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Video: Amanda Palmer Sings At New York
By
Jen Carlson
Published Dec 3, 2009
Modified Dec 3, 2009
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Dec 3, 2009
Modified Dec 3, 2009
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The lovely and talented Miss Amanda Palmer emailed us this morning with a video of her lip-dubbing (or as she calls it: a "karaoke verité" of) Tegan and Sara's song "Hell," filmed all over Union Square and parts of Brooklyn. She actually seems to have managed to frighten some tough-skinned New Yorkers! And are those gutter punks or NYU students she's with at the 2:46 mark?
Palmer tells us about the shoot and her inspiration for it:
"I'd loved the song the minute I heard it... one day while I was jogging and listening to it, it hit me that a fast, passers-by assault would be perfect. I emailed [Micheal] Pope and we shot a few days later. I simply emailed him the file and said 'Let's just shoot me singing to people on the streets of New York.' That day, we started in Park Slope and there was almost NOTHING going on and NOBODY to assault, so we headed onto the subway and went to Union Sqaure.
Some of the best parts of this experience are nowhere on the video... like the wonderful expressions and reactions on people's faces that the camera didn't catch. The guy in Union Square who bear-hugged me spontaneously was one of my favorites. Only in New York could you do something like this and be either ignored or celebrated. Anywhere else on the planet they'd be calling the men in little white coats. And the cops I followed and sang to didn't even blink an eye. What nice cops!"
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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