Rafting!

So the next weekend (we are now on March 6th), I went white water rafting for the first time! I went with my friends Allana and Lauren, who are from Canada, and we had to meet up with the rest of the rafting club at 8 am to drive to the shed where they keep the rafts and wetsuits. We had to pick out a wetsuit for the day, which was a more daunting task than anyone would think! The wetsuits owned by the club were all in pretty bad shape; they were still damp from the last trip and a ton of them had holes in them... the first one I tried on was too small but the second one fit. I didn't realize until later that the second one had a GIANT hole in the butt. oh dear. Nobody cared though because we all looked ridiculous. :P

After loading up the vans with all the rafts and pumps and lifejackets and our backpacks we headed off! We stopped at a bakery for breakfast and then drove for another half hour or so to the Picton River. It took us a while to blow all the rafts up and get our wetsuits on and pick out lifejackets and helmets and paddles, but we were finally ready to go around 11.

Before we could get on the river we had to listen to a safety talk, given by our friends Owen and Will. I wasn't nervous before the talk, but after hearing about the many ways I could potentially die and seeing all the ways to rescue people, I was getting anxious to just get on the river so I could see how deadly the whole thing was going to be. So finally, after what felt like forever, we got the rafts on the water and got in. With white water rafts, you don't sit IN the raft. You sit on the sides of the raft, rather than the bottom, and at first it felt really unstable. We were allowed to put one knee down when we were going over rapids, so I was doing that for a while, but eventually I got used to it and it wasn't so scary. The rapids weren't that big either, which was nice. The worst part about the whole thing was that during the stretches of river where there weren't rapids, people in other rafts would sneak up on you and grab you by your lifejacket and pull you into the water! It was SO COLD. We only had one moment where we thought the raft would tip... we were going down a rapid sideways and our raft got stuck on a rock and the water pushed one side of the raft underwater! We were all kind of standing on top of the raft and our guide Will was able to somehow maneuver us out... Allana and Lauren and I called it our Titanic moment. It was pretty scary, but afterwards we just laughed about it. Even if we had tipped, we wouldn't have gotten hurt. haha.

We stopped for lunch after about two hours and sat on some rocks in the sun and it was so gorgeous. It was really cool getting to know people too, since most of them I had never met before. After lunch we had another two hours or so to go on the river and we had many splash wars and a few more rapids and towards the end of the river we got to a big calm area and Will insisted we try something called a Helicopter. He stood up on the back of the raft and held onto a rope that was attached to the front. Everyone else had to sit as far back in the raft as we could, so that the front of it was lifted out of the water. Then one side of the raft paddled forwards and the other side paddled backwards and as the raft was spinning faster and faster it lifted off the water even more and eventually tipped. It was so much fun, but by then it was starting to get late and we were all freezing so we had to keep moving.

We finally reached the end of the river and changed into our warm, dry clothes. We drove about twenty minutes to a park where we had a really amazing barbecue. There were some cool hollowed out trees that were made into playground equipment at that park, so we were all climbing up them and looking out from the top and it was really cool. It was a nice relaxed evening. After we drove back to uni we had to hose down the rafts and all the equipment and by then we were all so tired. But it was an amazing day and as soon as I heard there was a three day rafting trip the following weekend I signed up! Rafting is so much fun. :)

Amanda Palmer and the night of pure awesomeness.

This entry is so long it even beats the O Week entry! I wrote it mostly for myself because I get obsessive when I write about concerts, but anyone who wants to take on this massive amount of text is welcome. haha. :P

The doors to the show finally opened around eight and Marcus and I rushed inside and got a spot right at the front. Everyone was totally relaxed and we all just sat on the floor and talked to each other for another hour or so. Finally the lights went down and we got up and squeezed as many people up front as possible and it was time for the show. Marcus and I were SO excited.

The first artist was Kim Boekbinder, who I’ve actually seen with Amanda before in Boston, but it was still really good seeing her again. She was wearing the most sparkly dress I’ve ever seen, with this really cool gold jacket and her hair was dyed neon pink. She looked awesome. She did a sing along with us first, to her song “The Impossible Girl” (also the name of her album), which was fun. Then she played a bunch of stuff I didn’t know, mostly just playing guitar and singing, but they were all really good. Her last song was my favorite, though. She recorded herself playing the guitar, and then had a pedal by her foot that she would press and whatever she recorded would just start looping itself. She started with the guitar, did two layers of background vocals… and then the weird stuff started happening. She had a rubber alligator toy that squeaks when you squeeze it, so she did some stuff with that, and then she had a cool keyboard thing that you blew into kind of like a harmonica, and then she had a tambourine… then she sang on top of all the layers and it sounded incredible. She danced around the stage in her sparkly dress and it was a ton of fun. Kim is so great. :)

SO SPARKLY.

