Ex-Dresden Dolls cabaret weirdo Amanda Palmer and her equally badass novelist husband Neil Gaiman are performing sold out show at the Moore tonight. She obviously has a fan base that loves her enough to be willing to chip in pretty excessively—the Kickstarter fund she and Gaiman used to fund the live recording of their West Coast tour was a wild success, (with 3,873 backers who pledged $133,341!) far exceeding their $20,000 goal.

Does it seem like everyone has a Kickstarter or Pledgedrive these days? At any given point I have Facebook invites for bands calling for tour support/record labels funding a pressing/photographers or videographers trying to pay for a shoot...If someone who can sell out the Moore at $22 a ticket is using it as a fundraising tool, does this mean that soliciting community support is going to be a part of developing projects in the arts from now on? I've talked to a lot of artists/musicians who think that this kind of funding is lazy and doesn't speak well of your product/art (“It's a racket... Whatever happened to just selling your t-shirts and records?”)

Conversely, if friends and community want to show their financial support, there isn't anything wrong with accepting free money to do something you believe in. There are a lot of really great projects out there funded by Kickstarter that might not have otherwise existed. For example, what about this project I stumbled upon called "FUCKING JAMES FRANCO," a rally to raise $2,000 to publish a book of hypothetical sexual encounters with the actor James Franco as told by various artists, writers and musicians. Do you really want to live in a world without a book of imaginary sex with Daniel Desario?? I'm not sure I do.