On Friday night, Whitney and I hit up the 9:30 Club with Yeah Right reader (and unofficial YR photographer) Denise to see the "Ben Folds and a piano" tour. Twas a good time.
The opener was Zach Williams who I can only assume is desperate to be the next Conor Oberst. Trouble is, Zach Williams is nowhere near as good a songwriter as Conor Oberst. His strategy for overcoming this shortfall was to sing extra loud. It was a slightly more talented version of a drunk person singing "Don't Stop Believing" extra loud at karaoke to compensate for the fact that they can't hit the high notes. He was trying so hard but it just wasn't good. It was kind of sad really. His last song (something about dragons) was particularly painful. But his set was short enough that I won't hold a grudge.
Before I get to the glory that was Ben Folds, let's digress and discuss the crowd. First off, this was the tallest group of people I've ever seen at a concert. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the fan base of a tall, dorky white guy has a large percentage of tall, dorky white guys. As you can imagine, this did not make it any easier to see Ben, since it was hard enough to see a dude sitting down at a piano without all the tall folk around.
There was also greater mix of ages than I expected. Ben Folds Five popularity peaked in 1998 so assumed that the crowd would be mostly in the 25-35 range. There were lots of those folks, but apparently the youngsters nowadays still enjoy the Ben Folds. There were plenty of high school kids in the crowd. We had a particularly entertaining gang of high schoolers standing in front of us. Where to begin with this group. Half of them were wearing a Ben Folds t-shirt. One of them had a longer emo style hair cut that kept getting in his eyes so he would shake his hair from side to side (much like a wet dog drying off) once every few minutes or so. This same young gentlemen was also a fan of putting his arms around the guys standing next to him and swaying during the slow songs. I love people watching.
But back to the music. Ben Folds played for over two hours. Just him and a piano. That meant that the audience was charged with harmonies and backing vocals, like Regina Spektor's part in "You Don't Know Me." For the more complicated bits he would split the audience into sections and conduct us like a choir director.
I was obsessed with Whatever and Ever Amen back in the day and I'd never seen Ben live before, either in solo or Ben Folds Five form. I was curious to see how many BFF songs he would play vs. his solo material. I was clearly pleased when he busted out "Kate" but he never played "Brick" or "Song for the Dumped" and that makes me a sad panda. But I'm seeing him again next month when he opens up for Weezer, so let's hope I'll get some more Whatever and Ever Amen action in that set.
Those concerns aside, he did play a good range of songs including old tracks, new tracks, and even unreleased tracks. "Jesusland," "Army," "Landed," "You Don't Know Me," "Effington," and "Still Fighting It" were all big crowd pleasers. You could tell that he didn't really have a set list as he would play pretty much anything that people shouted out. That probably accounts for some of the more obscure unreleased stuff that he played -- "Oh, you want to hear that? Really? Okay." He ended his encore by letting the the audience vote for "Rockin' the Suburbs" or "Bitches Ain't Shit" as the last song. The vote was a landslide for the Dr. Dre track.
Photo Credit: Denise
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