More music blogging
So I saw Ben Folds last night, for the 4th time live. The show was awesome, really really awesome as always, and yet I still have to admit that I feel slightly unsatisfied.
It isn't Bens fault. He is a victim of his own success and own amazing live shows. They're so energetic and so much fun that you remember, long afterwards, great songs he performed and can't wait to see him play them again. Yet he has too many songs now and can't play all the ones you want anymore. Every show before the last one, that I saw, he opened with 1 Angry Dawrf and 200 Solem Faces (great song, even greater when performed live.) This time, though, he opened with Bastard from his new album. A good song, but not nearly as much fun as the first one. But then he made up for it by playing 1 Angry Dawrf as his encore.
However, Ben is trying to sell a new album while at the same time not alienate his longtime fans. How does one pick and choose which songs to play when you only get 10-13 songs and half of them need to be from your newest album if you're pushing that material. I think he did a great job with his choices, so I can't even fault him for that. But a Ben show that doesn't play Army? So sad.
Really, I think he needs to just play for like 2 hours ever set. I know this isn't doable, but it's the only way that everyone will be happy.
Oh, and P.S., Ben, you need some help with who opens for you. I have YET to like an opening band (well, that's only kinda true because Ben Lee who played like 5 songs last night was pretty good.) Fleming and John suck, that guy who couldn't remember that name of his own band or the words to his song sucked and Rufus Wainwright last night almost put me to sleep.
posted by Chris Smith @ 2:35 PM
2 Comments:
Right after Weezer came out with Maladroit, Jann and I saw them at the Tweeter Center. Dashboard Confessional opened for them, which was PERFECT because the crowd was really fired up by the time weezer came out and I really noticed an energy difference in the night because of that. But anyway, back to the point. They were promoting Maladroit. Years earlier, when I saw them just after the green album came out, they played the entire album in the show, so I figured the same would happen here. But they didn't. They played pretty much the entire blue album and Pinkerton, and then a few songs from green and maladroit. It was an AMAZING set. I was really surprised they they did that...but I'm certainly not complaining. But I guess weezer hasn't ever really followed the traditional logic for anything they do. that's why they release their songs to the public for free before the albums come out, and share all their demos on websites. The money just doesn't matter to them very much.
I saw Rufus with Ben and Guster last summer. Waineright - oh man - does that guy revel in his own sucktitude....
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