I almost didn’t make it to this show. I was in Paris for a crazy week of work, hadn’t slept well in days, saw online that the show was sold out - so I took the 20-minute stroll from my hotel to the Elysée Montmartre to see if there were any last-minute tickets, but secretly hoping and expecting that there were none, so I could just have a nice noodle dish and then go cuddle in my bed.

Lo and behold, there were last-minute tickets available. So I got one. I pushed away my dreams of an early bedtime and walked up the stairs and swung open the doors to this legendary venue.

The show was electric. Punk cabaret by nature is theatrical and entertaining. (I refer to punk cabaret as if I am an expert, the Dresden Dolls are in fact the only punk cabaret band I know)

And the live version gives a whole new dimension that we don’t have just by listening - the makeup, the attire, the physical movement on stage - though piano and drums are difficult instruments to “move around” with.

What makes the Dresden Dolls live show particularly special are Amanda Palmer’s in-between-song anecdotes. She is a poet and an actress. She knows how to captivate an audience with words. And she does. Even recounting a grim scene from the movie Titanic which she unabashedly loves and inspired one of her new songs.

The concert definitely inspired me. Opened some chakras. And made me want to SING.

I got back to the hotel and I still couldn’t shake however, the controversy of her ex-husband Neil Gaiman and the countless women he assaulted, and Amanda Palmer’s connection to all that. There is a very thorough investigative piece in the New York Magazine and Vulture from 2025 that describes the panoply of events, that I re-read in the early hours of insomnia. Neil Gaiman is clearly a scumbag. He is still denying that he ever had non-consensual sex. And calling it all a smear campaign. Fucking wake up. You had power over these women, they did not want to sleep with you!

But Amanda Palmer’s involvement is much greyer. She is accused of knowingly putting women in danger by introducing them to Neil Gaiman. And turning a blind eye.

She probably definitely could have done things differently to protect these women. With the nanny in New Zealand, she did warn her ex-husband about the vulnerability of the woman and making sure he did not try anything with her. And in retrospect, “warning him” clearly was not enough.

But are we “burning the wrong witch”? We definitely can’t put the two on the same level field, Neil and Amanda.

It’s murky. I’m still trying to work it out. I’m open for discussion.