Amanda Palmer — who appears on the audiobook for my novel Walkaway — and Edward Ka-Spel of The Legendary Pinks Dots have just released a new, patron-funded album: "I Can Spin a Rainbow".
I just listened to the sample track and immediately bought the whole album (you can get it as a download, vinyl, CD, or double-vinyl).
Palmer writes:
it was a new process for me, to share songwriting as an act. jason webley and i co-wroite the entirety of "evelyn evelyn" (yes, the jig is up, we actually did write that record)….but that record was so silly and absurd it didn't feel difficult to sit down and bang out songs with a friend. but for "real" songs, emotional songs, i'm usually such a solitary songwriter, and i always found it really disorienting, the idea that you could do this WITH somebody. to me, songs have always been things i created alone and then presented to someone else to arrange or record (all of the dresden dolls material worked like that), and even THAT i would very difficult, because my little personal songs always feel so vulnerable. i still cringe and cower every time i play someone, even a trusted producer or engineer, a song for the first time.edward really help me grow and say "fuck it" in this department – he had no shame around mumbling words and images into existence while i noodled on the piano, he had no problem doing lyrical open-heart surgery on himself before my very eyes. WHY NOT, indeed? it was a lesson, a reminder, that we get attached to (and buried in) our own ideas of How Art Is Supposed To Be Made. art can get made any way you want, you just have to fucking Do It. and i love watching my own assumptions about process and ritual and importance get steamrolled by another artist. but then again, not any artist could do that to me. i had so much love and respect for edward that perhaps only he could pry me open like that.
I Can Spin a Rainbow [Amanda Palmer]
