EXIT POLL: AMANDA PALMER

The Boston-area icon has some advice for anyone who wants to come down and play #OccupyBoston.

AMANDA
AFTER NOAM CHOMSKY’S SPEECH AT OCCUPY BOSTON, SATURDAY 10.22.11.

How are you?
I sometimes answer that question honestly, but it never goes well.

So, how are you?
Actually today I am genuinely, honestly, one-hundred percent really really great.

Noam brought you down here?
Noam did bring me down here but I was here about a week ago to play and I’ve been continually following everything on Twitter and staying in touch.

It’s awesome. It’s totally awesome.

And there’s been more music down here too.
I saw that Garvy J opened up tonight. At the very beginning, I was dumbfounded that there weren’t more musicians hopping on board. Even mercenary musicians, because what is a fucking protest without music? Seriously.

It’s a drum circle!
Yes but one can only handle so much drum circle.

Haha, yeah.
It’s good to see so many musicians down here though, seriously.

Do you have any advice for musicians who are coming down here to play? Learn a Billy Bragg song? … What Billy Bragg song did you do?
“The World Turned Upside Down”

I’ve been singing Billy Bragg in my head for months.
The advice I would give to musicians is that you can’t wait to be invited. You have to think up the idea, get yourself over, find someone to talk to or email, if the occupy is organized enough, tweet them and volunteer to bring your own organized self down. You can’t have any needs.

You just need to come play.

And bring your shit.
And bring your shit. … I think the thing that was confusing to people in the first few weeks of the occupy was that people were like: “What do I do?” “How do I do it?” “I don’t really get it.” And since there wasn’t one centralized organizer you couldn’t call them up and say: “My band is ready to come down there and play.”

And cover a song! Cover a Dylan song …
You don’t have to be playing your own music.

Michelle Shocked!
The folk songs of the ‘60s and ‘70s were great songs because they were generalized and they still work right now. And there were great folks songs from the ‘90s, like Billy Bragg and Radiohead and others that are just as viable to cover. So if you’re in a metal band and play guitar you can come down, pick up a guitar, play some chords and ask people to sing.

Yeah.

You know, fucking swallow your pride and come be a hippie for a couple of hours.

BACK to all of the Dig’s #occupyboston coverage.