PALLOT EXPLAINS: Jamie Pallot resurfaced in this past weekend’s FT Magazine in a first-person piece explaining why he left his job at Vanity Fair, where he was executive director of multimedia projects. “‘I learnt to sing at 50 and quit my day job,’” read the piece’s subhead. Pallot was at Vanity Fair for almost two years when he quit last month. In the last year, Pallot picked up the guitar, a hobby of his teens, again in earnest. “I’d come home from my Manhattan media job and play for hours every night,” he explained. Soon, he was bold enough to perform in front of friends and at birthday parties, a dinner at a Venice palazzo, an open mic session in Manhattan’s East Village and a private party attended by David Byrne — “He grinned throughout and applauded,” Pallot wrote of the Talking Heads musician.
After a packed show at a club in the Lower East Side, Pallot “did the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I quit my job to devote myself to writing and performing my own material.” His stage name is “Hello I’m Jamie.” He concedes he won’t make a living performing music, but to “not to let this thing run its course would have seemed kind of criminal.” Over at Vanity Fair, his position has not been filled.