We suffer mornings most of all...

Biped and I went to see Amanda Palmer live the other weeked. We may have mentioned this already, but I felt it could bear repeating. Especially since I tried taking a few little videos with my camera and this is probably the best way to stitch them together.

A disclaimer, before I begin: my camera takes extremely poor quality videos to start with, and uploading them to youtube made them even less good. Also, my hands are a bit too shaky, and most annoyingly of all my camera will not record more than a minute's worth of footage in one go. Therefore, you follow links at your peril. However, the audio doesn't seem too dreadful, so hopefully those of you who want to have a look will get something out of them - and if I tag them sufficiently, hopefully youtube will throw up links to better quality ones. Sorry...

I met biped in Camden after work on Friday, sitting happily near Mornington Crescent tube station until she showed up. As we queued down the side of KOKO (or the Camden Palace as was), a nice girl came down the queue handing out cheapo bubble wands. It turned out she was just another ticket-holder, but had thought it would be fun to have everyone blowing bubbles as we waited outside. She was, of course, right, and much amusement was generated from the hundreds of bubbles spiralling off in the cold evening wind - it also got everyone in the queue talking to each other, because it is hard to ignore people in a British way when your bubbles have just blown into their face. One has to at least apologise and talk about the weather. Sadly, we were of course not allowed to blow bubbles inside, so this was only a quarter hour or so of entertainment - but it was a great idea.

Inside, we looked around for a location to claim and settled on a side area of upstairs balcony railing. We took it in turns to hold our claim to this two-person space whilst one of us at a time went to the toilet, and then we watched with interest. At first there was some random couple of musicians playing just on the audience pit floor, but they packed up before a dapper little man arrived on stage and told us it was Saturday, and then the first official warm-up act came on. He was Jason Webley, a slightly crazy rock accordionist. Yes, I didn't think those two things went together either, but they sort of do. He was a lot of fun, getting the audience to join in with his songs and sway along to things. He only sang about three songs, and was then succeeded by Zoë Keating, who was very good but sadly somewhat talked-over by the annoying crowd who had been hyped up by the previous act and were in no mood for odd cello solos. She amused myself and biped because she was using professionally the kind of equipment that we had seen Pagagnini play with for comic effect at the Edinburgh Festival - she was playing a line, then recording the harmonies over the top as she went, becoming her own cello ensemble. It was quite fantastic.

(Note: links from this point on are to my videos on youtube or my photos on flickr.)

Then the lights went down, and we were asked to share the grief and mourning associated with the death of Amanda Palmer. For those who do not follow her career, her debut album recently released is called Who Killed Amanda Palmer? - which is both a Twin Peaks reference and some sort of metaphorical statement. Therefore, many recent performance stunts and her live show itself are themed around this fictional death of hers. Therefore, to start the show, we were welcomed and invited to share our grief with each other. And particularly with Neil Gaiman, who appeared on stage as if by magic and started reading a eulogy to the sadly departed Amanda Palmer, who had died in any number of ways according to the bubblegum cards being traded across America. While he read this, Amanda herself was slowly carried in by her entourage and propped up behind her keyboard like a corpse with rigor mortis. (At one point, she toppled over.)

Neil Gaiman and the Danger Ensemble faded away to the back of the stage, and the show opened on the same explosive beginning as the album: Astronaut. This is a song which I have been warming to ever since first listening to the album, slowly tying it together into a whole thing, and I think seeing it live completed that process. There was no disconnect between the loud and quiet parts, no inconsistency of atmosphere or character, and it was quite simply a superb opener. The still, calm parts seemed to echo the silence and eulogy we had begun with; the sound and fury resonating with the anger that lies a bare few inches under the skin of all her songs, and both part of each other.

Without a word, she finished that and went straight into her next song: Ampersand. At this point, biped was apparently worrying that she was just going to go through the whole album in order, but I wasn't noticing. As Em once said in an email, this song is good live - probably better live than it is on the album. It's a long discourse between singer an audience, a miniature stump speech with a proposal for life and how to live it, and as such it comes across stilted and slightly self-obsessed on the album. But in real life it works, she's talking to you and just sharing the craziness of the world.

This set list, by the way, is coming to you courtesy of what I scribbled down once back at biped's, when we were both exhausted and could barely even remember what we'd heard any more. For this reason, I am a not 100% sure of the song order, but I think it went like this: Blake Says next. A beautiful sad little song, executed brilliantly and with the assistance of some people (probably the Danger Ensemble although I didn't notice) who infiltrated the audience and acted out a little scene for us.

From thence, she segued out of sadness into violence, from her own album back into our first Dresden Dolls song of the night - but not one I would have personally chosen, Bad Habit. I must say though that although I thought 'meh' as it started, I thoroughly enjoyed it possibly because I don't listen to it often so don't know every chord and beat by heart. Also, the energy behind it was just fantastic - a short clip here (sorry about the stupid girl next to me suddenly sticking her arm out, pft).

