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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 8, 2008 6:57:52 GMT -5
So much has been happenning lately between the musical, new musical direction and the new record. Time for a update!
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 8, 2008 6:58:19 GMT -5
A message from Tori: On parting ways with Epic/Sony and heading in the indie direction
“This is an exciting time. There will be many ways in the present and in the future for artists to cross what has become the new unchartered Music Frontier. Ways that may seem impossible today but in a months time will seem probable. There are many ways to be involved in a structure. But what kind of structure will it be and what will be the make up of it’s foundation? These are important questions, so important that I’ve been observing many different working templates in the music business for years now. The key word here is the word “working.” In some cases these structures do not work positively for some artists. Only for those who have designed the system to specifically “work” for the corporate few. Artists need not fear structure, we just have to design and partner with expansive ideas. It is time for us as artists to stop being dependent, dependent on any system that has become undependable. Only then can we help to create a new system that propagates and secures independence for each creator.”
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 8, 2008 6:58:55 GMT -5
Tori to Headline Dranouter Festival this August! Tori is confirmed as the headliner for the Dranouter Festival in Belgium this summer. Here are the details: August 1, 2008 Dranouter Festival Belgium 10:30 pm Performing solo on Kayam Main Stage The other artists on the bill include Loreena Mc Kennit, Billy Bragg, Ozark Henry, Woven Hand, Howe Gelb, Martha Wainwright, Grupo Fantasma, Dj Dolores, Lonely Drifter Karen, Xavier Rudd, Jim White and many more. Tickets are on sale and here is where you can get them: BELGIUM: www.kbc.be/ticketshop or ticketphone: 078/155151 FRANCE: www.fnac.fr/NETHERLANDS: www.ticketservice.nl or Ticketservice 0900/300 1250 OTHER COUNTRIES : 0032/57 446933
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 8, 2008 6:59:20 GMT -5
John Philip Shenale has been creating orchestral arrangements for Tori since Little Earthquakes. Here’s some clues about Tori’s upcoming projects from Myspace Blog:
there are many new things going on in Tori’s world, and ill be involved with 2 projects over the next month. the Musical and record. A very xciting time and if anybody can make the current chaos work in the record world for them it is T. More info with a number of other cool projects will be coming when dates are finalized. i think its going to be an interesting summer!!!
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 8, 2008 9:22:14 GMT -5
TORI AMOS INKS THE COMIC BOOK TATTOO - a 12" x 12" 480-page anthology. In stores July 23rd.
This July the ever-growing relationship between comics and music reaches new heights as Tori Amos and Image Comics release COMIC BOOK TATTOO, a 480-page, full color anthology adapting the themes and ideas behind her songs into a lush volume of sequential art.
"I have been surprised, excited and pleasantly shocked by these comics that are extensions of the songs that I have loved and therefore welcome these amazing stories of pictures and words because they are uncompromisingly inspiring," says Tori. "It shows you thought is a powerful formidable essence and can have a breathtaking domino effect." For a complete list of songs/stories featured in Comic Book Tattoo, click here.
To assemble COMIC BOOK TATTOO's diverse roster of talent, Tori worked alongside editor Rantz Hoseley, co-creator behind the upcoming DISPLACED PERSONS and VIX. Together they formed a line up featuring Y: THE LAST MAN's Pia Guerra, Leah Moore, John Reppion David Mack, Hope Larson, Ryan Kelly, Jonathan Hickman, Colleen Doran, Eric Canete, Ted McKeever, Jock, Anthony Johnston, Dame Darcy, Carla Speed McNeil, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Mark Buckingham, Ivan Brandon, C. B. Cebulski and many more, including an introduction by SANDMAN creator Neil Gaiman. Click here for a complete list of the creators involved in Comic Book Tattoo.
