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Ben Folds | Ben Folds Live

One man, one piano, one live album.
CD, Sony Music

Tekst: Norbert Pek

Publicatiedatum: 11 oktober 2002

It's not a classical concert, but there still is one man with one piano. And there's also some singing, and together we hear some quite familiar songs. Well, familiar: The condition is that you've listened to some of the albums this man has made in the past, with his band and recently also alone, like he is right now, playing in a theatre with an enthusiastic crowd. His name is Ben Folds and territorial problems made him leave his beloved Ben Folds Five. That's the band that first gave him the fame, even though BFF was never a real chartbuster. Ben just can't stop writing songs, and that's why he releases solo albums now. First a regular one and now a live show. Ben is also known to be a bombast fanatic. The latest album, Reinhold Messner, was full of strings, big drums, trumpets, and more, whereas the debut was only a piano/bass/drums piece. But Folds never went as far as a recent B-side called The Secret Life Of Morgan Davis with a complete musical orchestra. He might as well be tapping around the stage if it weren't his duty to play the piano.

The bombast of the recent recordings has to be translated to performing on a single piano now. Folds pulls it off most of the time, like when he plays Narcolepsy with the hammering of a lot of bass tones. He is fast, creative, and able to fill in all of the missing pieces caused by the absence of a full band. And when there isn't a band you can also use the audience. On Army he divides the audience into two sections: a trumpet section and a saxophone section. First he lets them practice together, and then, in the middle of the song, he uses it. Crowd happy, Ben happy. But sometimes you do wish for something supplemental. It's hard to get the Ben Folds Bombast out of your system, so sometimes a musical explosion would be nice.
Ben is at his best during this show on the small sensitive songs. He adds an extra dimension to Brick ("she is a brick and I'm drowning slowly") by explaining that the song is about an abortion his girlfriend had to get in high school. Fred Jones Part 1 is the only part of the show where he lets someone sing along, which is quite essential as well.

The selection of the show is terrific: a few songs from every album, mostly the best ones or the ones that sound good on piano only, but also a few B-sides including the recent One Down (originally played with a lot of acoustic guitar, but the single piano version reveals even more beauty.). And that's a thing we already knew about The Luckiest, also presented as a simple love song, but without strings this time around.
It's simple: When you hear Ben Folds Live you want to attend such a gig as quickly as possible. You want to be in the middle of that enthusiastic audience that hears and understands the sounds coming from the stage. There they see this one man who won't stop playing the piano and singing along, with band or without. The conclusion in Ben's own words in One Down: "People tell me 'Ben, just make up junk and turn it in’' but I never could quite bring myself to write a bunch of shit."

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/ben-folds/ben-folds-live/1938/
Meer Ben Folds op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/ben-folds