Karohemd's World

I was utterly exhausted last night, didn't even cook and was just able to move enough to use the remote and switch DVDs (sorry, ebb!). By midnight, I couldn't even concentrate on Babylon 5 anymore (The Coming of Shadows is indeed a fine episode and as things go on I can see the appeal and it saddens me that my watching was interrupted my moving to the UK, missing a whole season) Anyway, midnight rolled along and I went to bed and ... couldn't sleep. So I got up again after a while, switched the laptop.

Amanda Palmer twittered the following:

- just passed a group of berklee summer music students on mass ave & got accosted. one of them is named Tristan and is an aspiring......pianist and songwriter. he asked if I would listen to his songs if he could wrangle a practice room. i said yes and we went inside......but berklee closed the practice rooms for the day. so I'm taking him and his two school friends from Mexico to my house. I have a piano.
- HOLY SHIT HE'S AMAZING. HOLY SHIT
- here;s tristan at the piano. i think we maybe have to webcast this shit http://twitpic.com/2eg9d2

And she did and he was indeed amazing. He played one of his own compositions, then a four handed duet with Amanda, then some random bits , another duet in which he played a toy piano better than Amanda played the real one and a final improvised four handed duet with Amanda. It was fantastic. This shy, quiet guy - the complete opposite personality wise to AFP - turned into this wizard on the piano, playing all kinds of wonderful music.

He has a myspace but he isn't happy with it. Still, it should give you a rough idea of his music.

Archived webcast:


I love the future of communication we live in. This isn't even high tech, it's webcast from a Macbook using a free webcast/streaming service everyone can access.

Now to see if I can rescue this wasted Saturday (I did go to sleep a bit after three and finally got up just after 2), still exhausted so I'm going to attempt another early night tonight.

Evelyn Evelyn is a new acit discovered and produced by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley. Their manager, Sxip Shirey, was unfortunately unable to attend due to volcanic activity so his role of compere was taken over by Adrian Stout of the Tiger Lillies for the evening.

The evening consisted of four segments:
- Bitter Ruin as support act, again filling in for Sxip Shirey. Only a duo, vocals and (Flamenco) acoustic guitar but very powerful music and lyrics and and utter joy to watch and listen to.
- Evelyn Evelyn performing a mix of their own songs and two covers. They play the piano, accordion, guitar, kazoo and ukulele with astounding proficiency and their chemistry is apparent. They also dabble in divination.
- Jason Webley solo. He is a street performer through and through and a mad wizard on stage. His recording do not do him justice, you have to see him live to believe it. For those interested, he said he's planning a UK tour in the autumn.
- Amanda Palmer solo, performing a mix of songs from her solo album and Dresden Dolls back catalogue as well as duets with Jason Webley and Georgia of Bitter Ruin.
- Grand Finale with everyone on stage, including Neil Gaiman on tambourine and a few lucky fans.

The light wasn't too bad, just a little too much red (even more so on the Saturday). As I was sitting, I didn't have the freedom to move around so they are a bit static and microphones and other gear are in the way quite often. Still, I think I got some reasonable results.


Even more on flickr.

After hearing "Chicken Man", I really want AFP to collaborate with the Tiger Lillies (who she knows and has covered). She mentioned it was a possibility provided time and space allow when I asked her in a Q&A on twitter last year. :o)
The album is a mix of carnival style songs in a perfect fusion (ETA: pun so not intended! Honest!) of AFP and Jason Webley's styles and the spoken word story of the twins (with background noises and dialogue).
Upcoming tour in April, there are still tickets available for the added gig at Koko on the 22nd but the Bush Hall tickets (Fri, Sat, Sun) are sold out - I'm going on Friday and Saturday.

Details on the EvelynEvelyn project

The We Killed Amanda Palmer site included my "how the WKAP book killed me" collage.
This is all kinds of awesome. :o)

Amanda Palmer requested photos of people who had bought the book of photos of her dead self so I made these.
The book is great and has a variety of photos from Kyle Cassidy, Beth Hommel and a number of other photographers as well as lyrics from AFP's solo album of the same name and a few short stories by Neil Gaiman accompanying those photos.
It's a lovely book, go and buy it.
It also combines three of my favourite artists so I'm very happy indeed.

Watched some Neil Young at Glastonbury on iplayer. 64 and still Rocking in the Free World. Yeah. Bruce Springsteen, only 4 years younger, tonight. I guess I'll be glued to Radio6 online. Having seen how far from the stage even the first row is, I'm not too sad I can't be there. I get B.B. King and John Mayall at Wembley Arena tomorrow night instead. :o)

Kurt Weill on wikipedia

The Threepenny Opera
Probably his most well known work and his famous collaboration with Bert Brecht.

( YouTube vids under the cut )

Something I forgot to mention: Could it be that she's a gaming geek, too?

The new song she played contained the line "my heart is like a six-sided die".
"Normal" people don't make that distinction when they talk about dice. For them, all dice have six sides.