SONG/STORY (In order of appearance)
FLYING DUTCHMAN BOUNCING OFF CLOUDS GIRL MERMAN TAKE TO THE SKY MR. ZEBRA LITTLE EARTHQUAKES MARIANNE CRAZY PROGRAMMABLE SODA TOAST JACKIE'S STRENGTH LITTLE AMSTERDAM HERE IN MY HEAD SUEDE SUGAR TEENAGE HUSTLING FATHER LUCIFER SNOW CHERRIES FROM FRANCE WAITRESS CAUGHT A LITE SNEEZE WINTER BAKER BAKER 1,000 OCEANS SPACE DOG THE BEEKEEPER SIREN IIEEE SILENT ALL THESE YEARS LEATHER GOLD DUST PRECIOUS THINGS GLORY OF THE 80'S HONEY CRUCIFY GOD PANDORA'S AQUARIUM SCARLET'S WALK THE BEAUTY OF SPEED I CAN'T SEE NY UPSIDE DOWN NORTHERN LAD ROOSTERSPUR BRIDGE CORNFLAKE GIRL PIRATES HEY JUPITER DEVILS AND GODS PAST THE MISSION SWEET THE STING RIBBONS UNDONE PRETTY GOOD YEAR
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 19, 2008 9:09:49 GMT -5
As you may know, on July 23, 2008 Tori Amos and Image Comics release COMIC BOOK TATTOO, a 480-page, full color anthology adapting the themes and ideas behind her songs into a lush volume of sequential art. Editor Rantz Hoseley said, “While the connections between comics and music have been long established by generations of creators, Comic Book Tattoo is the pure distillation of how these two art forms inspire and feed off of each other across all the classifications, genres and styles of comic storytelling. Like Tori’s music, these stories run the gamut of human experience, emotion and imagination brought to life by some of the most compelling and innovative creators in the field of comics.”
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Post by rockstars on Jun 19, 2008 11:19:03 GMT -5
Wow, a bigger Toriphile than me!
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Post by jickity on Jun 20, 2008 2:07:54 GMT -5
I am totally buying that.....
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 20, 2008 4:10:15 GMT -5
I know, it looks amazing! And it's backed 100% by Tori.
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 22, 2008 7:03:35 GMT -5
Stay tuned for a new ToriAmos.com Posted June 03, 2008
The split from Sony means ToriAmos.com will need to go through some changes. For now there is a temporary holding page up. The plan is to launch a new look to the site within the next 2-3 weeks. Check back for more details. For those looking for the old American Doll Posse site, never fear, it will be made available again to fans on a new url within the next few days.
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 22, 2008 7:05:36 GMT -5
A fun excerpt by Tori offering some “life advice” will be featured in the upcoming book, CHERRY BOMB: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BECOMING A BETTER FLIRT, A TOUGHER CHICK, AND A HOTTER GIRLFRIEND, AND TO LIVING LIFE LIKE A ROCK STAR by Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna. CHERRY BOMB is described as an A-to-Z reference for everything awesome a girl needs to know, including the obvious (style, beauty, dating, and sex tips) and the not-so-obvious (how to prepare absinthe, how to sneak backstage, how to hit on a celebrity). When the book is released this August 5, here is a list of those who you can also expect to get some fun tips from…
-- Cherie Currie of THE RUNAWAYS (on “Cherry Bomb,” the song that influenced the book) -- Tori Amos (Life Advice) -- Dita Von Teese (Striptease) -- Betsey Johnson (Breast Cancer Awareness and Personal Style) -- Dancing with the Stars’ Cheryl Burke (Dancing Tips) -- Samantha Maloney of PEACHES (Drum Lesson) -- Katy Perry (Vintage Shopping) -- Lisa Loeb (How To Be a Great Hostess) -- Jessicka of SCARLING/JACK OFF JILL (Starting a Band) -- American Idol makeup artist Mezhgan (Beauty) -- Stylist Cynthia Freund (Rock Chick Style Tips) -- Anna Sui (Fashion Inspiration) -- Kat Von D (Tattoos) -- Master Chef Dave Rubell (Black Vodka Recipes) -- Berlin’s Terri Nunn (Dating, Doing it & Dumping) -- The Viper Room’s Melissa Renee Hernandez and Anna Geyer (Bouncers, Jobs) -- Christian Joy (Fashion Inspiration) -- Veruca Salt’s Louise Post (Sobriety) -- Dr. Ava Cadell (Orgasms) -- Tera Patrick (Menage a Trois) -- Joanna Angel (X-rated movies) -- Imogen Heap (Individuality) -- Hairstylist Dean Banowetz (Rockin’ Up ‘Dos) -- NicoleLee/SuicideGirls.com (Piercings) -- Pink Cheeks’ Cynthia Esser-Thorin (Waxing Tips)
Shirley definetly should have had a piece in this! It really is right up her street!
