So I'm back. Sorry I've been away for so long, but shit happens. Hope everyone had happy holiday(s)! Anyway, on to the music.
I was extremely fortunate to spend New Year's Eve with a band I've been wanting to see for a long time: The Dresden Dolls. The Dresden Dolls are a duo from Boston, MA composed of piano goddess Amanda Palmer and percussionist extraordinaire Brian Viglione. Now, if you have been reading this blog for a while, you may have caught on to my love of them already. But I'd never seen them perform and they had been doing mostly solo tours for a while, and I wanted to see them together before I saw them perform separately. Normally I spend New Year's Eve in Minnesota, but when I heard that The Dresden Dolls were playing in New York, I knew I had to go so I came back to New York three days early. That's how excited I was for this show.
The tickets were a bit on the pricey side (for me at least, with student loans to pay off and whatnot) but man were they worth every penny. The show was at The Grand Ballroom in the Manhattan Center (and grand it was... the prefect place for toasting the New Year with champagne). The Dresden Dolls crammed the night with entertainment, adding an extra band and a circus performer to their line-up, who they collected money from the audience to pay. And the concert went from a little after 8:30pm to almost 1:30am - one of the longest non-festival shows I think I've ever been to. In fact, the concert was so long and so full of entertainment that I think I'm going to have to write about it in two posts.
So, part 1:
Even waiting in line for the show was entertaining. So many audience members showed up wearing costumes and masks - not to mention the people that were working the show and wearing costumes who wandered outside a bit amongst the line. I kind of wish I had taken more pictures outside but it was very very cold and so I decided to keep my camera (and my fingers) safe and warm. I did however snap a picture of these painted hula-hoopers inside before the show (see right).
When the show started, Amanda (of The Dresden Dolls) came out all glammed up to introduce us to the master of ceremonies for the night, Sxip Shirey of The Luminscent Orchestrii. Then a band that wasn't on the playbill was announced - whose name I could not for the life of me understand no matter how many times their name was said (see left). But they were a folky band complete with a yodeler and soft shoe dancer. My favorite song of theirs was probably their cover of "Putting on the Ritz." They seemed nice and the girl was a very talented singer/yodeler (that's a rarity these days...). Apparently Amanda first saw them busking in Washington Square Park and then saw them again some time later and decided they simply had to play with them. And thus they were there on New Year's.
Next up was Meow Meow (see right). I had never heard of Meow Meow so I didn't really know what to expect, but with a name like Meow Meow I expected I wouldn't be disappointed. Her entrance was... a new one, at least in my concert-going experiences. She came in through the audience pretending to be late. Then she had audience members near the stage undress her until she was in her first costume. One audience member got called up on stage and then he brought his boyfriend up and they started making out (in between helping her undress and much witty banter). She kept telling them to just stand there with their arms around her and love her. She had really awesome sparkly red lipstick. She actually did very little singing in her whole performance - it was more a cabaret/comedy routing. She brought another audience member up on stage, and they all helped her change into her next costume (in front of the audience, whom she told to close our eyes) - a sparkly blue corsety dress. Then she called Amanda on stage to be her back-up singer and they did some rather silly singing. All in all it was lots of fun.
After Meow Meow was another performer not on the playbill - a circus performer from Montreal, whose name I also didn't catch unfortunately. He came on for a bit and defied gravity in this giant spinning ring (see left). That was fun to watch and it was very fitting with the feel of the night. Apparently he's a good friend of The Dresden Dolls' and from the sounds of it he used to be a documentarian until he decided to go to circus school. It looked like he was having so much fun on stage that it made me want to quit film and go to circus school too (haha, not really, but you get my point.
Last up before The Dresden Dolls was The Luminescent Orchestrii. Like their myspace says, they are "gypsy tango klezmer punk" and, as they said at the show (and then demonstrated), they throw a little hip hop and other things in too. They were a lot of fun. Usually consisting of four members - violin, viola, guitar and upright bass, they also had a guest percussionist for the whole show (see right) and a guest clarinetist for a song or two. They also had a very cabaret feel - partially because of their costumes, which I don't think are entirely their custom but were for the sake of this show. They were a lot of fun and they seemed like they were having a lot of fun. Their music was mostly upbeat - they kept saying "since we're a dance band..." At one point Meow Meow and the circus performer came on and tangoed (kinda) and they had a belly dancer for one number. Brian Viglione also joined them for a number or two on the drums. I was very glad to be introduced to this lovely band.
I was extremely fortunate to spend New Year's Eve with a band I've been wanting to see for a long time: The Dresden Dolls. The Dresden Dolls are a duo from Boston, MA composed of piano goddess Amanda Palmer and percussionist extraordinaire Brian Viglione. Now, if you have been reading this blog for a while, you may have caught on to my love of them already. But I'd never seen them perform and they had been doing mostly solo tours for a while, and I wanted to see them together before I saw them perform separately. Normally I spend New Year's Eve in Minnesota, but when I heard that The Dresden Dolls were playing in New York, I knew I had to go so I came back to New York three days early. That's how excited I was for this show.
