Well, last night was the third time I’d seen a Ben Folds show, and despite a slew of technical difficulties, it was hands down the best concert of the three. For starters, he did even more covers and impromptu little ditties than usual…
- “Your Cheatin’ Heart” (by Hank Williams)
- A song he called “F#ck You, I’ll Miss You” (which Ben made up on the spot, after mis-hearing a couple girls yell out “F#ck Yeah, MSU!”)
- “Rock Out With Your C*ck Out” (which accompanied a funny story about how he accidentally flashed his family jewels to an audience one night after stripping down to his boxers)
- “Bitches Ain’t Shit” (Dr. Dre’s “sad” rap song)
- “Such Great Heights” (which I posted the other day)
It’s funny. Just looking at those song titles, it sounds like Ben is this really crude jackass, but that’s part of what’s so funny about him. The guy can take a song called “Bitches Ain’t Shit” and make it sound romantic. I guess that’s the magic of the piano.
And speaking of pianos, the funniest part of the show was about three quarters of the way in, when the pedals on Ben’s piano started busting apart. He interrupted the lyrics to the song he was playing, and started singing about MSU’s shitty piano. He eventually quit playing, and signaled for someone to come try to fix it. This scruffy looking dude came out with a screw driver and got under the piano, but quickly figured out that it wasn’t attached with any screws. Ben kinda tried to keep things moving by making up a tune on his synthesizer, but he was clearly peeved, and just walked off the stage after a few minutes.
Another guy came running out with some duct tape, and they started wrapping the pedals, trying to re-attach the unit to the bottom of the piano. The crowd was starting to get restless by this point, but then we noticed this guy in a blue silk shirt stand up over in the section next to ours. A couple people behind us started chanting “Rick Shaw – Rick Shaw!” and we finally figured out that this was the harmonica-playing cab driver that Ben had brought up on stage at last year’s concert. I guess the guy just decided to show up at the concert with his harp, hoping that he might get invited onstage.
Well, Ben finally came back out, noticed Rick, and brought him up. They started jamming on an impromptu blues number with Rick whaling on his harmonica, and everyone in the crowd was going nuts. I think a lot of people remembered him from last year, and it was just hysterical to have the whole piano pedal episode capped off with Rick Shaw onstage.
Rick took a bow and made a graceful exit after his jam session, and then Ben and his band ripped into this amazing sequence of songs to cap off the main part of the show. They did Narcolepsy, Kate, Zak and Sara, Army, and, my personal favorite, Underground. For those who don’t know, Underground is my favorite Ben Folds Five song… maybe even one of my top-five favorite songs of all time. I’ve never seen Ben perform it live, so I was pretty geeked that he decided to play it last night.
Anyway, they came back out for the encore and played Not the Same, which is another great song for crowd participation. All those angelic “ahhhh-ahhhhhhs” just sound really cool with a couple thousand people singing a three-part harmony together (check out the video below to see what I’m talking about).
So yeah, the show was even better than I expected, and as bummed as I was about missing my dad’s big debut as a playwright, I was really glad we were able to go.
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