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 22, 2008 7:06:38 GMT -5
Tori’s track, Yo George, is one of the songs featured on the soundtrack for the documentary, Body of War - an intimate look at the face of war today from the eyes of a veteran who served a week in Iraq before suffering a bullet wound which left him paralyzed from the waist down. Tori’s in good company on this one… other artists featured include Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Ben Harper. Click here for more information about the soundtrack: www.bodyofwarmusic.com/ and here for more about the movie: www.bodyofwar.com/.
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 26, 2008 4:09:49 GMT -5
I thought it would be nice to make a list with all the info we know about T's musical so far. From me-me-me.tv, May 2007: Oh, I do need to leak something to you … I think I am writing a musical! I’m gushing but I’m under fucking lock and key. Will you be in it? That is not my plan. I am writing all the songs. I’m trying to be, who are those guys, I know one of them, Tim Rice… And Andrew Lloyd-Webber? Yes, Webber and Rice. I’m trying to be both. So I’m busy. From The Daily Mail (UK), June 22, 2007: “Watch out for… Tori Amos, the singer, who is collaborating with dramatist Samuel Adamson on a hoped-for production of The Light Princess, George McDonald’s story (which was illustrated by Maurice Sendak) about a princess cursed by a witch. The National Theatre has commissioned Ms Amos and Mr Adamson to see what they come up with. “Adamson, by the way, has also adapted Pedro Almodovar’s great film All About My Mother for the Old Vic, and Diana Rigg has joined the company, along with Lesley Manville, Joanne Froggart, Colin Morgan and Charlotte Randle. Performances begin on August 25.” From a press conference in Israel, July 2007: She said she was a bit nervous, cause musicals can be disastrous, or in her words: “It could be like Sound of Music or it could be like the Paul Simon musical. I love Paul Simon but still…”. Then she added something like: “But we’re getting the girls with the long legs to appear so it should be fine”. From the Webchat, October 2007: Okay….um…..what's the musical about?.....well…..the musical is based a book from the 19th century “The Light Princess” that the playwright Samuel Adamson… .is uh…..It's jumping off point and we’ve been working with the story and developing it.....in order to apply it to…..well to…..what we’ve all experience especially in the last 20 years. What we’re going through as a world. So um…..working with Sam is just beyond anything I can tell you. He’s such a brilliant playwright and its with the British National Theatre so it will…..it will launch in the UK in 2009…… From Metromix Television Interview, November 2007: weblogs.cltv.com/entertainment/tv/metromix/"After this huge tour is over, Tori will write a musical and it will open in Fall of 2009, in London." Interview with Samuel Adamson, November 2007: www.whatsonstage.com/index.ph...Samuel+Adamson"I’m working on a musical for the National with Tori Amos, based on George MacDonald’s fairy tale The Light Princess. It’s a long way off yet, but we are working on that, yes." Tori Talks Musical, Downloads On Polish Radio, November 2007: In this interview, she discusses many subjects, including the “Light Princess” musical and thoughts on her future as a recording artist; she even said she might offer future albums for download, rather than publishing them through a record label. Head on over to Speedie’s MySpace blog to listen to the whole thing. blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseac....logID=340741555Geek Monthly interview, January 2008 Amos says a Light Princess soundtrack will be made available, but “that’s down the road. First it’s got to be written. It’s sort of slated for the fall of 2009, and a lot of work is going into it as we speak.” Other information about the musical from the interview: Tori Amos is developing a musical with the British National Theatre. “The Light Princess” is based on a fairy tale written by George MacDonald in 1846. (“But I won’t be confined to a time—no way, no how.”) A surefire hit? Amos laughs. She knows it’s the highest tightrope she’s ever walked, career-wise, anyway. “You have to know that I’m very aware of the statistics of how many contemporary composers tank when they write a musical.” Here, she giggles, “People kiiiiiiiiindly just say, ‘Heads up, Tor, you’ve gotta know, you’re walking into a sonic minefield.’ And sometimes they’ll mention names of everybody that’s made a musical and it doesn’t work. “I say to them, look, you’re right…I know you can really mess up. What you can’t do is enter and think you’re just making another album. You have to go in and work as a team, and that’s the one thing about working with the British National Theatre: You come in as a team. No man is an island. You can’t just go off and…make this radical one-woman show.” Amos likes discipline. “It’s a blessing that I have to work within these constraints. I think that’s kind of…good for me,” she says, again laughing. “In no uncertain terms, when you work with the British National Theatre, you know what your gig is. I’m the composer. I write the songs. I’m not involved in the casting. I’m there to make sure that the singers and the actors have the best material they could possibly have.” The normally bold Amos sounds almost intimidated as she raves about the company involved in the production. “The playwright is one of the most exciting in England right now—and he’s a proper playwright. He’s not a book writer who’s trying his hand at the stage. He’s a playwright. He’s adapted Chekhov for the stage and just adapted [Pedro Almodóvar’s] All About My Mother for the British National Theatre…And he’s really helping me with the form and…you know, the form is on one hand pretty strict, and on the other hand, the world is your oyster. And I know that’s a paradox.” She says the British National Theatre is not concerned with ticket sales, “and I come from the position that, well, why can’t a lot of people like this and we still keep the artistic integrity? That’s difficult to do. You’re walking on both sides. But I like walking on both sides, on that tightrope. It’s really sexy to me to walk that tightrope.” ------------------- And here's a synopsis of the story from Wikipedia: The Light Princess is a fairy tale by George MacDonald. It was published in 1864. A king and queen, after some time, have a daughter. The king invites everyone to the christening, except his sister Princess Makemnoit, a spiteful and sour woman. She arrives without an invitation and curses the princess to have no gravity. Whenever the princess accidentally moves up in the air, she has to be brought down, and the wind is capable of carrying her off. As she grows, she never cries, and never can be brought to see the serious side of anything. The court philosophers, when consulted, are unable to propose any cure that the king and queen will suffer to be used. She passionately loves swimming, and when she swims, she regains her gravity. This leads to the proposal that if she could be brought to cry, it might break the curse. But nothing can induce her to cry. A prince from another country sets out to find a wife, but finds fault in every princess he finds. He had not intended to look at the light princess, but becoming lost in a forest, he finds the princess swimming. Thinking she is drowning, he "rescues" her, ending up with her in air, scolding him. He falls instantly in love and, at her demand, puts her back in the water, and goes swimming with her. Days pass, and the prince learns that her manner is changed between the water and the land, and he can not marry her as she is on land. Princess Makemnoit, meanwhile, discovers that the princess loves the lake and sets out to dry it up. The water is drained from the lake, the springs are stopped up, and the rain ceases. Even babies no longer cry water. As the lake dries up, they discover that the only way to stop it was to block up the hole the water is flowing from, and the only thing that will block it is a living man, who would die in the deed. The prince volunteers, on the condition that the princess keep him company while the lake fills. The lake fills up. When the prince drowns, the princess drags his body from the lake to take it to her old nurse, who is a wise woman. They tend him through the night, and he wakes at dawn. The princess falls to the floor and cries. After the princess masters the art of walking, she marries the prince. Princess Makemnoit's house is undermined by the waters, and falls in, drowning her. The light princess and her prince have many children, none of whom ever lose their gravity
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Post by Modern Method. on Jun 28, 2008 7:02:33 GMT -5
Rare Tori Amos Performances Coming to DVD
It's been 15-plus years since the release of Tori Amos' breakthrough solo debut, 'Little Earthquakes,' in 1992. The girl who had teased up her hair, put on some fishnets and grabbed a sword for her first outing, Y Kant Tori Read, had traded all the window dressing for some jeans, bodysuits and a batch of melodic diary confessions. The transformation can be seen on a DVD, featuring Amos' performances at the Montreux Jazz Festival in both 1991 and '92, due this fall.
