Monday, May 30, 2011

Ben Folds

On Sunday May 22 I went to see the Ben Folds gig at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre1. It's the second time I'll have seen him since he went solo; the last time was quite a while back, when he played with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra at the Festival Centre. Prior to that I saw him twice when he was still with Ben Folds Five.

I was huge Ben Folds Five fan; their first (self-titled) album is one of my favourites, and I rate it as one of the best – maybe even the best – debut album of all time. While I'm not quite as fond of the later albums with the group or his solo stuff – which isn't to say that I think it's bad, per se; it's that the debut album is so damn good, with an amazing energy and some truly kickass songs like Underground, Philosophy, Best Imitation of Myself, Video, Julianne and Uncle Walter, it's hard for anything else to compare – there are good songs on each. So I'd always be up to see him live.

His most recent album, Lonely Avenue was a bit of a departure from his usual style; he'd worked with English author Nick Hornby – author of Fever Pitch, About a Boy and High Fidelity – who'd written lyrics to which Folds put music. The result is different from his normal stuff, though with a few familiar touches – and it's really quite a good album.

So, with all of that in mind, my similarly-minded friend and I didn't hesitate to buy tickets when they went on sale; this was even more important than usual for this show, because it was allocated seating rather than general admission. So we ended up in the third row from the front, off to the right.

It was a thoroughly miserable evening, windy and raining; I wasn't in the best of moods – I'd pulled something in by lower back on Saturday morning, and later that day some miserable piece of shit had stolen the front wheel from my bike while I was enjoying an excellent production of Miss Saigon, which had put me in a bad mood that even by Sunday evening I was not quite over.

We managed to get a park not far from the entertainment centre – it was busier than usual because in the main section was the current Cirque de Soleil production, Saltimbanco. We timed it well, since the rain was light for as long as it took for us to get under cover – and it bucketed down a few minutes later.

The support act was Kate Miller-Heidke, who I was familiar with from the occasional song on the radio, and appearances on tv shows like Spicks and Specks, but who I'd never seen play live before. But she was even more awesome live than I'd expected; I intend to catch her solo show when she's next in Adelaide.

And then it was time for Ben.

1For those unfamiliar with the AEC Theatre, it's the newer, smaller section – separate from the big main space. It's the third time I've been there; last year it was the venue for Massive Attack and Regina Spektor.

The songs

I'm not going to list them all, but I will talk about those that were significant in some way or another. You can find the complete setlist here at Setlist.fm.

He opened with Levi Johnston's Blues, one of my favourites from Lonely Avenue – it's a song about the guy who knocked up US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol, based on things he'd posted on his Facebook page.

A bit later he played Belinda, another from Lonely Avenue; this one he spoke at length about beforehand, mostly about how difficult it was to write a song about a fictional character, considering that all his other music is about personal experiences, as well as having to include a song within the song that the main song is about.

It makes sense in context.

Not the Same, from Rockin' the Suburbs came along, and he explained that there was a particular significance to performing the song in Adelaide, because it was while he was living here that he recorded it, at Krell Studios –situated literally only a few hundred metres from where we were. And because of that, he wanted to record this performance for an upcoming live album.

Which is all kinds of awesome, because it's a song that he, wherever he is, always gets the crowd to participate in; singing the bit that goes 'ah-aah', with the audience split to sing the three different parts. So, I – and about two thousand others – might end up on a Ben Folds album.

He played Adelaide, which is a song I like the idea of – unsurprisingly, given it's where I choose to live – despite the fact I don't really like the song itself.

Kate Miller-Heidke came back on to help out with From Above and You Don't Know Me, and then the rest of the band left so Ben could play some solo songs, including Lullabye (one of the few songs from the last Ben Folds Five album, The Untitled Biography of Rheinhold Messner that I actually like), Brick (which I didn't think he did anymore, and which I could have lived without – but the crowd seemed happy to hear it), and Luckiest, which he explained had originally been written for a scene from the film Loser, but which wound up on the cutting room floor.

The band came back on and they played the song I was most hoping to hear – Landed, from Songs for Silverman, followed by Zak and Sara, Kate and another with crowd participation, Army.

After the encore they came back and played around with percussion for a while, and then got into the fairly traditional ending for his live shows, an extended version of Philosophy that includes the riff from Misirlou and then goes straight into Theme from Dr. Pyser.

And that was that. It was a great gig; while he's matured significantly as a songwriter, he's still a great, energetic performer who clearly loves being in front of an audience.

2 comments:

  1. That would have been good... I haven't seen him live since 2005 in Japan, and would definitely be keen to see him again. You've inspired me to get (download) the more recent albums that I don't have. I would have liked to have seen 'Kate' and especially an extended version of 'Philosophy'. I guess it was expected that he'd play 'Adelaide', given the location. I think I agree with you on that song; I don't know that I like the song, but have decided to 'like' it as a kind of default setting, being from Adelaide.

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  2. It definitely was an awesome gig (although from the point of view of my "not someone in love with ben folds' general awesomeness and not someone who knows the lyrics to his every song " boyfriend, apparently it was okay). I was sitting there being super excited about how he was playing Zak and Sara, and thinking "wow, how cool would it be if he played Kate? I love that song!" when all of a sudden he launched into it! Incidentally, I did turn around and do a girly squeal to the boyfriend at that point, which was met with a blank "why are you squealing?" look :)
    (I love Landed too, but I'm even more of a fan of Not the Same since I heard the a cappella version from University A Cappella!)

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