Stump Lane

[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.]

This 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.