"It's the first performance that's been caught on film of the pre-'Little Earthquakes' music," the Cornwall, England-based Amos tells Spinner. "That's exciting, and we've pulled it together and mastered it [in our studio]."
As for what it was like to watch those performances, Amos recalls the time with fondness. "You look back and think, 'Oh, great,' because in 1991, this was before there were stylists, before there was makeup, before there was all that. It can be your friend in that way," she says. "But at the same time, as much as I enjoyed watching [the performances], I had no idea what was going to happen. I was playing tiny little pubs, and playing these songs in a living room. 'Little Earthquakes' hadn't been released. There had been no attention and I walked out in front of a few thousand people as an opening act in 1991. Wait, I think I was the opening act for the opening act. Then you see the 1992 performance. By then, the EP had been released and the album had been released, and you can tell that there's a different audience. It's kind of fascinating to me. You ask yourself, 'Has it been that long? Where has the time gone?" And you look in the mirror and you realize you're not that person, but you feel that person."
But this isn't the only DVD in the works. A DVD release chronicling Amos' 'American Doll Posse' tour is also planned, though Amos says that the original concept of a concert DVD has since morphed into something much more involved. "Well, the idea is that we're creating a story," she says. "I don't know if you can call it a documentary, but we're creating a story of what happened on that road, with the touring and what happened afterwards. I'm scoring that right now."
Meanwhile, Amos is simultaneously gearing up for the release of 'Comic Book Tattoo,' a 480-page collection of stories and art inspired by her music, due July 23, and working on Samuel Adamson's musical adaptation of George MacDonald's 'The Light Princess.'
"It seems to be a full-time commitment," she says of the musical. "I've never written for other people before. Writing for a company and researching their characters, understanding how they speak, working closely with the playwright ... I've never experienced anything quite like it before. The collaboration process that I have when I'm making records is that the material is written and then you're working on arrangements. With 'The Light Princess,' another scene might be written or added or changed, which then will mean that a completely different set of songs have to be written for that scene. I like to work, so I don't mind how much work it takes. I'm not saying I'll never write another one. I'm enjoying it. But if you're writing a musical, you better like your collaborators. I happen to get along with them very well."
Check back next week when Spinner reveals exclusive art from 'Comic Book Tattoo,' as well as interviews with Amos and several of the book's contributors.
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Post by garbagefiend on Jun 28, 2008 7:15:22 GMT -5
How did you manage replying to yourself 11 times? Ja-hee-zuz.
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Post by Modern Method. on Jul 17, 2008 14:58:05 GMT -5
Tori Amos: Perez Hilton Is “Scary Smart” ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=2020&MediaType=1&Category=22Tori Amos is very smart. She is a gifted composer, mother to 7-year-old Natashya, and a talented performer. Surprisingly, the gay idol thinks that what Perez Hilton does – his backstabbing gossiping – is art. And, in fact, she says he is “scary smart.” In a recent interview with Out Magazine, Amos was asked if she was a fan of celebrity gossiper Perez Hilton – did she think he worked for the forces of good or evil. To which she replied that he was a “wonderful force.” “We're acquaintances. We've met. I think he can have a very sharp blade – there's no question about that. And there's a persona there – that's why somebody like that becomes bigger than life by talking about what other people are doing. That is his art form – talking about what other people are doing. Now when you do that, you can't always be complimentary or it's just not sustainable. There is no career there. So if you're one of the sacrifices along the way, it can't feel good. It just can't. But I think that if he weren't doing it somebody else would be doing it. There's always going to be somebody who's commenting on celebrities,” she answered. In a follow up question, she was asked if she liked Hilton's brand of style. “I think he's funny, but more than that, he's very smart. He's scary smart. And that's why this is occurring – because he's extremely intelligent.” Amos says her daughter, Natashya, while only 7-years-old, knows all about being gay. “She's very aware that some boys stay with boys forever and marry them. And some girls stay with girls and marry them. And it's the way it is.”
