When we found out that Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls and Evelyn Evelyn fame) was going to do one of her "ninja gigs" at Occupy Wall Street yesterday, we grabbed the camera crew and headed to Zuccotti Park. We'll have video of the full performance shortly (some audience footage below), but in the meantime, check out some photos, and here's what Amanda told us about the experience:
If I'm going to bring a bunch of people together, this is the perfect place to do it, just to spread awareness of what's happening here. Because I bet you a lot of the people here are New Yorkers who knew this was happening, but hadn't taken the time out of their lives to come here yet and check out what is actually going on. So hopefully this isn't a kind of one time event—where people wander in and see me, then wander out—but people actually stay and it spreads the awareness of what people are doing here. That was the goal in Boston, too.
Palmer, who's from Boston, had previously done the same thing at the Occupy movement going on there. Suri Ratnatunga was on the scene for Gothamist yesterday, and reports back:
Palmer made ample use of the "people's mic" to introduce her songs. In addition to some very entertaining material of her own -- a rewrite of Rebecca Black's viral hit "Friday" from the point of view of a truck stop hooker and an ode to the ukelele with lyrics that were crowd-sourced from twitter -- she did a cover of Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two Headed Boy" in honor of Jeff Magnum's performance last week and an apt rendition of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" with New York native Sxip Shirey on guitar.
Later today, Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello will be performing for the protesters, and previously we headed down there with former Shudder to Think frontman Craig Wedren, who spent his time there talking to those occupying the park.
