straight hours just like they could when I was 25. But boy do you feel the difference when it comes time to climb.

Ow.

Anyway, my other thought about the audience was rock on Amanda for getting all these people away from the Internet for a night. There was a wonderfully high nerd quotient in the crowd tonight, as well as a wonderfully high female-to-male ratio, which probably meant more female nerds than are usually gathered in one place outside of a Harry Potter convention (yes, I spend my vacations at Harry Potter conventions, what of it?). Like an HP con, there was quite an age spread, too, from the teenagers to those my age and those even older. No one seemed particularly dismayed by this. The common thread among us wasn’t “type” (punk, hipster, nerd, hippie, jock, all of the above, none of the above) or generation, but AMANDA FUCKING PALMER.

Speaking as someone who has spent a good bit of her life trying to get people out of their boxes and crossing the lines, I state for the record, this is awesome. We live in the post-modern age. In the arts, screwing around with the boundaries of genre, making mash-ups and subverting tropes, collage and juxtaposition as commentary, these are all the tools in the post-modern arts toolbox. Applying the post-tools is an art form itself. Music, fiction, visual art, dance, the tools apply to all. So isn’t it about time we started applying those tools to the categories of identity? Gender, class, “type,” etc? Society will still try to tell you who to be, but it’s more imperative than ever that we don’t allow others to define us or our worth, isn’t it?

Wait, sorry, this isn’t the time for a rant about how LGBT youth are still committing suicide or how women who aren’t empowered sexually aren’t empowered at all or any of my other soap boxes. Or is it? Well, let me tell you about the show, which as you might have guessed from my assessment of the audience–but which carried through the acts on the stage–was as affirming and category-busting as it gets. Details, photos, links, embedded songs, and much opining, under the cut:

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