The next band I had never heard of before, but when they played it was one of those moments where I knew they were absolutely  brilliant from the very first song. They’re called The Jane Austen Argument, and they’re a two piece band, just a guy singing and a girl on piano. The pianist Jen is really awesome (she did some vocals as well and her voice is beautiful), but let me tell you, their singer Tom Dickens totally blew me away. Even though he came out wearing an upside-down pair of wings and had this silly messy blonde hair, he was completely mesmerizing with the way he sang and the way he moved. They had just released their first album, The Birthing Pyre, and they pretty much played the whole thing (which was only five songs haha). I was completely in love with the song “Here in Melbourne,” and their last song “The Debt Collectors” was really amazing too because they got the entire crowd to sing along. They were a fairly low-key band, but I really, really enjoyed them.

Tom is one of the best singers I've ever heard. really.

The next act was supposed to be this guy called Mikelangelo, but he came out and said something like “Oh I’m so sorry, ladies and gentlemen, we’re having some technical difficulties, please wait just a few minutes…” and a few minutes later he came back out and was like “We have a special guest! We did not know they would be playing, but this is a special occasion indeed…” and I started freaking out because I knew that Amanda’s friend Jason Webley was at the show and they had done some collaborative work recently. So Mikelangelo continues, “This is so amazing, these performers are the only known conjoined twin musicians…” and I completely lost it. I had a feeling this was going to happen, but when it did… oh man. I was exploding from excitement. Evelyn Evelyn were going to be playing! Evelyn Evelyn are conjoined twins that Amanda and Jason found on myspace, and with their help, the Evelyn sisters were able to record and release an album last year titled “Elephant Elephant.” It’s pretty much an autobiography album, telling stories of growing up as conjoined twins and eventually joining the circus. It’s a really amazing album and although I had a feeling they would be there, I was still so excited. Sadly they only played one song, “Have you seen my sister Evelyn?” but they’re really shy so it was more than I could have asked for! They both looked so lovely in their purple dress and they sang beautifully. :)

Evelyn and Evelyn looked so beautiful! (Alright, so maybe it's just Amanda and Jason in costume, but the story is too much fun to give it away that quickly.)

THEN Mikelangelo came out with his band The Tin Star and they played a few songs. Mikelangelo is… interesting. He has a Johnny Cash sort of vibe about him, definitely referencing performers from the past, and his voice is really deep and sexy. Haha.  He’s so full of himself and at first I didn’t like him, but he really grows on you. He’s a great performer and he’s incredibly funny. He also had some dancing girls come out during his set, which was quite fun. Everything was straight out of the 60s.

THEN Jason Webley came out! Gosh. So many opening artists, but Amanda always picks really interesting people so it didn’t really bother me. Jason came out in his cute little hat and played his accordion and stomped around the stage and generally just made a ton of noise. It was fun. 

After playing for a bit, he introduced Amanda and we could all hear her singing, but we had NO idea where she was… then someone started pointing and we all looked… Amanda was up on this really high balcony, well actually it wasn’t even a balcony, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to be up there. haha. but she was wayyyy up high singing this funny song called “Makin’ Whoopie.” The entire setlist of her show went like this:

Makin Whoopie

Missed Me

Astronaut

Doctor Oz

Bad Wine and Lemon Cake

In My Mind

Such Great Heights

Australia

-Red Cross Donation-

Glass Slipper (request)

Drover’s Boy

Guitar Hero

Coin-Operated Boy

Formidable Marinade

Runs in the Family

Oasis

~~~

Map of Tasmania

Leeds United

~~~

Drinking song

Up on the balcony Amanda was wearing a dress of some sort, and then when she came down to the stage she was going to make a costume change but something went wrong, apparently, because she ended up running across the stage just in her frilly black underwear at one point. Not even a bra. Hahaha. She’s the absolute best. Then she got changed awkwardly behind an Australian flag while Mikelangelo tried to distract us. When she emerged from behind the flag she was all decked out in a lacey black bra, blue corset, a strange white frilly skirt, and knee high stockings with boots. She had attached ribbons to the corset to make it look like an Australian flag and it was really fantastic. See, she had just released an album called Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under, based on her recent fascination with Australia, so of course EVERYTHING was Australia themed. She looked gorgeous as always.

changing behind the flag...

and looking lovely!

“Missed Me” was cool because she had The Tin Star backing her up the whole time and Jason playing accordion. After that came “Astronaut,” which was amazing, and she banged on her piano like nobody’s business. “Doctor Oz” was alright, I’ve never liked that song that much, but then came another moment of amazingness. Also known as the emotional part of the show. Tom from Jane Austen came back out to do “Bad Wine and Lemon Cake” with Amanda (it’s his song, technically) and their voices work so well together and they just fed off each other and the amount of emotion they were able to put into that song was so awesome. Then Amanda got out her magical ukulele and played “In My Mind.” That song has always stuck out to me on the Down Under album, and I actually got really emotional while she was playing. I love that song so much.

