2 posts tagged “battle of who could care less”

This is going to sound weird but one of the punk as fuck, raucous, straight up balls out entertaining gigs I ever went to was Ben Folds Five back in 1996. It sort of embarrasses me to say that actually but it doesn't change the fact that it's true.

It may seem hard to imagine - the titular Ben Folds is the epitome of nerd chic and his two band mates at the time, Darren Jesse and Robert Sledge - aren't obvious candidates for the rock'n'roll hair raiser hall of fame. Plus the fact that it's a dude with a grand piano plus two other dudes on drums and bass.

But seriously, the gig was wild. For a start there was a huge amount of energy - Folds plays the piano like he's having hate sex with it and since the band was relatively unknown at the time the smallish venue was completely packed with nothing but hardcore fans. And me - I'd gone on a whim and was probably the only one in the joint who didn't know all the lyrics to all the songs.

And for a guy tied to a piano he was surprisingly mobile - I mean the dude climbed on top of the thing, stamped the keys with his feet, pounded them with his fists and elbows and smacked it with his stool. The encore ended with him hurling the stool across the stage at the keys to play the final crescendo.

The interaction with the audience was continuous - since then Folds has regular segments at the end of shows where he encourages different sections of  the audience to do the trumpet and saxophone parts during "Army" and a 3 part harmony during "Not The Same". If you're lucky then during the latter he'll start conducting the audience like a demented puppet master - one gig I went to he manipulated us like an instrument until we were doing, if I remember correctly, the them from Jaws.

At this gig however it was much more intimate - lots of requests shouted out (and often fulfilled, if only for a few seconds) for odd cover versions. I stumbled out later without any idea what time it was, my legs sore from jumping, my (probably flannelet) shirt drenched in sweat. I think I stage dived (dove?) a few times - to be honest it's all a bit of a blur.

 
 At the time the whole thing was a refreshing palate cleanser in the post grunge era - I was just starting college doing a CS degree, started reading Wired and the web was taking off. It kind of felt ok to be nerd who rocked out and Ben Folds Five felt like a soundtrack to that - well that and the Prodigy. But that's another story.

It was clever, witty lyrics, distorted pianos and self deprecation and I lapped up the two first albums.

After that, not so much though - there are still some gems but either I got older, or he did. I went to a gig last night and maybe it was the fact that a weekend of camping in 100°F or the fact that it was a Sunday night in Oakland or the fact that the sound quality was pretty awful but I just didn't get the same buzz as I had at previous gigs.

It's like the saying goes - you can never go home again. But you can shop there.  Or listen to tracks from the first two albums all day.

 

I was reading through Wired the other day (because I'm just that kind of hip, cool tech extropian) and came across this article on Pandora. Now if you do a bit of searching around on these there internets you may find various rants and screeds that I've penned about collaborative filtering and recommendation systems but that wasn't what bought me up short. It was this line

"College, the place where most people atone for the sonic sins of their youth, was a haze of Ben Folds Five and Dave Matthews Band. And things haven't really improved since."

I've never liked the Dave Matthews Band. Part of that is because once, after hearing a Matthew Good Band song I really liked I, err, electronically acquired a bunch of songs only to find I'd got the names Dave Matthews and Matthew Good mixed up and had downloaded several days worth of earnest dirge rather than high energy, politically tinged Candian rock.

That and the fact that once, during a poker game, the host was playing some Dave Matthews live album in the background and, after a while when I asked if all the songs were 30 minutes long or just the opening track I was politely informed that we were now several tracks in. Call me strange but when I can't tell different tracks apart then I'm pretty sure it's not the band for me.

Which is what disturbed me about the Wired quote above because I loved Ben Folds Five in college.

It's going to sound funny but the Ben Folds Five gig I went to in '97 was one of the best I've ever been to and I've been to a lot. And the Ben Folds solo gig I went to a couple of years go ranks pretty highly too.

Now, I know what you're thinking - how can a guy and piano be that good but seriously, you're going to have to trust me on this. Dude's got energy for one thing - I mean I've seen bands smash guitars before but it something else to watch someone trash their piano. Or climb on top of it and start playing it with the stool. Or throw the stool across the stage - he may be a white, nerdy guy from North Carolina but that's more rock and roll than half the faux-punk bands around at the moment.

Also, the interaction with the crowd is just amazing from requests to getting the audience to do the horns on "Army" (at about the 2 minute mark) and then leading them in a 3 part harmony for "Not the Same" - at one of gigs I went to he ended up stood on top of the piano playing the crowd like an instrument by directing the 3 sections although for the life of me I can't remember what song he got us to 'play'.

So, in rambling, slightly hungover conclusion - Ben Folds is not Dave Matthews because he's not gratuitously boring and if you disagree then yah-boo-sucks to you. At which point I leave you with "Kate" because who doesn't need 3 pasty white dudes in bed on a Monday Morning