Then we took a turn into the menacing and creepy, with Strength Through Music next. This is a song that I admire on the album but do not listen to much - partly too creepy, partly not musical enough for driving in my car and singing along to things. Here, after Amanda introduced the song in context of the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings in America, the strange little voiceover at the start was replaced by a simple reading of the names and injuries sustained (shot three times in the leg... shot once in the jaw...). It was pretty intense and only a little bit spoiled by a girl behind us who just would not shut up nattering at this point, and sighing heftily over everything Amanda said. It is possible she had some emotional connection to school shootings that we should have been forgiving of, but... really, it was frigging annoying while the song was being played. I'm impressed with biped for not squishing her like an annoying insect.

As the song had progressed, the Danger Ensemble had come on stage dressed as schoolkids, the better to emphasise the point (and adopt various attitudes of painful death at the end). This then led in perfectly to a strong and bouncy Guitar Hero, as they jumped around the stage adopting game-player poses and eventually 'killing' one of their number (by pushing her off the stage). I later remarked to biped how thematically excellent it was to put these two songs together and link them so explicitly, since to me they deal with very much the same subject - whereupon biped needed reassuring that I don't actually think playing computer games leads to homicide. Which I don't, but I think the songs do...

The song ended, the stage cleared, and Amanda took a little time to talk to us. She started introducing a song for those who have broken up, who might want to sit in a smoky old bar... and I knew where we were going with this and grinned wide. I know the version that Em was so lovely to pass on to the rest of us of I Google You was live anyway, but I decided I actually quite liked the KOKO audience at this point, because they loved this song. You'll hear it in the laughter on my video (with gaps where I had to start the camera rolling again) - each line was carefully listened to and rang a chord of resonance in our sad little British bones - I think my favourite line is the would-be PhD from Chesapeake. 

From this, we moved to the guaranteed crowd-pleaser of Coin-Operated Boy. Much of the audience sang along, the Danger Ensemble did their best work of the night chasing each other through the audience, and Amanda herself dissolved into laughter a few times at their antics (she particularly enjoyed messing with their heads on the 'never be alone - go!' stuck record part, where every time she played it (and they couldn't see her) they had to behave like a stuck record too. I think we must have had it about twenty times before she finally relented and moved on, hee). I then recorded most of the bridge, with thoughts of Em. *grins*

The crazy and fun just carried straight on, with the awesomest thing of the night: Oasis. Amanda introduced it by saying she'd just shot the video for it recently, and it might possibly be the most insulting video she's ever recorded. Which is intriguing, although she says she's hoping for an Obama victory because otherwise she fears getting kicked out of America for it. So, the best thing about this was that Jason Webley and Neil Gaiman reappeared on stage, one with a guitar and one with a tambourine (and both with mikes) and proceeded to accompany her (I was laughing way too hard to keep the camera still... you can actually hear me laugh at one point). Seriously effing awesome.

And then, the calm after the storm.  A little more chat from Amanda, an explanation of who the Dresden Dolls are and why she was playing some of their songs, and then Mrs O. Which I do love and she performed it very nicely indeed, so that made me happy. But it has, of course, faded in my memory relative to the two songs that were, essentially, the show's real finale.

The first one was introduced by Amanda as her favourite song from her new album. I felt moved to tell biped that it is my favourite too, because obviously this makes me special. I fear to say that when she announced it I may have made some sort of high-pitched woo-oo noise and am surprised biped didn't move elsewhere...it is, of course. Have to Drive. And it is so beautiful in the way it builds and then sublimes somewhere around the middle section and the bridge. The violin and cello accompaniment did everything in their power to augment the beauty, and I videoed two sections (there is a lot of crowd noise on this video for some reason. It wasn't quite that bad... or if it was, I was so focused on the song I didn't notice) but chose to simply luxuriate in the rest of it and enjoy the moment rather than divide my attention between the show and the camera). Although the harmony and her voice sound rather rough as hell on the second section of that video, it was truly good live - it was an edge and a lament overlaid on the sheer loneliness of the lyrics.

And then, of course, things got even better. A long instrumental rambling fancy between the three instruments made me suspicious, bearing in mind one of the voicemails that Em left me from the Melbourne show, and I was right - we went into Half Jack, and it was awesome. Again, I mostly chose to revel in this rather than record it for posterity, but you can have a little bit of See! Jack! Run!