 

After that Kim came back out and played Amanda’s ukulele and they did a cover of the song “Such Great Heights” by the band The Postal Service. It was absolutely amazing. I can’t really describe it, their voices were just perfect and especially since the song is about missing people it meant a lot to me. I was so transfixed on Amanda, I could tell she was thinking about her husband Neil, who she JUST married a few weeks before and she was already on tour on her own. Neil Gaiman is an incredible person; he’s a well known science fiction/graphic novel author and I had actually just finished his novel American Gods. I was hoping he’d be at the show with Amanda because I would have loved to meet him. American Gods is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It was so humbling seeing Amanda so vulnerable on stage, I adore both her and Neil and it must be so hard for them to be apart from each other. <3

The most amazing, most artistic couple ever to exist. <3

Then Amanda played “Australia” and it was beautiful. She was back on her piano and she sounded incredible and the fact that I was IN Australia with her was just kind of surreal. After that Amanda talked about the earthquake that had hit New Zealand the week before and how terrible she felt that she had to cancel her show there and she encouraged us all to donate to the Red Cross if we had any money to spare. She also told us about a fan named Laura who had lost her parents in the earthquake. After the show there were these huge pieces of paper and everyone was writing things like “Stay strong, there are so many people praying for you, things are going to get better!” It was really, really great. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote but I signed it “love from a fellow Amanda fan all the way from the United States.” :)

“Glass Slipper” was an interesting request because it was a song on the very first Dresden Dolls album ever, but Amanda still played it flawlessly. “Drover’s Boy” was interesting as well; apparently it’s a really old Australian song told from the point of view of an Aboriginal woman who had to pretend to be a boy to be with the man she loved… something like that. It was very sad. But then to cheer things up a bit, Amanda played “Guitar Hero,” which was fun, and “Coin-Operated Boy,” which was even more fun. Everyone was ready to lighten the mood so we were all being silly. Mikelangelo came out and did “Formidable Marinade,” from which I had really disturbing dreams the next night, and Amanda played “Runs in the Family” during which I exploded again because I love that song so freaking much. Then the dancing girls came back out for “Oasis,” which was really quite funny.

Then Amanda left the stage and Marcus and I finally turned to each other and were like “THIS IS SO AMAZING” and freaked out for a few minutes. Mainly we were discussing how badly we wanted her to play “Map of Tasmania.” A few minutes later she came back out onto the stage, with EVERYONE else behind her: Kim, Jason, Mikelangelo, dancing girls, backup band, EVERYONE, and started up “Map of Tasmania.” The entire place exploded. “Map of Tasmania” is ridiculous enough to begin with, but suddenly there were balloons and people dressed as koalas (who eventually took the costumes off danced around pretty much naked) and it was completely insane. I was dancing so hard and screaming so loud and it was so much fun. “Leeds United” continued the insanity. On the set list that I grabbed from the stage after the show it literally says “LEEDS UNITED (total madness)” and they didn’t disappoint. They closed the show with a drinking song in true Amanda style and then everyone finally left the stage for good. By then I was completely worn out and I just hugged Marcus and we laughed and skipped around a bit and drank a ton of water and then went out into the lobby to buy merch.

All I ended up getting was a cd by The Jane Austen Argument, and Marcus got Kim Boekbinder’s cd and a shirt that said “I <3 AFP” but the heart was actually Tasmania. Haha. We ended up meeting Kim and Mikelangelo and Tom and Jen after the show, which was so much fun, and we both got lots of hugs and pictures. We were some of the last people hanging out at the venue to meet Amanda, and eventually we were getting kicked out so she had to speed through the rest of the people and couldn’t take anymore pictures or anything. But I got her to sign my mp3 player and I think I blabbed something about “I’m from Boston and I’m all the way here and I love you!” and she just laughed and hugged me. She’s so great. :)

Jen and Tom were the sweetest people in the whole world. :D

After the show Marcus and I walked back to our hostel, talking the entire time about how amazing everything was, and we crashed the second we got back. It was such an amazing show. This was my sixth time seeing Amanda and every time is so much fun. It was really great being all the way across the world and still being able to see her.  I love her so, so much. <3

In my mind, I imagine so many things,

Things that aren’t really happening,

And when they put me in the ground I’ll start pounding the lid,

Saying ‘I haven’t finished yet! I still have a tattoo to get,

That says “I’m living in the moment…”’

-In My Mind, Amanda Palmer