on Amanda Palmer, volunteer musicans, and free labor
A few weeks ago, before I saw Amanda Palmer in concert at the Fonda Theatre/MusicBox, Amanda was chastised all over the internet and media for asking for musicians to volunteer to pay backup at her shows. The dust has pretty much settled, even though the New York ran a strange article last week saying Amanda was the internet's villain of the month. :/ Amanda and her team have decided to pay the musicians that came from the crowd sourcing.
Over on the AFP LA house party facebook group, some neat discussion was happening about it all. This is a little rambly, since it's part of what I said on Facebook. I tried to piece it together and add things so it makes more sense. :)
[to clarify: I am a kickstarter backer for Amanda's Theatre in Evil record. I bought the package that gave you the art book. It's nice. I also contributed to a house party that'll happen sometime next year in LA]
While I think it's important for artists to be compensated for their work, if you as an artist are okay with coming to perform for free, then that's your business decision. I would love it if artists became more proactive about destroying the starving artist myth. That stereotype is (in my opinion) what makes actions like Palmer's more common. Let's become thriving artists and treat ourselves like we should be paid!
Also, I think what Palmer is doing is on such a small scale compared to how musicians get taken advantage of with larger groups. I missed the opening of the NYC show (yea webcasts!). From what I saw, the horn musicians were just in a few numbers. They weren't in costume. They had sheet music and music stands. The musicians at the LA show were a mix of those in the supporting acts and local people.
If I still had my trombone with me, I would have signed up in a heartbeat. But I'm not a professional. I'm an amateur who enjoys hearing Palmer's music with full brass backup.
One of the woman in the LA group, Laura, made a great point about the actors union. I have many actor friends who aren't union. It's rare that they receive compensation for their work. If they do, it's usually only enough to cover gas. I used to work for a theatre company in LA that had a few union contracts available per production. Equity pressed them about once a year to "upgrade" to the next contract level above them. They couldn't afford the increase in compensation.
It was initially strange to see the musician's union get involved in this, at least to me. My own middle school band teacher even made FB posts about it! It never occurred to me that those volunteering would be union members. Course, when you ask for professional-ish people, I suppose that's part of who you will get. It is the union's job to advocate for more union opportunities.
Given how connected Amanda is to her fans, I think it's okay to ask for certain level of volunteer musician. Let's say I needed a stand-in light board operator for a play. One night only. I need someone I can trust. If they know a light board, even better! So, I'd probably put out a call saying "Hey I need a light board operator for next Thursday's performance of All My Sons! I know some of you have light board experience... message me if you can help out!" Amanda probably went a bit too far with it.
Course! If you want to know more about all the details of this, I recommend reading Jherk Bischoff's blog post about how he was organizing musicians. Jherk is the bassist in the Grand Theft Orchestra, Amanda's band. He did all the string arrangements for the record. Jherk explains that there was some budget for paid musicians, and not all cities were using crowd sourced volunteers.
New LA group friend Issac pointed out that Amanda falls between someone you want to donate your time to and someone who should pay you but isn't paying you what you're worth. I don't know if it's fair to say she has the means now to pay for brass (and maybe string) union musicians to come on tour for however long she and the GTO will be on the roard. She presented a super detailed breakdown of where the Kickstarter money went to. I don't remember seeing a line item for musicians. Also, I dunno her full tour budget.
I think Amanda is listening respectfully to the other side of the issue. At ladyofthelog's amazing dinner party a couple weeks ago, we all talked about how Amanda handled this in comparison to the Evelyn/Evelyn uproar. In my opinion, her attitude towards the latter was dismissive. I'm sure it helps with the musicians issue that she has more people directly involved with the project, more people offering advice who actually have a stake in what she is doing.
Issac also brought up the clash between classical musicians and pop musicians.
I also think there's a culture clash here between classical musicians, who work and train incredibly hard and see themselves as professionals looking for steady work, and pop musicians, many of whom have day jobs and see themselves more as hobbyists looking for their "big break."
I think it goes deeper: between those who play instruments and join the Union and those who play instruments but do so recreationally in situations where the union isn't involved, like playing in the pit orchestra for a local production of Cabaret (like I did over the summer).
