venta

So, last week I travelled to London to watch a bloke who wears thick-rimmed glasses and cords and looks like Rick Moranis bray hell out of a piano.

Many years ago, I detached a free casette tape from the front cover of Vox magazine (RIP), played it, and promptly fell in love with a track called Julianne. It was by a band called Ben Folds Five, which I completely misparsed for several years (interpreting the "Folds" as a verb). Look, indie bands have got away with names very much dafter than that, ok ?

Fast forward a few years, and you'll find me sitting on a floor in St Edmund's Hall trying to pretend that I knew Ben Folds was a pianist, and leader of the Ben Folds Five. Of whom, I might add, there were only three anyway, including him. I don't think I was very convincing.

Ben Folds Five disbanded a few years ago, but Ben Folds himself is still alive and kicking. Last year, I had a ticket to see him playing at the Barbican. The show was cancelled when he fell ill, and rescheduled for this June - and happened, despite him managing to crack a rib flying into the UK.

Now, I actually think we profitted here: I believe last year's tour was Ben Folds solo. This year's tour includes a bassist and a drummer, and was truly fantastic. I'd been a little wary, because the recently released solo album Songs For Silverman had been a little, well, lacklustre. It's nice enough, and quite pretty, and I like listening to it. But it's very monotone, and mellow, and completely lacks the, well, pretty much the everything of earlier albums.

I needn't have worried. Crouched over, rather than sitting on, his piano stool, Ben Folds still kicks arse live. He's still there attacking the pinao as if his life depended on getting the chords out. A casual glampse at his key-mashing, almost random style and you might be excused for thinking that he was any two-bit pub piano player. Then suddenly he'll settle down and a flood of beautiful, lyrical playing comes out - sure he can. Just sometimes he choose not to.

Very few tracks from the new album seemed to be on show - mostly it was the rocking, witty, humorous and frequently obscene songs from earlier days.

I think the evening's highlight for me was the cover of Bitches Ain't Shit, originally by Dr Dre. "But Venta," you cry, "Dr Dre is a gansta rapper and Ben Folds is a jazz pianist. How does that work?"

Well... Ben Folds actually described the track as a collaboration (albeit an unwitting one on Dr Dre's part) - Dre wrote the words, he wrote the tune. Oh yes, it has a tune now. And quite a nice one. And some interesting piano breaks, and a nice section of three-part harmony in the middle. Genius. (I even attempted to brave iGoats to download this track, but failed as it's only available from iGoats in the US :( )

As I've often said before, inspired covers are something that really endears a band to me. But in this case, I see it more as an extension of the thoroughly entertaining and creative improvisation to which Ben Folds is prone. Sure, he opened his set with a solid cover of In Between Days, but it's really the almost-throwaway extras that make the gig.

I wasn't expecting him to suddenly break into Purple Haze. I wasn't expecting him to tack Hot Butter's Popcorn on the end of a song, or shove Miserilou in to finish another. And on at least one occasion, I don't think the rest of his band was expecting it either. But they're pros; they joined in.

There is a Ben Folds Live DVD in which someone in the crowd shouts "rock this bitch", and is obligingly dealt out a short, improvised song called Rock This Bitch. This has caught on, in a big way. The web is full of reports of Rock This Bitch being performed in various styles, and in various evolutions.

So, the shouts started, and Ben Folds stared reprovingly at the crowd. The Barbican, we were told, should not be called a bitch. He did promise, however, that he would rock later, once the elderly Barbican employee known as the Rock Regulator had fallen asleep. And indeed, our Rock This Bitch turned up shortly afterwards, in the form of The Barbican Is Not Your Bitch ("The Barbican is a respectable place/The Barbican should not be called names")

To anyone who's used to jazz, the idea of a trio being able to improvise 128 bars without warning is nothing. It's commonplace. But if you hang around indie joints, it's bloody unusual. And it ought to be encouraged.

Actually, the other highlight kept me amused for the entire concert (except the brief spell when it left the stage): the drummer. I like drummers. I like singing drummers better. I have no idea whether this drummer was a drummer of particular merit, but I do know that he was outrageously happy to be there. As far as I know, I've never before seen someone who enjoyed hitting things with sticks quite so much as this guy. I kept breaking out into spontaneous giggling - not laughing at him, but just enjoying the sheer exuberance with which he was, well, hitting things with sticks.

The bass player, who looked like an oversized student, had a great beard and a mean falsetto was good too. But really, in between watching Ben Folds hands (which we were ideally placed to do, front row, facing the keyboard) and laughing at the drummer, I kept forgetting about him. Which is a shame, because I suspect him of being rather a nifty bass player, too.

At times, this seemed to be the Ben Folds Five in all but name. As a trio, they're fantastic. They're rockin' the suburbs (just like Michael Jackson did).