Ahh. So excellent. And from here, we entered the winding down phase of the show... firstly, an energetic mime along to Umbrella, followed by one those fake leaving the stage things which does at least serve the purpose of letting you know the show is coming to an end. After we cheered and hollered for a minute or so non-stop, they re-appeared and we got Amanda and Jason Webley covering Livin' On A Prayer, which on the one hand is quite strange but on the other hand I had been prepared for by talking to someone who'd seen her in Manchester earlier in the week. It is, you see, lyrically inconsistent within itself, and Amanda seems to want to share this with the world. It's also quite good for a general sing-along. Then Amanda talked to us all for a while, explaining how she'd broken her foot and building up into discussion of the final song, via an anecdote about having filmed the video for it in London only the month before, and having her agents pussyfoot around the idea that she maybe... you know, just maybe... might want to look at changing some of the shots because maybe... she looked a bit chubby in it? Part of the reason I love her as a performer is because that is just something that is never going to bother her, and you know it, and she laughed it off along with the rest of ('who do they think I am, Britney fucking Spears?'). And so, the end - which was, sadly, mimed, but at least she made that very clear (by ironically holding the mike away from her and yet cunningly the song carried on...) and just had a hell-load of fun with it anyway. I assume it was mimed because it's a great finale piece but it would be impossible to do live without a handy brass band - it was, of course, Leeds United. Which I really do not love very much at all but now cannot deny it is a damn fine gig song and left me feeling superbly alive and enthused at the end.

And so there we have it. Biped and I took our time moseying out of the venue, picking up my luggage and standing around outside for a bit as biped threw her bicycle to the ground for no good reason and got funny looks. She then cycled back to Hampstead, while I caught the bus, and she beat me. Hmph. We splurged squee onto the board, then sat trying to pull this set list together and relive our favourite bits (and get something other than Umbrella or Livin' On A Prayer stuck in our heads) until finally exhaustion claimed us.

What a truly excellent way to spend an evening.

Act III: Rome

I do believe it is time to kill this telling off. We arrived in Rome about four hours after leaving Venice, a journey which included a bus, a plane from which we got a good view of the Italian countryside ("Hills!" said cheeky, pointing excitedly), another bus, a short walk through a very dodgy metro station, a metro ride to Rome's central station and then a short walk through a few residential streets. Despite worries over how well we'd manage all of this, it all went very smoothly - in this direction. Coming back will be dealt with later...

We arrived at the hostel - another old building with fantastically high ceilings and wooden shutters on the windows - were checked in by a nice lady who was either actually British or had a phenomenally clear accent, dumped our bags and headed out for dinner. A few streets further towards the city centre, we found two little restaurants sharing the same alley, both with tables outside (by now, we were comfortable in summer clothes outside at all hours, and goulash was a distant memory), dithered for 5 minutes, picked one and considered the menu. Although we had dispensed with the order-your-meal-by-tv-reference method of food choice by now, it ambushed us in reverse as we discussed our menu choices and which tv characters they represented. It was decided that seafood risotto (cheeky) sounded wholesome but dull, and was therefore Apollo from BSG, while rigatoni a la carbonara sounded just plain dull and was therefore Duncan (VMars). However, when the meals arrived it turned out that cheeky's meal was no staid Apollo, but a full-out crazy Starbuck with pincers and antennae. My carbonara was indeed Duncan, but had had so much pepper added to it that we decided he probably hadn't taken his pills for a while. This was a nice meal, sitting outdoors in friendliness and warmth, and writing total craziness in the pad. But we were tired, so we went back to the hostel... and proceeded not to sleep very well. The road outside was loud, but the window had to remain open to keep us cool enough. There's nothing like motorbikes and road drills for a good night's sleep. Oh, and something that bit me.

The next day... which I think would be Monday? I have totally lost track now... would be all about the Romans. Well, all about the Romans and getting very warm and slightly sunburnt and lacking adequate hydration. But mostly the Romans. We went first of all to the Coliseum, walking there from the hostel through a park past the site of Nero's spectacularly opulent Domus Aurea, built over within twenty years by the Baths of Trajan, the ruins of which still stand on top of it. Anyway, we didn't have time for all that - we wanted to get to the Coliseum (sorry, Flavian Amphitheatre) before the queues got too long. We were mostly successful, probably queuing for only about 20 minutes. We hired an audioguide, noting as we did that it said you were only allowed to keep it for 2 hours, after which they started charging you something a little extortionate like €4 per minute. We scoffed at that but also felt safe because there was no way it would take us 2 hours to go round a single building, right?

We were within about 5 minutes of incurring that extra charge. Oops. It wasn't exactly that there was so much to see, or even that the audioguide had hours of information to impart, but we just spent much time staring at areas and imagining how they would have been - picturing the wild animals caged underneath, imagining how it was possible to have a single reserved seat for everybody, imagining the walkways full of togas and the arena full of ships for the day. Also it was very pleasantly sunny and warm, the views towards the forum were good, we kept getting asked to take other people's photos, and there were frequent breaks to reapply suncream as it was sweated off. (I missed a lovely triangle in the middle of my back which was extremely painful for weeks to come...)

