Monday 03/06/06
Ben Folds rocked the house at the Paramount last Saturday night. It was the first time I'd seen him perform and it was a hell of a lot of fun. The crowd was enthusiastic and gave the opener, Chris Mills, a lot of love too. He deserved it, he was very good.
Ben's set focused on his recent music. I think he only did one song from the Five's first album ("Philosophy"), three from Reinhold Messner, and nothing at all from Whatever and Ever Amen. It must be a relief for him not to feel obligated to play "Brick" anymore. He did do both "Army" and "Not the Same" (both of which include audience participation) despite rumors that he was getting tired of "Army." We were treated to his cover of "Bitches Ain't Shit" but, sadly, no "Rock This Bitch," and no Shatner songs (of course, those probably wouldn't really work without Shatner).
Unlike his previous tour, where it was just him and a piano, he did have a drummer and a bassist with him, thus recreating the Ben Folds Five sound -- Lindsay Jamieson and Jared Reynolds, who played on Songs for Silverman. He did a few songs solo as well, however.
Ben revealed that he's been working on the soundtrack for an animated film for DreamWorks, Over the Hedge. He apparently spent the last couple of weeks editing bass drum tracks in Pro Tools and says that if they gave out an Oscar for the tightest bass drum track in an animated feature, this would be a shoo-in.
I was amazed at the variety of people who came out to this show. Sure they were almost all white, and I only say "almost all" just in case there were some persons of color up on the balcony where I couldn't see them, but it was quite a wide range of ages and "types." I'm pretty sure that the five people sitting in front of Kristine and me constituted an entire Folds-loving family (a rather liberal one, given the profanity that laces half his tunes). But no matter their age, nearly everyone seemed to know the words to every song and often sang along -- on key. There wasn't a dry eye in the house as he did "Still Fighting It," the song he wrote for his son, and it was oddly touching to see a bunch of kids tearing up to "Fred Jones Part II," a song about a retiree.
If you have a chance to go see Ben Folds on this tour, take it, especially if you've not seen him before.
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