The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Amanda Palmer is backing off on her controversial idea: she will pay her musicians after all!
She has been the center of blog conversations since the add posted on her website to hire musicians to play with her each night of her tour, and to offer them just hugs and beers in return.
‘We're looking for professional-ish horns and strings for EVERY CITY to hop up on stage with us for a couple of tunes. We need a COUPLE of horns (trumpet! bari! sax! trombone! all need apply!!!) to join in the blasting with Ronald Reagan, our sax duo who'll be joining the Grand Theft Orchestra every night. We will feed you beer, hug/high-five you up and down (pick your poison), give you merch, and thank you mightily for adding to the big noise we are planning to make,’ she wrote not so long ago.
She got a lot of positive responses, as there are always enthusiastic people willing to volunteer in any situation, but she was also harshly criticized for doing such a thing, knowing she had just raised more than $1 million on Kickstarter to fund her new album and tour! I did criticize her too, especially after knowing that it would have cost her only $35,000 and that she wasn’t expected all that money from the fundraising campaign.
Even producer Steve Albini gave his opinion about all this, calling her an ‘idiot’ (the fool later apologized), but Amanda called him a ‘grumpy fuck’.
Palmer also published a long letter to try to justify herself, and it seems there was a lot of brouhaha for nothing, as Amanda changed her mind:
‘A few of them (the cowards, the trolls) threw some pretty nasty stones. but most of you brought well-articulated views, along with your personal stories and experiences. steve albini called me an idiot, then apologized for calling me an idiot, then called me an idiot anyway. For better or for worse, this whole kerfuffle has meant i’ve spent the past week thinking hard about this, listening to what everyone was saying and discussing. i hear you. i see your points. me and my band have discussed it at length. and we have decided we should pay all of our guest musicians. we have the power to do it, and we’re going to do it. (in fact, we started doing it three shows ago.)’
What does she mean exactly when she says she had the power to do it? The power or the money? I always salute people who change their mind when they recognize they were wrong, but in her case, she rather looks like a person caught doing something unethical.