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Ben
Folds & a Piano
with special guest: Duncan Sheik
city: madison, WI
venue: barrymore theatre
date: 11.24.02 |
Ben Folds
Pleases Crowd; Groupies Just Like Quite Riot Did
by:
thomas rensink
Musical artists
Ben Folds and Duncan Sheik played in Madison at the Barrymore
Sunday, November 24th. The show opened with Sheik and synth guitarist
Gerry Leonard, playing electric and acoustic guitar based songs
including the well-known radio hit “Barely Breathing.”
Sheik’s smooth falsetto complemented the two guitars and
sounded as good live as recorded.
Following
Sheik’s performance, a single Baldwin Grand Piano was set
on stage, and solo performer Ben Folds soon followed. With great
musical depth and ingenuity, Folds produced a sound that is rarely
matched by solo performances. Using an array of creative methods
to deliver a full band effect, he rearranged previously recorded
songs for solo piano and used tricks like invoking the audience
as back up vocals for instrumental parts and using the damper
pedal as a kind of percussive technique. To complete the one-man
show, Folds showed his varied talents as he transitioned in one
song to a drum solo and finished on the piano without a pause.
For the duration of the concert, he performed almost exclusively
by request with familiar songs like “Brick,” “Emaline,”
“Rockin’ the Suburbs,” and “Song for the
Dumped.”
Although
widely considered a pop artist, many of Ben Folds’s songs
included musical influence from often untapped resources. His
diverse musical repertoire included jazz improvisational solos,
blues scales, modal harmonies, and even baroque sections at times,
but never at the expense of his unique sound. Known for his physical
performance technique and satirical lyrics, this concert was no
exception. Lyrics included stories of bad break-ups, friends who
had acid trips and became Born Again Christians, and Santa getting
stuck in the chimney and dying, with lyrics “hurry up call
my lawyer fast, ‘cause Mrs. Clause is gonna sue my ass!”
Don’t
mistake Folds as a cheap musician who relies on off humor lyrics
to gain popularity, however. Even in the face of breaking three
piano strings within the first five minutes and leaving an “F”
key useless, his improvisational skills proved this no challenge
to complete the performance. In contrast to many musical artists,
Folds played most of the songs with added segments and solos that
won’t be heard on the recording, pausing during one tangent
to elicit humor saying, “I just made that part up.”
If ever there was a time when the word “virtuoso”
should be used in the world of pop music, Ben Folds is probably
the best candidate.
In the same
flashy style that his performance came, Ben Folds exited with
a black stretch limo outfitted with a hot tub and as many as five
girls. All in all it made for a mind-blowing concert; maybe the
best way to describe his live performance is simply “rockin’."
08-Dec-2002
9:40 PM
>
If you
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