Evelyn Evelyn/Amanda Palmer/Jason Webley at the Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (6/1/10)

I overheard a young fellow say. He’s right, but I would add that this Evelyn Evelyn/Amanda Palmer/Jason Webley concert at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis last night was much better than any old circus. Clearly, this is possibly the best show I’ve seen in a long time, and trust me when I tell you that I’ve been to a lot of shows.

Sxip Shirey is a sort of weird one-man band, who uses ordinary things to make unordinary music. He, and his hair, also acted as the announcer and MC throughout the first part of the show.

The highlight for me was “sister act”, Evelyn Evelyn, a conjoined “Parapagus Tripus Dibrachius twins”. What I liked about them is that I can’t tell if their story and music were inspired by real-life twins or that Eva and Lyn Neville were products of Palmer and Webley’s imagination. Whatever the truth may be, watching them perform is both weird and wonderful.

Their show is pretty much a compressed version of their debut self-titled album, which you can stream on bandcamp. The version of “The Tragic Events of September” was performed with Sxip Shirey doing shadow puppets, quite entertaining and fun.

For their encore, they played a ukulele rendition of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, which made me think that they should do a double encore and come back with Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together”.

There was a brief break and Jason Webley came back on with his accordion. It seems to me that this later part of the show was the “real” rock/pop show. He did about three songs before Amanda F*cking Palmer came on stage to a very excited audience.

Last night’s show was a bit special. First of all, it was Jason Webley’s birthday. Surely there was going to be a lot more celebrating later on, especially when mister Neil Gaiman showed up. For those who aren’t familiar with Gaiman’s work, I’ve been a long-time fan with his Sandman (have met him on a few occasions), but people may know him from being the writer to Coraline and Stardust. The appearance was a surprise for me as his public appearance fee is $45,000 – but it made sense later on when I was told that they are engaged to be married.

Gaiman read an excerpt from their book, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. See video below, apology for the shaky cam, I wasn’t exactly close to the stage.

There was actually a post-show autograph session with Neil, Amanda, and Jason. The line instantly grew and wrapped around the Cedar’s walls. A ton of fans went to the merch table and bought the 10″ and/or $40 hardcover book. Me? I would’ve loved to stay, but the long line tells me to call it a day.