On a broader point, I think the more important discussion to be having is one about free fan labor. The New Yorker article, while being really weird at times, did a good job touching on this.
Over on the AFP LA house party facebook group, some neat discussion was happening about it all. This is a little rambly, since it's part of what I said on Facebook. I tried to piece it together and add things so it makes more sense. :)
[to clarify: I am a kickstarter backer for Amanda's Theatre in Evil record. I bought the package that gave you the art book. It's nice. I also contributed to a house party that'll happen sometime next year in LA]
While I think it's important for artists to be compensated for their work, if you as an artist are okay with coming to perform for free, then that's your business decision. I would love it if artists became more proactive about destroying the starving artist myth. That stereotype is (in my opinion) what makes actions like Palmer's more common. Let's become thriving artists and treat ourselves like we should be paid!
Also, I think what Palmer is doing is on such a small scale compared to how musicians get taken advantage of with larger groups. I missed the opening of the NYC show (yea webcasts!). From what I saw, the horn musicians were just in a few numbers. They weren't in costume. They had sheet music and music stands. The musicians at the LA show were a mix of those in the supporting acts and local people.
If I still had my trombone with me, I would have signed up in a heartbeat. But I'm not a professional. I'm an amateur who enjoys hearing Palmer's music with full brass backup.
One of the woman in the LA group, Laura, made a great point about the actors union. I have many actor friends who aren't union. It's rare that they receive compensation for their work. If they do, it's usually only enough to cover gas. I used to work for a theatre company in LA that had a few union contracts available per production. Equity pressed them about once a year to "upgrade" to the next contract level above them. They couldn't afford the increase in compensation.
It was initially strange to see the musician's union get involved in this, at least to me. My own middle school band teacher even made FB posts about it! It never occurred to me that those volunteering would be union members. Course, when you ask for professional-ish people, I suppose that's part of who you will get. It is the union's job to advocate for more union opportunities.
Given how connected Amanda is to her fans, I think it's okay to ask for certain level of volunteer musician. Let's say I needed a stand-in light board operator for a play. One night only. I need someone I can trust. If they know a light board, even better! So, I'd probably put out a call saying "Hey I need a light board operator for next Thursday's performance of All My Sons! I know some of you have light board experience... message me if you can help out!" Amanda probably went a bit too far with it.
Course! If you want to know more about all the details of this, I recommend reading Jherk Bischoff's blog post about how he was organizing musicians. Jherk is the bassist in the Grand Theft Orchestra, Amanda's band. He did all the string arrangements for the record. Jherk explains that there was some budget for paid musicians, and not all cities were using crowd sourced volunteers.
New LA group friend Issac pointed out that Amanda falls between someone you want to donate your time to and someone who should pay you but isn't paying you what you're worth. I don't know if it's fair to say she has the means now to pay for brass (and maybe string) union musicians to come on tour for however long she and the GTO will be on the roard. She presented a super detailed breakdown of where the Kickstarter money went to. I don't remember seeing a line item for musicians. Also, I dunno her full tour budget.
I think Amanda is listening respectfully to the other side of the issue. At ladyofthelog's amazing dinner party a couple weeks ago, we all talked about how Amanda handled this in comparison to the Evelyn/Evelyn uproar. In my opinion, her attitude towards the latter was dismissive. I'm sure it helps with the musicians issue that she has more people directly involved with the project, more people offering advice who actually have a stake in what she is doing.
Issac also brought up the clash between classical musicians and pop musicians.
I also think there's a culture clash here between classical musicians, who work and train incredibly hard and see themselves as professionals looking for steady work, and pop musicians, many of whom have day jobs and see themselves more as hobbyists looking for their "big break."
I think it goes deeper: between those who play instruments and join the Union and those who play instruments but do so recreationally in situations where the union isn't involved, like playing in the pit orchestra for a local production of Cabaret (like I did over the summer).
On a broader point, I think the more important discussion to be having is one about free fan labor. The New Yorker article, while being really weird at times, did a good job touching on this.