The tickets were a bit on the pricey side (for me at least, with student loans to pay off and whatnot) but man were they worth every penny. The show was at The Grand Ballroom in the Manhattan Center (and grand it was... the prefect place for toasting the New Year with champagne). The Dresden Dolls crammed the night with entertainment, adding an extra band and a circus performer to their line-up, who they collected money from the audience to pay. And the concert went from a little after 8:30pm to almost 1:30am - one of the longest non-festival shows I think I've ever been to. In fact, the concert was so long and so full of entertainment that I think I'm going to have to write about it in two posts.
So, part 1:
Even waiting in line for the show was entertaining. So many audience members showed up wearing costumes and masks - not to mention the people that were working the show and wearing costumes who wandered outside a bit amongst the line. I kind of wish I had taken more pictures outside but it was very very cold and so I decided to keep my camera (and my fingers) safe and warm. I did however snap a picture of these painted hula-hoopers inside before the show (see right).When the show started, Amanda (of The Dresden Dolls) came out all glammed up to introduce us to the master of ceremonies for the night, Sxip Shirey of The Luminscent Orchestrii. Then a band that wasn't on the playbill was announced - whose name I could not for the life of me understand no matter how many times their name was said (see left). But they were a folky band complete with a yodeler and soft shoe dancer. My favorite song of theirs was probably their cover of "Putting on the Ritz." They seemed nice and the girl was a very talented singer/yodeler (that's a rarity these days...). Apparently Amanda first saw them busking in Washington Square Park and then saw them again some time later and decided they simply had to play with them. And thus they were there on New Year's.Next up was Meow Meow (see right). I had never heard of Meow Meow so I didn't really know what to expect, but with a name like Meow Meow I expected I wouldn't be disappointed. Her entrance was... a new one, at least in my concert-going experiences. She came in through the audience pretending to be late. Then she had audience members near the stage undress her until she was in her first costume. One audience member got called up on stage and then he brought his boyfriend up and they started making out (in between helping her undress and much witty banter). She kept telling them to just stand there with their arms around her and love her. She had really awesome sparkly red lipstick. She actually did very little singing in her whole performance - it was more a cabaret/comedy routing. She brought another audience member up on stage, and they all helped her change into her next costume (in front of the audience, whom she told to close our eyes) - a sparkly blue corsety dress. Then she called Amanda on stage to be her back-up singer and they did some rather silly singing. All in all it was lots of fun.After Meow Meow was another performer not on the playbill - a circus performer from Montreal, whose name I also didn't catch unfortunately. He came on for a bit and defied gravity in this giant spinning ring (see left). That was fun to watch and it was very fitting with the feel of the night. Apparently he's a good friend of The Dresden Dolls' and from the sounds of it he used to be a documentarian until he decided to go to circus school. It looked like he was having so much fun on stage that it made me want to quit film and go to circus school too (haha, not really, but you get my point.Last up before The Dresden Dolls was The Luminescent Orchestrii. Like their myspace says, they are "gypsy tango klezmer punk" and, as they said at the show (and then demonstrated), they throw a little hip hop and other things in too. They were a lot of fun. Usually consisting of four members - violin, viola, guitar and upright bass, they also had a guest percussionist for the whole show (see right) and a guest clarinetist for a song or two. They also had a very cabaret feel - partially because of their costumes, which I don't think are entirely their custom but were for the sake of this show. They were a lot of fun and they seemed like they were having a lot of fun. Their music was mostly upbeat - they kept saying "since we're a dance band..." At one point Meow Meow and the circus performer came on and tangoed (kinda) and they had a belly dancer for one number. Brian Viglione also joined them for a number or two on the drums. I was very glad to be introduced to this lovely band.So that's part one for today. Here are some more pictures of the first half of the show:
Amanda all dressed up
The soft-shoe dancer and the first band whose name I couldn't hear
Random audience members undressing Meow Meow shortly after she arrived on stage.
The two guys who about to make out on stage, during which Meow Meow asked them if they could kiss a little to the right...
Amanda singing backup while the random audience members helped Meow Meow change her costume and then embraced her and loved her.
Meow Meow crowd surfing through the light-up hula hoops of the painted hula dancers
The guest clarinetist with The Luminescent Orchestrii, with violist Rima Fand and violinist Sarah Alden
The bass player of the Luminescent Orchestrii, Benji Fox-Rosen
Sxip Shirey and the viola player, Rima Fand
The belly dancer
Meow Meow and the circus performer tangoing to a Luminescent Orchestrii song
Brian Viglione guest drumming with the guest drummer (whose name I don't know) toward the end of the Luminescent Orchestrii set.And some mp3s to sample of The Luminescent Orchestrii:
Tarif Hijacked [mp3]
Warsaw [mp3]
Warsaw [mp3]
P.S. They do have vocals in a some of their songs. I just happened to pick two songs without.
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