This post is a bit of a combo as I realised I hadn't done my normal blog of Hottest 100 votes and I felt that they worked well in combination with talking about Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking, mainly because Palmer is an amazing musician and also because as always my "dear Hottest 100, where are the ladies" rant is coming.
OK so to start my thoughts on Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking or to give it, its full title, The Art of Asking: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help...
Amanda Palmer to me has always been someone whose music I should have appreciated but that I missed connecting with as she initially sidestepped me. Her band, The Dresden Dolls, first got airplay when I was at uni and was in the midst of what I think of as my catch up phase. Having been raised in a household where the music of choice was either jazz or classical (not that there is anything wrong with that and in my adult years I came to be thankful for that additional musical knowledge), my first response as a teenager was to flee these genres and to listen exclusively to alt rock and alt pop and other musical genres with the word "alt" in the mix, but then in the middle of my uni years, triple j was going through a big skip hop phase so I listened to it less and there was no other alternative station in Wollongong so instead of listening to more and more new alt music, I discovered those rock and pop artists of the 1960s onwards who I'd missed as a child- listening to lots of Beatles, Bowie, Queen, Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd in particular. Dresden Dolls with their punk cabaret sound were exactly in my wheelhouse music wise but at exactly the wrong time...I was also a little weirded out by the fact that one of my close friends in high school was called Amanda Palmer (no, she didn't leave Wollongong for Boston and form The Dresden Dolls...it is just a very common name...there also is or maybe was a reporter for Channel 7 news in Australia with the same name in the late 90s early 2000s). What I heard of Dresden Dolls I liked but I didn't hear enough to invest to heavily. Then a few years later, Amanda Palmer started appearing on Spicks and Specks occasionally and again I thought I should really look into her music more...but that was in the midst/immediately after of her break up with her label so I didn't want to buy a Dresden Dolls album if she wasn't getting cash for it. My desire to look into her music was further compounded when she started dating and then subsequently married the man who (if I were a writer and I had them) would be my literary hero/hallmark/words to that effect, Neil Gaiman. I repeatedly made a mental note to buy an album in the future when I knew she would get the money but never delivered on that. I made notes to go to her concerts and never did. When I blogged a while ago about the Hottest 100 of the last 20 years and the lack of women and posted 20 songs by women that should have made it in, someone I know pointed out I forgot to include any Palmer/The Dresden Dolls, and that made me want to go and add "Coin Operated Boy" (my favourite Dresden Dolls song) in place of one of the songs I had included...but I didn't. I was the worst fan possible...maybe because I wasn't a real fan...except of her twitter feed which I read regularly and her blog which I read on occasion but that seems wrong when you are talking about a musician.
Anyhow getting to the point and apologies to Ms Palmer for the lack of cash in your direction in the past. A few weeks ago, I went to see Amanda Palmer at an event organised by the Sydney's Writers Festival and I picked up her book, The Art of Asking, which is based on her highly viewed TED talk. It was an amazing night as Palmer sang a few tunes, read some excerpts, others read excerpts, others sang some tunes, Palmer talked about her book with Tara Moss, and then Neil Gaiman appeared and read excerpts of both The Art of Asking and his new book Trigger Warning (which is the next book I plan to buy but haven't got around to getting just yet).
The next day I started the book and the main thing I can say is, taking aside Palmer's personal story, I wish it was something that had been written ages ago...then again maybe it is just Palmer's experiences that make her the perfect person to say it. As a rough split in the book, it covers Palmer's career from street performance artist (a massively tall bride statue offering flowers to passers by) to Dresden Dolls to label quitting to kickstarter to the present day and all the controversies she encountered in-between, paralleling this story in many ways with her memories of meeting and falling for and marrying Neil Gaiman. It parallels the professional and personal and the intersections between these..and the ways that we can function one way in one sphere of life and another in another. Palmer as a performer is willing to accept the help of others without reservation and to trust her fans unreservedly (what else can you expect from someone who was a street artist?) but Palmer in her relationship with Gaiman spent a significant amount of time grappling with accepting the help/financial support of her husband, let alone the difficulty for her of grappling with what it meant for her to have a husband in the first place. The book is unflinchingly honest and heart felt and on a couple of occasions I found myself crying (when she writes about the abortion she had just weeks after her marriage and the resulting weeks of weakness/illness and when she writes about her best friend's battle with cancer) and at others I found myself quite angry at the world (Palmer has repeatedly attracted controversy as a performer and a person, and there have been several "scandals" about the way she has done things...all of these ill founded in my opinion...and the vitriol she was faced with on each occasion just filled me with rage as I read about them, even though Palmer displays such forgiveness and very little bitterness in these sections). The book also asks much bigger questions about the value we place on art and why we do art in the first place and what our attitudes to generosity and honesty are and how we as humanity generally value (or not) ourselves as adult human beings. I would say it is a must read for anyone who raises money to live by crowd funding or similar, especially artists, and that it generally has a lot to offer for all of us as we seek to find a comfortable place in this world where we can be seen for who we really are. It asks people to be honest, to be comfortable with asking for help when it is needed, to be trusting, to be generous, to accept offered help, to get behind the art/artists we love, to realise that it is OK to sometimes feel that you have no clue what you are doing, and to take the offered flower/doughnut when we are faced with it.
