Ben Folds – Powerstation February 19, 2018

Ben Folds Solo Paper Aeroplane Request Tour was genius from start to finish. Because, let’s face it … Ben Folds is a genius!

The average IQ of the audience at this gig would be well over the average. Given the gorgeously tuneful singing from punters, Folds’ guess that there were a lot of musicians and music students in the room was probably correct. The audience acted like his band ~ a community choir filling-out every corner of the Powerstation. It was a polyphonic spree that filled in any missing harmonies or instrumentation from any sonic space that might be felt missing from the original band or studio recordings.

To be honest, you didn’t feel as if anything was missing. The impact of solo performance, expecially someone who plays as hard, fully and intensely as Folds, is complete in itself. IMHO, solo gigs can be THE most powerful and intimate. Sure, it’s just one man and grand piano, but this was Ben Folds: multi-instrumentalist and Ben Folds: virtuosic pianist (who spent 6 months JUST practicing scales to a metronome!) It shows. He is a musicians’ musician, a songwriter’s songwriter. He speaks for the underdog, the downtrodden, the dumped. He’s a geek who speaks to (and for) the geeks, and makes what he called “Punk rock for sissies”

Folds first played an ‘artist curated set’ of 9 songs starting with Phone in a Pool. The subject matter in his songs is just so rich, diverse, fascinating and engaging… From All U Can Eat (they give no fuck) about a Denny’s experience with his judgemental right-wing father, through to the 4-part counterpoint harmony singing of Bastard.

Lucy Rose, who sang a support slot joined him onstage for gorgeous co-vocals for Still Fighting It (…fitting too, given her youth)

He told stories behind some tunes. Particularly fascinating was the tale behind the jazz waltz Not a Fan. Folds recounted there being a big man with “Jesus and jail tattoos” who’d managed to get backstage, saying angrily ”I’m not a fan…  but my girlfriend is”. The Ben Folds Five had just enjoyed some commercial success with Brick and hired Slayer’s old tour manager. It turned out that this same ‘non fan’ held a knife as the tour manager forcibly and hastily removed him.

You Don’t Know Me really showed how devoted, diligent and talented the Auckland audience was; their singing along was sweetly supportive and well delivered. It was an obvious thrill to Folds himself (reminding me of Elbow’s Guy Garvey and their infamous football stadium sing-a-longs and how this really bonds people at live shows).

At the end of Steven’s Last Night in Town, a floor tom was brought to the side of the piano and he then sat down to play the drum kit that was assembled around him by a team of roadies. What a treat. What an impact.

Herb Alpert’s Tijajuana Brass became a soundtrack to ‘craft-time’ as Folds took a break. We wrote song requests on pieces of paper that we then fashioned into planes.

We were instructed not to ‘prematurely launch’ our planes… “Not that there’s any shame in that”, but to “Launch” after a 10 to 0 countdown.

The sight of a flock of paper aeroplanes all dive-bombing the stage to Herb Alpert will be with me indelibly.

Folds then strode around the carpet of paper planes to select tunes after each was sung. Some, he would consult his chart book to access. After all, his prolific career spans over 25 years (with some pretty kooky co-writes and collaborations… including Willaim Shatner, Nick Horby and Neil Gaimon!).

It was wonderful to hear the creation-stories of each song, especially of how the short stories of JD Sallinger inspired Zak and Sara (where he imagined the long-suffering girlfriends of guitarists endlessly jamming in music shops would themselves be “envisioning the music of the future” (see Zak and Sara, complete lyrics at the end of this review)

Ben Folds is a lyricist’s lyricist. He is smart, funny, satirical, soulful and highly articulate. At 51, he is currently a highly respected Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Centre, a composer of film sondtracks and 22 albums.

Keeping it crispy, he made up a song on the spot in response to picking up a blank piece of paper. He sang “Some people are like a blank piece of paper”… and “Here’s a bridge / If your bridge fails, then you drown in your song”.

Parodying ‘90s alt rock hegemony, he’d written Rockin’ the Suburbs in response to Korn calling the Ben Folds Five ‘fucking pussies’ in Spin Magazine (brilliantly taking the piss of the dominant perspective of angry white middle-class men).

I’d personally wanted Jesusland from Songs for Silverman or Picture Window from Lonely Avenue. but my word…. There’s just no way you could feel short-changed when he’s such a high-wattage/high calibre performer.

Seeing hundreds of paper aeroplanes littering the stage as the cleaners came in and security ushered me away, was a beautiful testimony to the hundreds of songs Ben Folds has written and how well-loved his genius is.

Caitlin Smith

Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Reuben Raj:

Setlist

1. Phone in a Pool
2. Annie Waits
3. All U Can Eat (they give no fuck)
4. Bastard
5. Still Fighting It
6. So There
7. Landed
8. Not a Fan
9. You don’t Know me
10. Steven’s Last Night in Town
11. Don’t Change your Plans
12. Effington
13. Army
14. Dog(?)
15. Gracie
16. Rent-a-cop
17. The Luckiest
18. Adelaide
19. Zak and Sara
20. Improvised song about writing a song about a person being a blank piece of paper
21. Underground
22. Hava Nagila
23. Rockin’ the Suburbs

 

Zak and Sara

Ben Folds

Sara spelled without an ‘h’ was getting bored
On a Peavea amp in 1984
While Zak without a ‘see’ tried out some new guitars
Playing Sara-with-no-h’s favorite song

Zak and Sara

Often Sara would have spells where she lost time
She saw the future, she heard voices from inside
The kind of voices she would soon learn to deny
Because at home they got her smacked

Zak and Sara
Zak and Sara

Zak called his dad about layaway plans
And Sara told the friendly salesman that:
“You’ll all die in your cars,
And why’s it gotta be dark?
And you’re all working in a submarine.”

She saw the lights, she saw the pale English face
Some strange machines repeating beats and thumping bass
Visions of pills that put you in a loving trance
That make it possible for all white boys to dance
And when Zak finished Sara’s song, Sara clapped

Zak and Sara
Zak and Sara