Saturday, September 28, 2002
On Second Thoughts...
...you know how it is when you mention something to someone that there's a particular thing you like but in fact, until about the moment you mentioned it, it didn't seem like such a big deal.
The strangest thing of all is that talking about Ben Folds in the post below suddenly turned me into a BF SuperFan and I happen to have just spent a rather long time bouncing around the Web looking at Ben Folds [Five] websites. With a bottle of white wine to help me along, it has to be said. It's not the first time I've done this - lots of the sites looked quite familiar - but for a while I seemed to have something to prove to the...er...one person...that reads this nonsense I write here on http://www.mutualmisunderstanding.com.
Anyway, I've re-thought a couple of things.
Ben Folds is God. He's a Hero. Yes, Really.
If you actually Give A Shit, jump on over to www.bffclubhouse.com and give an hour or so of your life to listening to some bits of the many live sets they've got there. Perhaps you actually need to know the released (CD) versions of the songs to get the point I'm trying (and, no doubt, failing) to make, but the most recent stuff there, and indeed, the tracks at http://www.benfoldsweb.com/citymkt.htm - a whole set of stuff of just Ben and a piano which I think is slightly awesome - convince me the world, as a whole, is missing out on something good.
Perhaps I should dream of having as much as 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001% of the talent of this man.
I mean, re-writing one of your best songs (Song For The Dumped, again) in a minor key and making it about as good as the original? Doing live the 'bits' that the record company were rather worried about releasing on record? That then turn out to be rather bloody good 'bits'....
The funniest thing of all is that I'm only one person 'removed' from meeting up with Mr Folds if the occasion demanded it. I'm a friend of a good friend of his.
What a strange life this is.
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Damn You, Ben
You know, being too busy to play with the computer, and by extension the Internet (Source Of All Useful Knowledge), has more consequences than just not updating this Blog as often as I should have....
I've just found out, via a handful of random links, that Ben Folds is playing in London on the 4th and 5th of October. The bummer is that all the tickets have gone already.
Now, he's supporting The Divine Comedy - I'm not a fan of theirs at all (in fact you could say it's the sort of stuff I don't 'get' at all) but I'd like to think that much of the reason they've sold out so quickly for these two gigs is because of Mr Folds.
I have to say that I think the bloke is, basically, a genius.
In my old age (all of 32) he's the one person I can listen to and think "Fuck. I wish I had 0.00000000001% of the talent he has". Yeah, it's not just because he can sing and play rather complicated things on the piano at the same time (two things I certainly can't do), but rather he can write songs about the way he's feeling that day - ref: Song For The Dumped as a off-the-top-of-my-head example - and it still makes sense and the whole thing is valid as a creative piece of work.
Damn him.
It's funny that because his stuff often contains a large dose of humour he's simply not taken quite as seriously as an artist as he should be (except by the College Radio crowd in the US where he's huge) - the bloke is writing songs about the life that most people lead yet he's rather sidelined....wake up people...here's someone that's telling you that you're not the only ones going through whatever crisis you're going through....listen and be comforted...listen and laugh...listen and cry...
I do belive that Ben Folds is one of the few people out there that can make people actually feel better.
Anyway, gutted that I didn't spot this earlier. I would have loved to see him live again (the last time was in Central Park, New York, June 1999 and he simply made me cry. Not because all his songs are sad - although some definitely are - but rather the whole thing was...well...'beautiful')
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Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Life's A Blur
Just wanted to say what a nice bunch of blokes Blur are. I happen to be quite a big fan of their music, but even if I wasn't I think I'd still consider them a fun group of people to spend time with. I hung out with them for a couple of days, oooh, 3 weeks or so ago now (yes, I'm that far behind on this blog!) - just 'being' in the studio while they worked (their studio is called '13' - hence the title of their last album!).
It's nice when you meet 'famous' people that are as down to Earth as you'd hoped.
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