It is a beautiful book and you can buy it most anywhere that sells books...if your main stream book stores let you down, head to the more "alternative"/"indie" bookstore in your area and you are sure to find it. And to answer to looming question about me actually buying some of Palmer's music...I finally did so I can slightly stop feeling guilty now. And also for the rest of you to enjoy, "Coin Operated Boy" the song I forgot to share in the past.
So, moving on from a book by a musician to some more music...
Normally I blog my votes for the Hottest 100 sometime just after I've cast them, but this year I didn't. I waited and I listened to the countdown and I will blog now instead. I had no reason for waiting, I just didn't have the time, and then after the countdown happened I realised that I wanted to share my votes with you because my votes were 7 female artists/bands with women on lead vocals to 3 male artists/bands with men on lead vocals, and once again the Hottest 100 was dominated by male artists- seriously Taylor Swift at 12 would have been an improvement as it would have upped the female artist count if nothing else (I understand the grounds on which triple j excluded it and they have the right to...but the controversy was a joke especially when it meant that the lack of limelight on female artists was so completely overshadowed (well not completely as The Sydney Morning Herald published their yearly rant on it...thanks SMH for continually being the voice of reason on this front)). My vote count on getting in was 3 (at numbers 61, 26 and 18...if my memory serves), even when you take it up to the 200 which was published today, and 2 of the 3 that got in where male acts I voted for!
So my votes, ladies first...
"Yellow Flicker Beat" by Lorde (the one female fronted vote that got in!)
"Goddess" by Banks
"I might survive" by Architecture in Helsinki (oddly absent...songs with the male singer taking lead vocals have frequently made the countdown in the past)
"Water Fountain"by tUnE-yArDs
"Stay Gold" by First Aid Kit
"90s Music" by Kimbra (SHOCKING absence!)
"Strong Hand" by Chvrches
And now to the guys...
"Hunger of the Pine" by alt-j feat. Miley Cyrus
"Talk Too Much" by Andy Bull
"Real" by Years & Years (the track by a male band that I voted for that didn't get in...I didn't expect it to, it has not got as much airplay as it should)
Enjoy these tunes as many of them didn't get the Hottest 100 outing they deserved, and if you, like me, would like to express your annoyance at the lack of women in the Hottest 100 EVERY YEAR, there is a change.org petition asking triple j to be more active in investing in female artists that you should sign, just click here to do that. If you wish to point out to me that the voting is fairly evenly split on gender lines or that it is democratic, firstly someone already has and I've already reached an agree to disagree decision in my mind on that, secondly gender of voters is irrelevant when talking gender of artist and even bringing it up indicates you think only women listen to music by women which is rubbish, and thirdly just because something is "democratic" (if it truly was, we would have heard Taylor Swift) doesn't mean it is right or that people don't have a right to disagree with it (or else I would have to keep quiet on my myriad disagreements with the Abbott government and sorry my right wing voting friends, that ain't going to happen).
Finally since I talked music and Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking is partly about crowd funding, I give you a song that I might have voted for in the Hottest 100 except that it would have involved typing in my vote and unless you are Taylor Swift that doesn't bode well for getting in. It is my friend's crowdfunded 2014 single which was (biases aside) one of my favourite tracks of 2014...so I leave you for this post with "Walls" by arbori... it may not be by a woman but it features one and it also is right by the alley of supporting music that people are offering out there in the world (I got a dinner out of crowdfunding it).
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