After we found our way out of the Coliseum (more difficult than you'd think), the day was almost unbearably hot. We wandered the streets in search of a restaurant and eventually found a not-very-good one where we were almost the only customers and the waiters had a habit of stroking your arm. Hmm. Oh well, it had a ceiling fan. Grabbing some much-needed gelato afterwards, we headed towards the forum. Which we knew nothing about other than that our guide book said we Had To See it, and it hd been included in our admission price for the Coliseum. We rather unfortunately assumed that, as it stretches over a huge area, there must be places inside which would give us information, a map or some bottled water. We were wrong. Therefore, although we thoroughly enjoyed wandering around its many and varied ruins and indeed spent the whole afternoon there, we were restricted for information to what my very limited Latin could decipher from age-eroded inscriptions and we had to rely on the (thankfully ubiquitous) drinking fountains for cool water to quench our thirst and occasionally quench our sunburn and hot heads too (you would easily dry within 10 minutes). We also managed to entirely miss the palace of Tiberius and Caligula - oops. But on the plus side we saw lots and lots of other things, so much so that all these millennia-old ruins started looking remarkably alike and we got blase enough about them to just walk on them, sit on them, lie around in the sunshine between them, without even really paying attention any more.

As the sun fell down the sky, we stopped depetalling daisies on a comfy bit of grass and went back out into the city. We walked to the Tiber, crossed it and then crossed back on the next bridge down... and then went wrong. For this I have only myself to blame, as I didn't pay sufficient attention to the map, but it meant we ended up walking for about 2 hours - and only half of that was with nice scenery. Never mind - despite falling off the edge of the map at one point we made out way safely back to the hostel area, and some food which was a) not as good as the previous day's and b) more expensive. Boo. On the other hand, we had our second gelati of the day before retiring to bed. I picked up another three insect bites, and was unchuffed.

Tuesday. Egads. Not our best day, really - Rome just sort of got to us, being large and impersonal and so full of famous things that you couldn't appreciate any of them individually. However, we went to the Vatican and sort of enjoyed it until we'd been walking through it for two hours and it all looked the same. There is only so much gilding that should be allowed in one place, even if it has all been put there in degrees down the centuries. But seeing real friezes by Raphael and Michelangelo was sort of cool, I guess. It was just too big and too busy, though. St Paul's was slightly better although still overly grand for my tastes. We should have thought to go up the dome, but we didn't - instead we had our attention distracted by some Michelangelo statue called the Pieta. Hmm yes. Then my credit card stopped working, so we annoyingly had to go back to the hostel so I could retrieve my other cash card (and charge my camera for 5 minutes as it had died). Thankfully, after that the day perked up a bit - we were back to wandering through the city, and the free or cheap sights seemed to be much better, overall. The Pantheon was pretty cool, we loved the cat sanctuary set up within the ruins of some more Roman temples, Trajan's column is mighty and interesting, and we found more bits of forum across the road. Then we saw the Trevi fountain by streetlights and eventually made it back to the hostel, content that we had crammed as much into our time as we could possibly have hoped for.

The next morning had nothing in except travelling home - and we very nearly managed to mess that up. Thanks to a complete brain fart on my part, the alarm did not go off at the right time and we therefore left later than planned. The connection from metro to bus fell apart entirely as it turned out the buses were not at all regular, and then we might still have been fine except that the bus took the most ridiculous route imaginable, through every suburb such that we could see the airport for half an hour before we reached it. I was so nervous and despairing at this point - in the end, we reached the airport after check-in ought to have closed. We ran for the departures area, only to find - in ten minutes or so of thorough confusion - that not only had the check-in desks only just opened, thanks to Ryanair's wonderful organisation - but that there were many other people also just arriving having had difficulties with their own forms of transport (direct buses and even a taxi all apparently stuck in a bad rush hour). So, in the end, we made the flight fine, but I don't think my life expectancy has been helped by the experience.

On the flight home, we listened to ipod and mp3 player, which had had remarkably little to do previously (although cheeky went to sleep listening to hers each night). I remember miming along to various OMWF songs and giggling ourselves silly. Ah, fun. Then back to East Midlands, my car and my house. Oh hello, camera, I missed you...

I will not bother with another entry for the remaining 3 days that cheeky stayed - suffice to say there was a nice trip to London to say hi and bye to biped, a panic when cheeky thought she'd remembered her flight times wrong, a joint watching of the BSG episode that was out that week (President and Commander! Wah!) and eventually a fun drive to Heathrow with much singing along to tv songs (I giggle too easily when driving. Especially when, say, Right Here Right Now inspires my passenger to burst out with "I love Mercer!") Then an un-British farewell hug and off cheeky went to have lots of fun and sunshine at camp, while I went back to my British 'summer' and work. Darn her.