NEWS ROUNDUP: Rock Hall’s Newest Inductees, New Music from Amanda Palmer + MORE

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019 Inductees Announced

The inductees to 2019’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced this week and include Stevie Nicks, The Zombies, Radiohead, Def Leppard, Janet Jackson, The Cure, and Roxy Music (with Brian Eno). Stevie Nicks is the first woman to be inducted twice – first with Fleetwood Mac in 1998, and now in 2019 for her career as a solo artist. She tweeted “I have been in a band since 1968. To be recognized for my solo work makes me take a deep breath and smile. It’s a glorious feeling.”

Radiohead acknowledged their invitation in a more positive regard after last year’s dismissive comments from guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien. For bands like The Zombies, whose career bloomed later than most 1960s British Invasion bands, this is a “life-defining moment.” The 34th annual Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on March 29th 2019.

The New New

Amanda Palmer released “Drowning in The Sound,” the first single from her solo album There Will Be No Intermission. It comes out on March 8, 2019, which is also International Woman’s Day. Avril Lavigne released “Tell Me It’s Over” and announced her upcoming record Head Above Water. You Me At Six released a Rick & Morty inspired lyric video for “Straight to My Head.”

End Notes

  • New Jersey Radio Station WFMU’s Free Music Archive will not be removed after being acquired by KitSplit. WFMU Director Cheyanne Hoffman stated that they “will reopen artist/curator uploads and our Music Submission form and resume our scheduled audio weirdness, curated playlist posts, and new releases here on our blog.”

INTERVIEW: Amanda Palmer on Making Art in the Era of #MeToo

On the set of “Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now.” Photo by Hayley Rosenblum.

Exactly one year to the day of the New York Times article that exposed Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual predator, Amanda Palmer and Jasmine Power released a video that cements the importance of the #MeToo movement. Though its lyrics make no specific reference to the disgraced Hollywood mogul, the song is called “Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now” and was written shortly after the news of Weinstein’s transgressions became a media frenzy.

In a blog post, Palmer details the making of the video, the significance of choreographer Noémie Lafrance’s vivid work, and the genesis of the entire project, which was crowd-funded via Patreon. But in a separate interview with AudioFemme, she illuminates these ideas further. “We all know the basics: rape is bad, sexual assault is bad. But there is such a broad spectrum of power play within these private arenas,” she explains. The #MeToo movement has shown that sexual assault and harassment is an all too universal experience for many women, and the day Power and Palmer were set to enter the studio together, Palmer says her mind was caught on the idea that so many of these incidents had happened in hotel rooms. “I met Jasmine only a few days before we went to the studio, and I had been reading the news that morning, not about Harvey Weinstein, but about Stormy Daniels,” she remembers. “That made me think not just about the hotel rooms as this strange infinite karmic space, but the fact that these moments always happen behind closed doors in these cellular private spaces where women and men are alone.”

That made the setting for the video an obvious choice. But Palmer didn’t want the short film to focus on her – instead, she wanted to make it about women globally and the internal dialogue we may all be simultaneously working through. She says she wanted to capture “how frustrating it is to be that woman, stuck in that room with a man who wields all the power, and this psychic battle that you have to do in your own head, and the exhaustion of having to negotiate [with] an insistent, annoying man… weighing your options, looking for the escape, wondering what the path of least resistance is, wondering if the path of least resistance really is your best option, questioning your own motivation, questioning how you will be perceived. Not being able to actually find your inner voice, because the voices outside of you are screaming at you so loudly.” To that end, Palmer and Power take a more supportive role in the video itself, standing among a throng of women solemnly repeating the song’s lyrics.

Palmer tells AudioFemme this was a very deliberate decision. “When I thought about what the video needed to be I had a short list of things, which is that it couldn’t be centered around me and it needed to include a ton of women, of different ages, shapes, sizes and colors to reflect the fact that this is a totally universal global experience,” explains Palmer. “And choreography felt correct because of the viscerally painful nature of the subject.” In choosing to bring to the story to life with a chorus of women, Palmer shows the magnitude of the issues they were seeking to address, while each woman’s nuanced movements and expressions reveal that no one experience encompasses the reality of sexual assault – each woman is involved in her own internal battle. Part of what makes “Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now” so powerful is that Palmer doesn’t dive into her anger towards men like Weinstein, Cosby, Kavanaugh and Trump, but instead investigates her own curiosity of the female psyche.

“That is one of the things I hope the song gets at, because it’s a lot easier to write a song about what is black and white, and what is bad,” Palmer says. “It’s a lot harder to write a song, and make a video for that matter, about the internal tumult that women have to face in so many interactions.” As songwriters, Power and Palmer know that making art about weighty subjects is often the best way to process them, show solidarity, and offer a visceral, but not exploitative, experience to those who have attempted to remain willfully ignorant about these issues. “I think we just have to rip out the pages and write an entirely new book about empowerment,” Palmer says.

While the media has relied on the black and white experience of assault and rape, artists like Palmer and Powers are opening up to a wider conversation of grey nuances. “Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now” opens a dialogue where these nuances to come to life, and ends on an empowering note; the chorus of women stand shoulder-to-shoulder, repeating the words “You forget that I’m the one writing this.” This powerful scene re-imagines the common media narrative that paints survivors as voiceless victims, giving them the potential to re-write their own stories. This, Palmer says, is the whole point. “Art has opened incredibly important doors that have lead to progress,” she says. “I think this is the time for artists of all genders to stand up and start addressing more of this stuff. Art making and storytelling right now is so critical because everything else is so fucking confusing.”

TRACK PREMIERE: Led to Sea “Breathe Some”

Alex Guy

Elevate your Friday with the premiere of Led to Sea’s new track “Breathe Some.” It’s the first song from the upcoming album, The Beautiful Humming of Ms. Fortune, set to drop May 5. Led to Sea is the solo project from the Seattle-based violinist, violist and singer Alex Guy. In a sea of recycled pop production grey seagulls, Guy soars like a dove. Her sound merges her classical sensibilities into an experimental package with a pretty pop bow. Some of that shining production quality is likely due the engineering and co-producer role of notable Jherek Bischoff (David Byrne, Amanda Palmer, etc) who Guy worked with over the past two years creating the project.

Us femmes always enjoy anything that expands our music education while pleasing the senses – and “Breathe Some” does exactly that. Cheers, Alex Guy. We must add we get a kick out of imagining how many fans will be surprised to learn you’re a classically trained woman with striking eyes, rather than another bloke, with a name like Alex Guy.

Listen to “Breathe Some” below:

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