Ben Folds Concert Review: Fantastic

I adore Ben Folds even more than I did before.

He played a lot of new material from the latest album "Way to Normal" and songs from "Rockin the Suburbs", both albums I don't have. He didn't play Army but that's okay.

The man is smart, funny, clever and talented. And according to Potty Mouth who commented in my previous post, he likes cats. What a guy!

I can't give you a set list because I don't remember/know the songs. The songs he did play from "Whatever and Ever Amen" weren't the ones I was hoping to hear, but they were great anyway. Nothing from "Rheinhold Messner", either.

He talked about forging his advisor's signature in college so he could get into some post-graduate level music composition courses. He was found out and his credits didn't count, but he learned techniques on changing the sound of a piano with objects like Altoid tins (ha!) - which he demonstrated on one of his songs.  

He also played some of his "fake songs", which were songs he and the band recorded in an eight hour period while on tour to leak out on the internet prior to the album being released. He played the real songs, then the fake equivalent (which had different names on request of his label). He admitted that they did it as a joke, but then ended up really liking them.

Or as he was quoted in the media: "I think some people hate it because they were told it was a joke. In the end people got free songs and we had something to do on July 11.”

We loved them. Here are my two favorites of the fakes. I downloaded them and hopefully I did it right (OMG - my first internet music download experience! I did it for you!)

One song is "Free Coffee Town", which is both silly and sweet. The other is a fun song about a depressed man asking Dr. Yang to help him get his girlfriend back.

Enjoy!