My Topless Video Chat With Amanda Palmer

Amanda Palmer's arrest in Amsterdam.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjacques">Carl Guderian</a>/Flickr

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Amanda Palmer is not an artist so much as an event. Probably best known as the former front woman for punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, she’s also a street performer, director, composer, blogger, and the unhinged virtuoso of fucking bring-it. After a heated battle with Roadrunner, her former label, Palmer has turned into a crusader for DIY music distribution. She now relies on her wits, her Twits (she’s up to 517,000 followers on Twitter), and her loyal, creative fanbase to keep her rocking. Not to mention fan donations on her website, or music-making pledge campaigns on sites like Kickstarter.

Not too long ago, Huffington Post dubbed Palmer the “Social Media Queen of Rock-N-Roll”—her awesomeness in that realm is perhaps best encapuslated by her performance at The Shorty Awards, where she compiled and sang the year’s most amusing tweets from the likes of Kanye West, Paris Hilton, and Beaker from the Muppets.

When she’s not on the interwebs, Palmer tours relentlessly (New England and Europe this summer), and she recently collaborated on a project called 8in8 with Ben Folds, OK Go’s Damian Kulash (we interview him here), and Palmer’s husband, the author Neil Gaiman. In short, they tried to create and record eight songs in eight hours—and ended up with six songs in twelve hours, but still. Prior to that, Palmer released Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under, an Australia tribute featuring a cheeky homage to pubic hair, “Map of Tasmania,” which you can watch below.

I reached out to Ms. Palmer on Twitter (of course), and she agreed to talk after I promised to take her on a dive bar date to find a Russian cyclops. For the record, I didn’t actually ask her to do the interview in her bra, but, you know, you’re welcome. Click on the questions in blue to watch Palmer’s answers.

Click here for more music features from Mother Jones.

PS: You can find more Amanda Palmer on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. And you really should watch “Map of Tasmania”—here it is!

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We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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