Palmer Goes Pops, Lockhart Goes Punk!

by Bryce Lambert on January 2, 2010

The made for probably the best New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had. Her set, including such popular selections from her Dresden Dolls and solo material as Missed Me, Runs in the Family, Coin-Operated Boy, and Leeds United, though short, was utterly spectacular. Palmer’s music has a unique quality of retaining a vintageness, while still sounding fresh, original, and daring. Her cabaret-informed songs, costumes, and performance figure perfectly into our Jazz Age sense of what New Year’s eve should be and I don’t think the Pops could have chosen a better guest-star to bring in; they kept it local and true to character of the evening. I only wish her set had been longer and who knows why it wasn’t–union rules, the need to include some more traditional Pops selections?

The concert began with a brief all-Pops program chosen by Palmer and her fans via the Palmer fan forum , including a well-navigated rendition Mack the Knife, at the beginning of which Lockhart turned to the audience and struck a cocked pose, shooting us all one of his boyish smiles. The strengths of the Pops as a jazz orchestra was further showcased with All That Jazz and Mack the Knife. A spinning green Milky Way was projected across the organ for the Star Wars Imperial March. Lockhart surprised us with an arrangement of ‘s A Fifth of Beethoven from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The organ was turned into the dance floor of 2001 Odyssey with flashing squares of colored light. The Pops also performed an eloquent rendition of Björk’s Overture from Dancer in the Dark (2000), below,synced up with a movie by Michael Pope, shot in Symphony Hall and commissioned by the orchestra for the evening. I had a little difficulty following the film, but it seemed to me like a version of (1985) that takes place at Symphony rather than that swimming pool.

Björk’s Overture. I wish the Pops would release their recording.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version . You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Photo by Lauren Goldberg (Fairytalevegas.com)

Although Lockhart participated in a few staged gags with Palmer, he seemed more at home during his opening act and actually had more to say about Bizet (prior to the performance of selections from Carmen), than he did about Palmer. She, on the other hand, made an admirable effort at Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, paying, it seemed, homage to classical music. She hired a piano teacher and practiced and practiced, even expressing some angst about the endeavour on her . In the end, she couldn’t get it, so she planned a little ruse where a cellphone went off in the audience, the perpetrator was hauled up on stage and sat down in front of the piano as Palmer said “this is really hard and your phone is really annoying.” The offender turned out to be no less than pro-pianist Lance Horne, who finished off the movement as Palmer twirled around the stage with a glass of champagne.

Photo by Lauren Goldberg (Fairytalevegas.com)

Horn wasn’t the only Palmer accomplice in the audience. At times the whole audience seemed to be full of her friends, or at least fawning fans. Walking around Symphony before the concert, taking in all the pre-concert entertainment, I found it hard to tell who was part of the show and who was just dressed up for it. It could have been coed Amanda Palmer look-alike contest and it was clear that the Palmer fans outnumbered the Pops fans. The Pops must have succeeded in whatever intentions they had of reaching a new audience.

Some might disagree, but I felt that the arrangements were plainer than they could have been and that the Pops were too often playing background for Palmer. Although, as far as that goes, it was spectacular backup. I would have liked to have seen a little more collaboration, rather than a Pops set, then a Palmer set. Say, an instrumental version of a Palmer track or instrumental interludes or passages of those songs that Palmer sang. More along the lines of one of the concert’s better moments, where the Pops started off the Dresden Dolls single Coin-Operated Boy with the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth.

These folks were set up in Cabot-Cahners Room, seated at a table litered with, amongst other things, a stereopticon and a few daguerreotypes.

Palmer performed a selection of covers including We Are the Champions, Mein Herr from Cabaret (1972), Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt, and Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. About a dozen dancers (male and female), I think, from The Slutcracker, dolled up as Lady Gagas, joined her on-stage for Poker Face, below. The cover included a sarcastic reading of an academic essay discussing whether or not Gaga’s “illusory poker face has indeed freed her from the conception of femininity” and her “post-structuralist prison of ego and artlessness.”

The evening featured a screening of Statuesque, a cute short silent film by Palmer’s beau Neil Gaiman, the muti-disciplinary artist whom Palmer gave the stage over to so that he could read us a few motivational words for the new year. He also got to make out with Palmer at the completion of the Pops’ countdown, just shy of midnight. It’s probably not kosher, but I thought I’d post the whole film here, for anyone who missed it or would like to see it again. It’s a sweet throwback to Palmer’s former days spent doing the living statue thing in Harvard Square, an experience that no doubt helped to mold her into the consummate performer and entertainer she is today and was this past New Year’s Eve. The screening would have benefited from even a simple live scoring by the orchestra, but nonetheless fit well into the evening of quality performance, that rocked-out Symphony Hall with some unlikely characters, mediocre boxed dinners, solid pre-show acts, and a reminder to us all how cool an unamplified (aside from the vocals) rock concert can be.

to see this content.

Previous post:

Next post: