posted by Neil
I'm home, after ten days in New York and Boston and Cape Cod. I've left Maddy behind in New York, where she is doing an internship before going off to college. Then I left Amanda behind in Boston, where she is packing before she goes to France and Italy to do interviews about her new album before she flies to San Francisco for her art show and Kickstarter-backer concert.
It's a beautiful night. I'm told it was evilly hot while I was away, but it's glorious now, a night filled with fireflies, somewhat spoiled by Lola dashing off into the darkness while walking through a cornfield, and returning in triumph with a young raccoon she had just caught and killed.
Barnes and Noble have once more started to sell the Sandman graphic novels (along with the other DC Comics graphic novels they'd stopped selling) in their brick and mortar stores, so I am happy to link to them once again. I doubt either boycott actually did anything, but mine made me feel marginally empowered. Anyway, they are selling copies of STORIES, the anthology I edited with Al Sarrantonio, in hardback, for $2.99. (It contains my story "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains", and many other wonderful stories by wonderful authors, and it won the Shirley Jackson award and the Locus award for Best Anthology.) I'm not sure how long they'll be selling them at that price.
It's a beautiful night. I'm told it was evilly hot while I was away, but it's glorious now, a night filled with fireflies, somewhat spoiled by Lola dashing off into the darkness while walking through a cornfield, and returning in triumph with a young raccoon she had just caught and killed.
Barnes and Noble have once more started to sell the Sandman graphic novels (along with the other DC Comics graphic novels they'd stopped selling) in their brick and mortar stores, so I am happy to link to them once again. I doubt either boycott actually did anything, but mine made me feel marginally empowered. Anyway, they are selling copies of STORIES, the anthology I edited with Al Sarrantonio, in hardback, for $2.99. (It contains my story "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains", and many other wonderful stories by wonderful authors, and it won the Shirley Jackson award and the Locus award for Best Anthology.) I'm not sure how long they'll be selling them at that price.
Here's the video (via the Open Spark project "Your Music Played By Lightning") of the 8in8 song Nikola Tesla, words by yours truly, played on enormous Tesla Coils. It is impossible to describe the glorious nerdy rush of pride I felt looking at (and listening to) this.
Here's a fan-made-video of the song with lots of cardboard in it, and fewer giant electronic zaps...
There were many wonderful things on the kitchen table waiting for me, but my favourite was the mock-up of the new edition of Stardust.
There hasn't been a hardback of Stardust in print in the US for about 13 years. I'm not sure why not. Jennifer Brehl, my editor at William Morrow, talked to me about what I wanted to see in a book. I told her I wanted it to look and feel like something from 90 years ago, like the books I treasured as a kid that I found in the school library (the ones I'd buy for a penny in the school library sales, and loved ever after). Bless her, she got it. She took all my blathering and went off and has started making it into a book.
She's commissione
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 5/4/2011
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Rainn, 8in8, School Bullies in Power, The Problem With Saints, Illuminate Parkinsons, Add a tag
posted by Neil
I'm now home, to Spring and dogs. Had a wonderful time with Ben Folds, Damian Kulash from OKGo and Amanda Palmer making the #8in8 project, which as of 3 days ago has raised over $21,000 for Berklee City Music, bringing access to music to inner city kids in Boston. Given that the minimum donation is $1, I think we've got a lot of people downloading the 8in8 music, and it is doing good things, and for that I thank you all.
If you haven't checked it out, here's a player for the songs and a link to the website. (The one I sing on is the last song, The Problem With Saints, but they're all wonderful, and Amanda, Ben and Damian sing on the other five.)
<a href="http://music.amandapalmer.net/album/nighty-night">Nighty Night by Amanda Palmer</a>
Here's one of the many wonderful videos people have made for the songs. This one is gloriously funny.
Also a huge thank you from me to all of you who donated to RAINN, who met and exceeded their fundraising goals in April, and told me that the signed posters from Neverwear were a really popular donation incentive. (This is a good thing to know for future such fundraisers.)
<a href="http://music.amandapalmer.net/album/nighty-night">Nighty Night by Amanda Palmer</a>
Here's one of the many wonderful videos people have made for the songs. This one is gloriously funny.
Also a huge thank you from me to all of you who donated to RAINN, who met and exceeded their fundraising goals in April, and told me that the signed posters from Neverwear were a really popular donation incentive. (This is a good thing to know for future such fundraisers.)
...
SEMI-POLITICAL BIT
Lots of my readers are Republicans, just as lots of my readers are Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Liberals, Greens, Democrats, and supporters of political parties that Americans can't quite understand, like LibDems and Tories and Monster Raving Loony Party such. I'm not a particularly political animal -- if there was a party whose main platform was being nice to people, freedom of speech and supporting libraries I'd sign up for it, but mostly I try and vote, when I vote, which is in the UK by postal ballot, for the person whose politics I dislike the least, and who does the most good for the area s/he represe
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 4/26/2011
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: John Reed, Rex Harrison, Actually the songs are sort of fun, RIP Poly Styrene, My Sad Descent Into Hell, 8in8, Add a tag
posted by Neil
As I type this I'm about an hour away from going on stage at Berklee College in Boston as part of the world's least super supergroup. It's me, Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds and Damian Kulash from OK Go. We're like the Inferior 5 of supergroups. We started existing yesterday at 4 pm, stopped working and named ourselves at about 4 am, having, in the meantime, written and recorded six songs. Tonight we do Our Gig, and then there remains the angry break-up, the bitter recriminations, the bile-filled Rolling Stone article, the VH1 Behind The Music Special, the sad descent into cocaine hell, our tragic but cleaned-up comeback and triumphant mega-tour followed by the night all of our hits will be sung by a succession of hopefuls soon to have their own dreams rudely shattered on American Idol...
Er.
Actually, it had a lot more in common with Roger Corman, who, when asked why he'd made the original film of Little Shop of Horrors, explained, "We were going to play tennis but it was raining that weekend." Amanda suggested we do something interesting, Ben said why not make 8 songs in 8 hours? and Damian and I were seduced and sucked in by their madness. Honestly, if they jumped off a bridge, we'd probably jump off too.
Here's a picture of us done last night by artist Cassandra Long - the four principals and Sean Slade, our producer.
Well, we set out to record 8 songs in 8 hours, actually recorded six songs in six hours, with help, suggestions, kibbitzing, and suchlike from the good folk and dangerous insomniacs of Twitter.
I had expected that my job would be REALLY EASY. All I had to do was write lyrics. I knew I could write the lyrics for songs in less than 8 hours... I didn't have to write songs, play an instrument or even sing.
It wasn't easy. It was always fun, though, even when it was hard. And by 3 am when I realised that I'd written some lyrics for a song that had to be sung by someone with an English accent, I just said sod it, and did my best to channel John Reed (you probably don't know who John Reed was, but he was my hero when I was eleven, and the mainstay of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company) and to talk in tune, like Rex Harrison, rather than go "OmigodIaminarecordingstudioandIhavetoactuallysingnowwithBenFoldsplayingpianothisisincrediblystressfulargh"
I just swallowed my nerves and did it.
The songs are a mixture of funny and sad and odd. I found myself trying to write Amanda-ish songs for Amanda, Ben Foldsish for Ben, Damiany for Damian, and, er, I don't know, a sort of Tom Lehrer-W.S. Gilbert for me.
We wished we'd had more time. But I think we were pleased, and surprised, by how real it soun
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