10/04/2015

Ben Folds Live - Ben Folds

Track list:

1. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
2. Zak And Sara
3. Silver Street
4. Best Imitation of Myself
5. Not The Same
6. Jane
7. One Down
8. Fred Jones Part 2
9. Brick
10. Narcolepsy
11. Army
12. The Last Polka
13. Tiny Dancer
14. Rock This Bitch
15. Philosophy
16. The Luckiest
17. Emaline

Running time: 71 minutes
Released: 2002
Three in a row; this is probably the best of the three, too. Whilst a trio of Ben Folds (Five) albums in a row is a bit like overkill I cannot be blamed for their album nomenclature issues! Thankfully I have had a few days away from the laptop so it is not quite so repetitive from that perspective.

This album contains songs from the first 3 Ben Folds Five albums as well as some from Folds' first solo effort, Rocking the Suburbs and a couple of oddities. After a brief intro spiel from an announcer Folds launches into things full tilt... it sounds less energetic on this listen than I recall from memory though, which is a disappointment that I will get over.

I am back from the holiday within a holiday, but not yet from the holiday itself. 4 days of travelling around the Peloponnese in the back of a car has my spine all shook up and my body still warming: alas we were not fortunate with the weather after the first day: lots of wind, a little rain, and temperatures more akin to Middlesbrough than the Mediterranean. Ah well; it's Good Friday today and a lazy day of whatever.

Zak and Sara is a little bit of a left field choice for live performance - its not one of his stronger songs, and yet... Stripped of anything except his piano the composition and performance are more easily appreciated than they were on the original recording. Folds' all-action playing style lends itself well to essentially covering the percussion as well as the melody and the rolling rumble of his lower hand is such that you really don't miss it. Next up is Silver Street; this an oddity - a quick Google relates it to a British Asian radio soap of the same name (as a final closer on the termination of the series) but not much about where the song came from. I have always rather liked its whimsy, melancholy and sense of inevitable decline.

I wrote a little about Best Imitation of Myself last time out, and may return to it again because it's the title of Ben Folds' retrospective, a triple-disc album looming on the horizon for these pages, so skipping over it here brings us to Not the Same - context-giving intro and backing choir and all. It has never been a particular favourite of mine. The use of the choir is pretty good and I rather like some of the top hand work in the verses but the constant of the bass chords leave me a little cold. I think I still prefer this over the version on Rocking the Suburbs though. The long outro of choir-backing sets a more relaxed mood, which is maintained by the next track. Jane was always one of my favourites from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner and its subdued tone and pleasant piano keep it a favourite.

I could have sworn that One Down had an intro chatter giving the context to this throwaway number, but I guess I must be conflating my memory of seeing Folds do it live with the recording on this live album. Talk of quotas, target numbers and wanting out of a contractual arrangement spring to mind - themes strongly echoed by the lyrics. Maybe my brain made up the contextual introduction on its own - the material is all there to lead to that conclusion...

This middle section is really rather maudlin in tone - Fred Jones is sad, Brick is beautiful but heartbreaking, One Down is redolent of being trapped. The occasional audience scream or squeal or applause can be heard during Jones pt 2, and it is completely out of tone for the song they are squealing to. I can only guess that it is related to the appearance of the guest musician but it rather breaks the mood. The intro to Brick starts, stops for Ben to explain the really obvious context, then recommences. This is probably my favourite recording of the song. Melody wandering, repeating in loops as a muted vocal and light bass structure fill in. It is thoroughly touching - very easy to identify with the decisions being made and the toll that can take. The lack of bass and drums allows the piano to fill all the space, and lends weight to the pauses between notes, transitions from chorus to bridge to verse to chorus gain gravitas from the room the notes have.

Outside as it concludes I can hear cats wailing in the wind - not a very pleasant accompaniment. That piles on top of the fact I was woken at 3.30am by a house alarm going off somewhere in the neighbourhood. It can be noisy in this area alright. Looking out the window I find that actually the cats are right outside; two of them facing off... and then they are gone, taking their noise elsewhere as Folds is playing Narcolepsy and my mind has wandered too far from it. The other piece of noteworthy news today is that Richie Benaud has passed away, probably the single most important figure in me somehow turning about from hating cricket to watching or listening avidly and I am torn between concentrating fully on this music which I have listened too regularly for more than a decade and reading tributes. Folds is now training his horn section for Army - an audience participation routine that I have been a part of and one that works where many fall flat.

Army is a rollicking tune, keys never quiet as the bustle and bluster push it through until the point the human-powered "horn section" kick in. Simple chords are added back to them and the audience fade out again for the next verse, before shouting back a line in answer. There is a puerile end to the song where Folds swaps "your mommy" for "the army" but its not enough to spoil the effect, and then he launches into The Last Polka, fingers already warmed up for the key-bashing busy number that in some ways most typifies a Folds performance and just for a second makes me think back to that sheet music and how I might like to be able to play with such verve. Then we are into knock-off Elton territory again with the cover of Tiny Dancer; I have seen video somewhere (did this disc have a bonus DVD? I don't remember) of Folds performing in oversized specs to complete the image. The comparisons have, I guess, dogged him for most of his career. I cannot claim to be familiar enough with Elton John's performances or songs to add to commentary of the similarity or otherwise, but I always liked this particular track (i.e. as Folds does it on this disc) and have maybe heard the original once - and that after I heard this. There is something in the playing here, the strength of the emphasized notes that really hits home.

Oddity, aside, waste of time that I cannot bring myself to get rid of, then into the lead out proper with yet another version of Philosophy - this one containing Misirlou in the outro - and probably my definitive version of the song. Piano only, energy coursing through it, and ended by transitioning into something else. There is percussion achieved (at a guess) by slapping the piano case and strumming the piano strings by hand (I think there must also be a second set of hands involved here but maybe I am underestimating our performer) before settling back into melody and leading out loudly.

I said on Ben Folds Five Live that I thought this was a set of tracks recorded in different halls and then mashed together; on listening I am not so sure I wasn't referencing this incorrectly, thinking instead of the live disc of Imitation. There is a consistency between tracks with carryover of applause etc. that gives me pause, not that that couldn't have been achieved through the mastering. I do not have the hard copy to hand (being on holiday) so I cannot check this, and will surely forget to when I get home. I do not fear such mistakes anyway, happy to recognise the possibility and leave it sitting here. This waffle stops me concentrating too much on the lyrics of The Luckiest which, when heard, tend to make me cringe and feel lonelier than ever. The same can be said of Emaline - a song I did not really like too much on Naked Baby Photos but loved on the second disc of Messner (I didn't get the second disc on my copy of that album, but a friend did...). The live performance adds a lot, and the extra time to round off the rough edges from what was pre-BFF material have left what, for me, is a diamond of a song - beautiful melody and sentiment.

And so now I can move on to someone other than Folds for a short while, this album completed and left entirely intact despite Rock This Bitch really deserving to be let go. It won't be long until Ben (and friends) resurface though, with just 5 things to go before Best Imitation of Myself will make it 6 out of 11 posts dedicated to Mr Folds. A lot of variety in the interim though, with jazz, folk, seminal indie rock and big beat to fit in. One of those 4 is an easy guess but the others are less obvious.

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