Ben Folds
Last week, gigging buddy Jenn, Nic and I went to see Ben Folds play at the Academy in Bristol. It was the last night of his tour and although I knew I would see him play at Glasto I decided he’d be worth seeing at his own show.
And how right I was.
Firstly we had the most random support ever from Corn Mo. I’ve not picked a specific video to link to on YouTube, as frankly I couldn’t pick one, so this link just goes to a pile search results hopefully. One man, an accordian, a keyboard and a drumstick in his shoelaces for kicking a cymbal with. I kid you not. Genius. Apparently he gave his demo tape to Ben at an airport and the rest is history (as someone somewhere says).
On to the main event though. I had semi-complained in my Glasto write-up that Ben Folds seemed a bit cocky and/or uninterested in the performance and I was a bit miffed that we lost two of Folds songs to Amanda of the Dresden Dolls. Thankfully it might be that he was drunk, upset that his $2000 synth was getting rained or maybe he just doesn’t really like playing festivals, as his Bristol show made up for it in spades.
He came on just before nine and then played a 2 hours plus set round til eleven and was on top form.
A quick look on Wiki post-Glasto and pre-gig confirmed that the reason I didn’t recognise a lot of his songs was due to the fact I only have one of of his two studio albums and none of his live stuff. But that didn’t matter. He was brilliant, playing with accompaniment on drums and bass from his two (main) backing musicians and occasional tambourine from a guy who ran on stage (to huge acclaim) from the crowd.
He played a tight and sharp set, sometimes sat at the piano, sometimes stood in a lunging position so he could still tap the pedal. Totally animated and involved at all times. Due to the overall shortness of our party, (I was the tallest so you get the idea) we were stood up on the balcony and we had a superb view of him playing and it was just incredble.
So I’ve gushed about the whole thing quite a lot, so I’ll shut up in a minute, but first a couple of personal highlights and then a couple of apologies.
Highlight 1. When he played Landed – one of my favourite songs ever.
Highlight 2. When he played Battle of who could care less – the first time I ever heard any of his songs when I was at Portsmouth in 1997. And still an awesome song today.
Apology 1. Corin – so much better than Glasto. I wish you could have been there. Sorry.
Apology 2. Jenn – yep, we were at the front of the balcony, in the centre, for Portishead back in December. Sorry.
No apology required. The man who invented black sambuca (and gin and vodka) should probably be apologising in spades though… He owes me an unrivalled view of Portishead in a small venue close to their home town, dammit.
I haven’t got round to blogging about Ben Folds yet but you’ve done it so well that I might not bother. Although my highlights (not owning ANY Ben Folds at all) were his cover of Such Great Heights which was just lovely and involved synths (always a good thing), his impromtu song about Wales, the sheer length of the set and the fact that he played the last note of the whole evening by throwing his stool at the piano.
All that and Corn Mo’s shoelace cymbal playing of course :)
Ooh! And the fact that Corn Mo kept digressing and bringing us back on track by saying, “Anyhoo…”
You could point all your last.fm buddies at this page in that case :)
*hints*
Did you see my latest last.fm “chat”??? I have no idea who he is but he was standing RIGHT NEXT TO US. The power of the internet, eh?
[...] in July Jenn, Nic and I went to see Ben Folds at the Academy in Bristol. Following a brilliant gig, I’m not sure how it happened, but there [...]