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Post by Modern Method. on Jul 21, 2008 6:51:29 GMT -5
Undented.com - March 2008 Tori’s peeps have cleared up the David Byrne/Here Lies Love mystery for us: David visited Tori at her studio in January where they worked on a couple of tracks for a recorded version of Here Lies Love (with Tori on vocals, yippee!). The song cycle is based on the story of Imelda Marcos and Estrella Campos, the hired woman who raised her. The album is expected to be released through Nonesuch Records sometime this autumn. (There are currently no plans for Tori to be involved in any live performances of this musical.) Source: undented.com/news/1433/tori-connected-with-byrnes-here-lies-love
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Post by Modern Method. on Jul 21, 2008 17:41:21 GMT -5
Tori will be live on www.toriamos.com at 4:00 PM PST Wednesday, July 23 to do a video chat via Meebo. She'll be talking about Comic Book Tattoo and all the other various appearances and projects she's got coming up. Don't miss it!
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Post by Modern Method. on Jul 22, 2008 3:38:03 GMT -5
The Lioness and the Wildebeests: Tori Amos on Going Independent
“I’m not a part of this business. I was playing music before people were peeing their beds,” Tori Amos told journalist Brad Balfour in 1993. Unfortunately, the music business didn’t seem to know that, and Amos never found a comfortable home within the conventional record label structure. After an acrimonious split with Atlantic Records in 2001, Amos signed on with Epic Records. Epic seemed an ideal match at the time because of then-president Polly Anthony’s commitment to keeping Amos happy, providing extensive promotion for Amos’ 2002 album Scarlet’s Walk and a high-budget music video featuring Adrian Brody for Amos’ single “A Sorta Fairytale”.
Unfortunately, things at Epic soured quickly. In 2003, Anthony was ousted as president, and Amos soon found herself working in a context just as hostile as the one she thought she had escaped. Fortunately, Amos’s creative genius had already extended itself to the business side of her work. Whether or not Amos felt she was a part of the music business, she was good at it. Beginning with 1998’s From the Choirgirl Hotel, Amos began recording at a home studio she built with her husband and sound engineer Mark Hawley. In 2003, Amos and her longtime creative team developed their own management group—The Bridge Entertainment Group—while Amos fulfilled her contract and released her next two albums, The Beekeeper (2005) and American Doll Posse (2007), on Epic; but the label was hardly her only means of distribution.
Through her website, Amos released a series of high-quality concert recordings called “The Original Bootlegs” in 2005. Though those recordings had little promotion, they sold well; well enough to motivate the release of many official recordings from her 2007 tour. Those recordings, known as the “Legs and Boots” series, were available for download just hours after each concert’s finish. In between those releases, Amos joined forces with Rhino Records to release a DVD compilation of all her videos and the Piano box set featuring remastered songs, unreleased material, and demos of several songs.
Yet, Amos realized that as long as she was under a record company’s contract, she still lacked ultimate control as to how her major works were presented. The only answer was to leave the label—a process that required a lot of ingenuity, some slyness, and perfect timing.
Now that she is finally free, Amos seems busier than ever. Though her last world tour just finished in December 2007, Amos has been writing a new album in addition to a musical called “The Light Princess,” and she just finished helping orchestrate the creation of Comic Book Tattoo, a book of comic artists’ interpretations of her work. Here she discusses the long road to freedom, what it’s like to give her songs “parallel worlds” in art, and why wildebeests can come in very handy.
