Brigade
From AFPwiki
The term Brigade (or "Dirty Business Brigade") describes a network of artists, who volunteer to entertain the audience at Amanda Palmer and The Dresden Dolls concerts previous to their start. Brigadeers recrute from professional and amateur artists among the AFP and Dresden Dolls fans.
The Brigade doesn't have a particular structure, nor is it exclusive in any way. However, certain regional Brigades are organized via MySpace in order to coordinate their efforts and to connect to new people.
It happened to be common practice during many of the longer tours that Amanda named a brigade coordinator to whom interested parties could send emails, in order to apply for a brigade position (and a connected slot on the guestlist). The coordinators were announced via the ShadowBox forum and/or via newsletter.
Origin
In the beginning of The Dresden Dolls' career, the band invited befriended artists to their concerts, whose performances added a unique element of Vaudeville- and Varieté-theatre to the concerts. When the band was supposed to play at the Lollapalooza Festival Tour in 2004, Amanda planned to take a bunch of befriended artists with them, in order to present a more interactive and entertaining show to the audience. Perry Farrel (organizer of the tour) gave his OK for this undertaking, though the tour was eventually cancelled because of slow ticket sales.[1]
Nevertheless, the idea was born and The Dresden Dolls decided to bring it to life during their own clubtour, recruiting regional artists.
References
Related Links
- Dirty Business Brigade at MySpace
- A more detailed list of regional Brigades is at the Fan Pages article
