Late update Saturday! I flew to D.C. from Milwaukee yesterday to visit Lisa for a long weekend. I’m off for spring break for another week or so, and on Thursday I got tickets to see engage in some high school nostalgia by seeing Ben Folds with my kick-ass little brother at the Rave in downtown Milwaukee. I saw him three years ago at the same building, but he was playing at the Eagles Ballroom as opposed to the Eagles Club, which is much smaller. What did he do to get downgraded?
First, a disclaimer: I don’t do much blogging about music. I prefer to leave that to my friend TJ. But I also hadn’t been to a real concert in over two years, so it was a pretty big event for me. Anyway, Ben Folds:
In my opinion, his latest release, Way to Normal, while a valiant effort to return to the whimsical, irreverent style of the Five, kinda blows. Yes, there are a few good tracks, but as an overall work, not so much. Not going to give you a review of that here, though. Check out the sidebar on the Wikipedia page for those… Pitchfork’s review (2.7/10) is especially damning. Here you’ll find the setlist from Ben’s show on Thursday:
- Lovesick Diagnostician (a.k.a. the fake ‘Dr. Yang’)
- Dr. Yang
- Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head)
- Free Coffee
- Annie Waits
- Alice Childress
- Bastard
- Effington
- Brainwashed
- There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You
- Fair
- You Don’t Know Me
- Landed
- Zak and Sara
- Bitch Went Nutz (‘fake’ version)
- One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
- Boxing (solo)
- Eddie Walker (solo)
- Best Imitation of Myself (solo)
- Kylie from Connecticut
- Cologne
- Tom & Mary
- Rockin’ the Suburbs
- Army
- Errant Dog (encore)
- Where’s Summer B.?
- Not the Same
There were a few treats there, especially Fair, Boxing, and the little-known Tom & Mary. He improv’ed a little about the microphone smelling bad. But I was extremely disappointed that Errant Dog, probably one of the worst Folds songs out there was the encore opener. And was it just me, or did Ben seem much less personable and open than he has in the past? I missed the stories, the audience interaction, even throwing the stool at the piano was gone. He did call some people ‘fuckin’ assholes’ at the end. In any case. Let’s break down this setlist:
- Way to Normal (9/30/08): 9 songs
- Way to Normal (fake) (leaked summer ’08): 2 songs
- Songs For Silverman (4/26/05): 2 songs
- Sunny 16 (9/30/03): 1 song
- Rockin’ the Suburbs (9/11/01): 4 songs
- The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (4/27/99): 1 song
- Naked Baby Photos (1/13/98): 2 songs
- Whatever & Ever Amen (3/18/97): 2 songs
- Ben Folds Five (8/8/95): 4 songs
Or, by recording group:
- Ben Folds: 18 songs
- Ben Folds Five: 9 songs
Hmmm. He played almost every track on Way to Normal (skipped Frown Song, Before Cologne, and Bitch Went Nuts), which is to be expected, but I was surprised at how little he played from Songs For Silverman and how many from the Five’s namesake album. I think I wasn’t the only one engaging in nostalgia Thursday night. Here’s to hoping that the next time Ben returns to Milwaukee, he’ll have found his way… to normal.