+ + +
You’ve just announced that you’ve gone independent, so congratulations! Well, thank you very much. It’s been a long time coming. A long, long time.
How does it feel? Well, you begin to realize that you can’t blame a corporation now for the mistakes. You have to cover all areas of putting a work out into the world. It’s not just dealing with it from a creative side, but then taking the work out into the world and investigating all the possibilities that this can be done. So I think right now is a moment where we’re sitting down, those of us on the team, and looking at all the many different ways that you can put your creations out there and who you can partner with and that can mean many different partners for many different projects. So, yeah, it’s an exciting time.
It’s also a lot of work, it sounds like. How much control would you say that the record company had been having over your career and your music? They don’t have any control over the music. But they have control over how it’s presented. Meaning, how things are promoted and marketed, not the look of a campaign. They have nothing to do with the creativity. It’s very complicated how deals get made, and you begin to understand that once you really step out of the artist side of the pie and you walk into the distribution side. So, you have to be willing to take on board a world that negotiates in secrecy a lot of the time unless you’re in the industry and know what goes on, [and] I was willing to take that on. But I’ve been in the music business a long, long time. Not everybody’s willing to take that on.
I have a really good team as well. I’ve been developing a team of people for over 22 years now. And some people have fallen by the wayside and others that we’ve worked with, maybe years ago, and now that I’m independent, you have your pick of the best of the best. And that is one reason that I really wanted to go independent because you’re not locked into the constraints of what a label is. There are so many financial issues that come up with the label: they make decisions based on their pocket, not what’s best for the specific work. And they also make deals based on their roster, and, politically, what will help this other artist that they’re expecting to sell x from. So, sometimes, certain artists are used to help other artists, and you have to be aware of what that means. And it can be done in a very negative way. It can have very negative effects. I know that probably what I’m saying to you sounds really abstract and, in some ways, it’s going to be. Until you walk through that door, and you understand how the deals are made, then it’s almost not a reality until you see the machinations at work.
I find myself thinking about how you have such a devoted fan base that you’ve worked really hard to maintain. Do you think you still would have made the same decision if you didn’t know that you had this huge fan base that would promote you by word of mouth and support you? I’d be in a very different position if I didn’t have a group of people that were interconnected and that have been there consistently over the years so we knew that we could count on them. It makes you a very different force to be reckoned with if you have this than if you don’t. So I had faith that if I left the old structure with a team of people that, again, I’ve been, let’s say, cultivating, for many years now, I figured that as a think tank, we could figure out the best way for each specific project, how to take it out into the world and get it out there; and that means that you’re not locked in to partnering with one construct.
So that side of it is really challenging, and that side of it means [that] you get to explore. You get to sit down and speak to people. Once the news hit that I’d left, the phone rang off the hook! And that’s what you hope will happen, but you can never be sure that will happen. I had to make this decision for creative reasons and when I say creative reasons, that encompasses a lot of things. It meant that I did not want to turn another work into Epic/Sony and I knew that at a certain point, and once I knew that, then I had to mobilize and make sure that I was able to have the upper hand and negotiate my way out. But when you’re trying to negotiate yourself out of a situation, you really have to hope that the universe is on your side, that certain things fall into place, or you don’t walk away with what you want to walk away with, meaning, rights to your own music. And in order to do that, you better have some clever people on your team—and I do have clever people on my team.
I found myself wondering too [about] how you have this huge back catalog of songs that you’ve recorded that didn’t make it onto albums for one reason or another that maybe you didn’t want Epic Records to own. Do you see this as being a way to release some of those songs in their own context? Well, that is a thought that is a good thought. I haven’t thought of it recently, but at the time I think I thought about it. You have to be really intelligent here, Erin—not that you’re not—but you see, the way that it works is quite nasty. Anything that you record under a budget theoretically could be argued that it could be theirs. Therefore, anything that wasn’t on the records was never, obviously, recorded under their budget. Do you see what I’m saying? So therefore, no songs were ever recorded for records that aren’t on the records. They might have been recorded at Martian Studios for my experimental purposes when I was not under budget. Do you follow me?
