Matt Down Under

Staying in bed until 11am (lazy). Spending like 2 hours in the bathroom (really lazy). Looking out of the window and spontaneously deciding to cancel all plans for activities outside of my flat due to signs of rain (notoriously lazy).

What started like a usual Saturday turned out to become one of the greatest days in Hobart I had so far. After having spent most of the day working on some websites and eating microwaved leftovers, I left the house around 9pm to walk down to the Brisbane Hotel to see Amanda Palmer at her last concert while in Australia. I was really excited to see such a great act in Tasmania, my previous music experience at the Soundscape Festival in Hobart had been quite disappointing.

Around 10pm Liam Constable from Tasmania began as the first support act. Something must have been wrong with him, he seemed a little annoyed from the start. He didn’t say anything except something like ‘my name is Liam Constable, next is Enola Falls, then Amanda Palmer’. Having said that he played around ten songs in a row and didn’t say a single word between the songs, not even a ‘thank you’ when the audience applauded. After the last song he left the stage as quickly as possible, again, without saying anything.

Not sure what his problem was, maybe he was annoyed that many people didn’t really listen to his songs, many were talking, others were outside, but a lot of people were actually listening and applauding. I mean if you’re a support act for a well-known artist like Amanda Palmer you can probably assume that people mostly come to see Amanda. And if you’re playing a concert and notice that the crowd isn’t listening to you, maybe you should simply do a bit more interacting with your audience?

Liam’s music was actually pretty good. He has a great feeling for melodies, but his lyrics seemed a bit depressed - although I didn’t understand every part. I liked it. Sound was also pretty good. So everything was good, only his performance was kind of worth improving.

Next was Enola Fall, another local band. I can’t really judge their music, it was probably good, but their sound was absolutely crap. It was way too loud and a pretty bad mix. When you have three guitars and only hear one, then something is wrong. The bad sound killed the whole performance.

Around midnight Amanda Palmer began. I was surprised that she looked so well, on Saturday afternoon I followed her Twitter messages where she didn’t sound very healthy. But she actually looked even prettier than on photos.

Unfortunately she didn’t bring the Danger Ensemble to Tassie, a group of artists that accompanied her on her previous concerts. So it was a pure solo performance, Amanda and the piano. I guess the stage would have been too small anyway to do any sort of artistic dance performance while Amanda plays.

It was a great concert, people really loved her and the stage piano sounded great. She played songs from her solo album, some new ones like a song about Australia and another one that kind of was about Google… She also played a few Dresden Dolls songs.

I guess it was almost 2am when the show was over but shortly after she appeared again to sign anything people asked her to sign. I got a signature on the shirt I bought before. It was great to see how much time she dedicated to her fans.

When I walked home it was around 2.30am and I tried to hurry, not only because of the rain - my soccer club in Germany was having a match and I tried to be back home in time for the second half of the live broadcast on the Internet. It was a fantastic 3:0 victory and the perfect ending of a great day.

Amanda said she plans to be back in Tasmania around Christmas time. So all you losers unfortunates who missed her this time (despite my invitations and promotions) will get another chance soon. Lucky you.

Here are some more photos.