Super Amanda (born 1978 in Berkley, California) is a London based American singer, actress, writer and internet personality known for her skilled singing voice, vivacious personality, tall hourglass figure and her "overtly sexy but never explicit" You Tube videos. Her trained contralto voice boldly reinterprets the classic rock of singers like Roger Daltrey, Nick Lowe, Freddy Mercury, Geddy Lee and Mick Jagger as well the works of Elgar and Purcell. Her work in front of and behind the camera recalls Frank Tashlin, Russ Meyer and Monty Python.
Super Amanda is currently emerging as one of the most exciting performers to date for a rapidly growing audience tired of raunchy culture and looking for someone both sexy and intelligent. Renee Fladen-Kamm, Bay Area vocal coach, opera director and inspiration for The Left Banke's 'Walk Away Renee', has called Amanda "one of the most powerful female voices for rock currently performing.''
Since Super Amanda's January 2007 debut on You Tube, her combined online video hits for her first sixty video clips is over 20 million. Currently, her combined YouTube and Myspace pages boast over 32,500 subscribers, all accomplished with no promotion apart from word of mouth. Super Amanda's videos combine disparate forms such as prose and verse, theater and film references and despite their bold sexiness she is never pornographic or even verbally explicit. Her most popular video "My Hourglass Figure Makes Me Smarter" has been downloaded over 5 million times on the internet. Two of her popular channels can be viewed here:
www.youtube.com/superamandarocks and www.myspace.com/superamandamovies
Super Amanda's first EP, "Kill Switch...Klick featuring Super Amanda" on Seattle's Go-Kustom Label was released on Itunes, Amazon and Cd Baby in December 2007. The music comprises the theme for independent director and industrial rock artist D.A. Sebasstian's feature length film "Hot Rod Girls Save The World" in which she also makes a cameo appearance. The theme song called "Killing Machine" about Amazonian revenge, is being called " the perfect marriage of singer and song" and is available on the EP in five different astonishing versions including house techno and acoustic. Her second EP for Go-Kuston, "Hemi Charger" was released on Itunes in May 2008. She is currently working on a 2010 release for Go-Kustom.
Super Amanda's music can be purchased and sampled here:
cdbaby.com/cd/switchklick6
www.myspace.com/superamandarocks
phobos.apple.com/WebObject.../viewAlbum
Super Amanda grew up in the San Francisco/Bay Area. At the age of five she became fascinated with The Beatles, classical literature and many classic films from the 50's and 60's especially "The Wizard of Oz" and "Yellow Submarine." By the fourth grade she could name over 300 characters from Greek Mythology, recite verses from Dante's Inferno and the Greek alphabet yet missed getting into The G.A.T.E. (Gifted and Talented Education) program at age ten by only one point. The testing panel found her "very bright but tending towards too much creativity and fantasy." As a very rebellious teenager Amanda proudly displayed fanatical devotion to The Who, The Rolling Stones, Heavy Metal and Stanley Kubrick's film "A Clockwork Orange" (long before it was a popular with pop culture 'strip miners' ) as well as Charles Dickens, Frank L Baum, Tolstoy, Monty Python and Sophia Loren. Despite occasional suspensions (including one for a producing a punk rock zine) and clashes with her instructors, Amanda showed promise as a performer going on to win over a dozen awards in high school speech , citizenship and acting competitions and serving in student government.
Super Amanda has studied voice since the age of 15 and her vocal coaches include renowned Santa Rosa based Soprano Carol Menke and music scholar and opera director Renee Fladen -Kamm. Her stage acting credits are too numerous to note here but include Opera Non Troppo's "King Arthur" (2002) and "Dido and Aeneas" (2000) Super Amanda has also performed regularly at both The Starry Plough and LePena Cultural Center in Berkeley and at Columbia College Jazz Festival (1999).
Super Amanda is also an alumni of British singer-songwriter Rachel Fuller's live web cast chat show "In The Attic." She made a very memorable guest appearance at the ITA studio in Twickenham, appearing alongside The Who's Pete Townshend and co-host singer-songwriter Mikey Cuthbert. Pete Townshend famously described Super Amanda to Rolling Stone Magazine as being 'larger than life.' A devoted fan of The Who, Super Amanda is formerly the lead singer of the Bay Area based Who Tribute Band "Substitute." Josh Robertson, contributing editor at Playboy Magazine has dubbed her a "You Tube star and Tura Satana doppelganger " a reference to the legendary star of Russ Meyer's cult film "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" and indeed both Meyer and Satana are key influences of Super Amanda's. The "Super" in Super Amanda is itself a homage to Russ Meyer's 1975 classic adult comedy "SuperVixens." where each buxom female character's name is prefaced with "Super" to denote their over the top presence and intimidating manner. Her single "Hemi Charger" which was released in May 2008 is itself a song that pays tribute to Tura Satana's persona.
Super Amanda also has a long and varied history of social activism fighting tirelessly as a teen to ban the trophy hunting of California Mountain Lions and is a co-founder of the The Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, a non-profit with 501(C) (3) status dedicated to restoring Paul Robeson's legacy in American schools. She served as the committee's educational director and web developer from 1998 to 2008 and is now an honorary board member Emeritus.
www.bayarearobeson.org/
When Super Amanda's close family friend Jonathan F. Smith died in 1999, he willed over half of his estate to the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and The Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee at her request. Much of the endowment went towards The Monument to The Lincoln Brigade which was unveiled at San Fransisco's Vaillancourt Fountain on the Embarcadero, not far from San Francisco's Ferry Building on March 30th, 2008. Amanda is currently working on a lecture regarding Paul Robeson's work as peace maker with a focus on his African scholarship in juxtaposition with current world events, an excerpt which can be found on
superamanda.blogspot.com/2007/...a.html
In Spring 2006 she met with renowned British politician and peace activist, The Right and Honourable Tony Benn, to discuss Paul Robeson's effect on post war England. She also performed with Marcus Duskin of "Folk This" at the official west coast unveiling of the Paul Robeson postage stamp at the Hunter's Point station in San Francisco (2004) and was an adviser on the Carin T Ford book: " Paul Robeson: I Want to Make Freedom Ring" Enslow Publishers (2008), the first long form high school textbook specifically written about Paul Robeson for U.S. schools.
Super Amanda has also spent over a hundred hours re-editing and rebuilding Paul Robeson's Wikipedia article and establishing supplemental Robeson pages including the article about the legendary inter-war avant garde artistic trio, POOL .
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul...ilmography
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_Group
A visually exciting performer, her statuesque form and bombshell rocker ebullience offer a striking contrast to her down to earth political side which is also a large part of her appeal as audiences know there will never be a dull moment when she takes the stage or sits down for a chat. Along with the Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, Super Amanda is currently working on restoring Paul Robeson to his rightful place and history by planning a series of talks in the UK.
Amanda and her husband Kevin welcomed their first child in summer 2009.
