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An Inordinately High Proportion of Songs About "Bitches"

April 29, 2009

[What is the protocol around here for burying two posts that only just appeared at the top of the page in the time since I started composing this post? With apologies, be sure to see Agi’s All Your Carbon Are Belong To Us and Mike’s If A Senator Switched Parties And No One Cared Would It Make A Difference? below.]

LoserThis is probably going to blow any street cred I may have had with this crowd, but I went to a Ben Folds concert last night. Went with my dad, who I had put on to Ben Folds Five 11 or 12 years ago. He’s been following Folds since, though I have not. But he asked me to go. So I went. It was good. Dude can fucking shred on the piano. And the band was tight. Piano — bass — drums — one guy who played synthesizers, horns, xylophone and other percussion instruments — and another percussionist who was the best tambourine player I have ever witnessed, and could kick Will Ferrell’s ass at cowbell any day. (Folds actually had him take a cowbell solo at one point.)

A highlight for me was a song introduced as one of a group of intentionally shitty tracks leaked on the internet as a gag prior to the release of one of their albums.

The Bitch Went Nuts

Even more highlighty, here is what can happen when you jam a couple of Altoids tins in a grand piano and play it through a distortion pedal.

Free Coffee

They didn’t do a whole lot of Ben Folds Five stuff, so aside from two covers of fake doctors (Dr. Dre and Dr. Hook,) I was hearing most of the songs cold, without having heard them before, and it was still a great show.

3 Comments leave one →
  1. April 29, 2009 9:41 AM

    Ben Folds seems like one of those artists that would put on a great live show. Speaking of street cred, the last show I saw prior to the two DJ Shadow concerts in ’06 and ’07 was Fountains of Wayne. Sounds like we’re in the same boat, musically.

  2. April 29, 2009 10:15 AM

    “Here is what can happen when you jam a couple of Altoids tins in a grand piano and play it through a distortion pedal.”
    Ben Folds is channeling John Cage? Sweet.

  3. Montag permalink
    April 29, 2009 10:23 AM

    thanks, BDR, now i’ve learned my new item for the day.
    from the wikipedia page on John Cage:
    Another famous creation of Cage’s is the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by placing various objects in the strings) …
    Ben Folds did call it “prepared piano” as he explained what he was doing. also it sounded way cooler in person than it does in the you tube.

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