Yes. That is very clever. And that’s the only way that you can do what you’re suggesting. But I also think another side to this is you want to be able to re-record songs within a period, a time-frame, soon after you’ve left a label, or you can’t do bootlegs anymore on a tour. See, there are recording restrictions that come along with leaving a label that can last up to five years. So we were able to navigate around that, again, because we have a clever team, and again, I would say to you, you have to read between the lines. Things just fell into place and the universe was on our side.
Sometimes things like this can happen because there are other things that are happening, explosive things that take people’s attention away from, maybe, the lioness sneaking off in the night with the cubs over the Serengeti and the hunters got involved with a stampede of wildebeests, and so you think, this lioness, now is the time to take the cubs, we have to go into the wide open, we have to, and we have to trust that maybe there will be some British tourists that distract the American hunters, I don’t know. And they talk about the war, you know, World War II, and you have to hope that the good old boys will be so involved with this and shooting the wildebeests that we can cross, and in plain daylight. And so that’s essentially what happened.
Can I ask you about one of my personal favorite abandoned projects of yours--the experimental-recorded-at-Martian-Studios-songs that might have been on the vampire album? Do you see yourself revisiting those? Oh, what are they called? Do you know what they’re called? Were there names?
No, I was just remembering in Piece by Piece [Tori’s autobiography] how you talk about how you were going to travel to Eastern Europe and study Vlad the Impaler and dealing with the idea of loss and invasion. Oh, yes. Now it’s all coming back to me. Well, that idea slips into things from time to time. I think as a conceptual work it got abandoned because I had so many miscarriages that husband said, “Wife, you’ve bled enough. There’s enough blood around here, you know, for years. You don’t need to go visit Vlad the Impaler’s story.” And I thought that, in a strange way, life took over my path and the need to explore that shifted because of the miscarriage experiences.
Fortunately, you’re exploring other things, visually as well as sonically. I want to ask about Comic Book Tattoo, which is different artists interpreting your work visually, including a lot of women artists in there, which I find wonderful. I was wondering if there were any stories in there that made you see your own songs differently. A lot of them have. When I was sent the storyboards, some of them, the way that they were reading, I kind of cocked my head and said “I wonder how this is going to play out.” However, Rantz [Hoseley] and I discussed the concept and I was not going to interfere. I thought it was really important that the writers and the artists were not going have any kind of middling witness because this can’t be about what the songs are about from my perspective as I know them. They live on in their own way. They’ve spoken how they feel about themselves just by existing sonically. And then anybody and everybody has [their own] right to an interpretation of it. I felt that what was important about this is that it be allowed to take a turn that might be completely the furthest thing from the song’s intention when it was written. I had to allow that to happen.
Therefore, when I looked at the book for the first time, it was sent on computer for the first time; it had to be sent on computer, because it was going to be printed in Hong Kong, and that was the final stage, to put it onto hard copy. So everything was done and approved of through the computer. Therefore, I couldn’t look at it, you see, all at one time. I had to go page by page. And so I couldn’t jump around and I couldn’t thumb through. So I started at the beginning and I went to the end. And what I loved about it was that there are parallel words to the songs now that exist because of Comic Book Tattoo. There are alternate stories, and I find that that’s really—how do you say—this continues the circle, so the sonic inspires the visuals. And when I was hearing these stories, I started to hear music in my head, but not the songs they were connected with, because I don’t see these as “visual covers” of the songs. I see these as the freedom of an artist to tell a story that was inspired by a song, or the song is used as a jumping off point, or they follow it to a point, and then they take a turn, so the main thing that you need to know is that this is not about an encyclopedia of what the songs are about in comic book form. This was about a marriage of two forms that allowed freedom for them to dream.
I think it’s best we leave that there. It was lovely speaking with you, Erin.
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Post by Modern Method. on Jul 27, 2008 18:31:40 GMT -5
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