Hand me my nose-ring, show me the moshpit

[venta]

I've written before about seeing Ben Folds; although I've seen him live a few times, and seen him with his touring band, last night was special.

For the first time in thirteen years, the badly-named Ben Folds Five (they're a trio) were back together and touring.

As I overheard some bloke saying in a Subway opposite Brixton tube: "it's not that I dislike his solo stuff". It's nice, some of it's really good, lots of it is quite pretty piano music. But relatively little of it has the brash, ballsy sound of the Ben Folds Five. The man himself described the Five as "punk rock for cissies".

After a rather unattention-grabbing support from Alicia Witt, the other support act came on and also failed to get the attention they really deserved. Bitter Ruin are legally a duo (one boy, one girl, both sing, he plays guitar) but seemed to have picked up an extra cellist from somewhere. Sadly, their acoustic sound didn't have the punch to silence a chattering roomful and I suspect most people regarded them as pleasant background.

I really liked them though - picking up their CD bundle from the merch table on the way out. They do the two-vocal thing very well, and swing between beautiful, lyrical music and shouty, screamy anger at the drop of a hat. And boy, can they both sing. I recommend listening to Trust, if you're interested.

All three of the Five came on stage and... sort of drifted into a gig. I'm terrible at remembering BFF song names, but the first few were of the "OK" type. Fine. But not exciting. Then suddenly they kicked off into Jackson Cannery and we were away... when Ben Folds is good, he's blinding. Darren Jessee drums like a demon without actually seeming to move or exert himself in any way. And the bassist, Robert Sledge... he likes his distortion. The bass fuzzes and crackles til you wonder whether it's deliberate or whether some important fuse has blown in an amp somewhere. Then he throws in a bass solo, and you think yeah, that's deliberate.

There is a new BFF album out, which I've been approaching with some caution, but live some of the songs really grabbed me. I'm delighted to learn, too, that BFF have adopted Rock This Bitch from Ben Folds' solo shows - for explanation and example, watch Ben Folds rocking this bitch with a full (surprised) symphony orchestra. Rocking This Bitch in Brixton covered the architectural features of the venue ("Ionic columns, if I'm not very much mistaken"), the last band Ben Folds saw there (RATM), the BSE crisis, and various other things along the way.

However, the high point was the three older songs leading up to the end of the set: Song For the Dumped, Kate and Underground with the audience belting out the words and the Five playing fit to smash everything.

There was a brief encore, with Mr Folds walking across the piano keyboard to stand on his grand and conduct the audience singing the trumpet harmonies of Army, and we're done. No Philosophy! No Julianne! No Best Imitation of Myself! A great night - but they should have let us write the setlist :)

As an aside: if anyone is reading who doesn't consider themselves a fan of Ben Folds or his Five, can they tell me whether they know any songs by him/them? Ben Folds' singles have rarely charted, which makes it tricky to know which songs, if any, are "known".

Comments

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

As someone who's been recommended them endlessly but never quite got round to getting into them, I know Underground but nothing else i think.

Incidentally, i saw Bitter Ruin in a smaller, and I'm guessing much more attentive, venue a couple of months back and was very impressed