THE MAGICAL ARMCHAIR
The Ben Folds Five Digest
Issue #411 - July 26, 1997
Magical Armchair Digest Saturday, July 26 1997 Volume 01 : Number 411
THE MAGICAL ARMCHAIR
The Ben Folds Five Mailing List
TO REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THIS MAILING LIST
Send an e-mail message to armchair-request@maillist.il.fontys.nl with
the word 'unsubscribe' (without the quotes) in the message body. Please
do not post unsubscribe requests to the list itself! If you are having
trouble, send mail to armchair-owner@maillist.il.fontys.nl and I will try
to help you.
TOPICS IN THIS DIGEST:
HORDE Kansas
Boots and other Strange Stuff
Re: Bootlegs
Ben Folds Is Sexy!
Satan Is My Master
Cover Song Election: The Results!
The DT's
just livid about...
One Angry Dwarf and non related (kinda)
the result of my problem
"For those of y'all who wear bum packs..."
Re: Magical Armchair Digest V1 #410
Greetings...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 22:56:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ranvac@aol.com
Subject: HORDE Kansas
after frying a few eggs on the sidewalk yesterday afternoon, i made my way to
the Kansas HORDE fest and was blown away by three incredible performances.
topping the list of course are Ben, Darren and Robert but i'll get to them
in a minute.
first though, anyone going to HORDE needs to make sure they catch Morphine
and Squirrel Nut Zippers. they both have completely different but equally
unique styles that should impress anyone who understands quality music and
true talent. so many alternative bands these days know about three chords
and can't sing to save their souls (can you say Green Day or maybe Bush...i
could go on but i'll spare you). both these groups offer something new.
and then, there's BFF. what can i say...every time i hear them i find
something new to love. such as, has anyone noticed that Darren sings along
to the beat? he's up there jamming along and the whole time he's dancing
around and singing whatever count he's playing. it's hysterical. and
there's Ben, how can you not love a guy who makes his towel into a cape for
the last song.
the show was brilliant, what else do you expect? they could have easily
played on the main stage here and pulled in a huge crowd. the autograph line
for them was several yards longer than Big Head Todd's (YES!! ha ha) i had a
great view of Ben's hands during the performance...geez, i couldn't play like
that if i studied for the rest of my exsistance!
we staked out the autograph booth an hour before they arrived (and
surprisingly we weren't alone) and Bess and I gave them some copies of the
armchair.
all in all a wonderful day.
anna
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 20:38:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: Max Ryan Wall <wallmr@whitman.edu>
Subject: Boots and other Strange Stuff
I was looking at Music Blvd., my music provider since I'm in the middle of
nowhere, and when I put in BF5, it came up with WaEA and a band called
Breadmaker. I'm just wondering if there's any connection or if their site
is incorrect. (thought some more of the older fans would know...)
Also, I myself would, like so many others, like to get a bootleg concert
recording or two. Please let me know if you could help me out in this
dept. I've got lots of live Tori (in the spirit of the "debate") that I'm
willing to help trade, and a copy of the Paul Simon Songbook....Muchas
Gracias to anyone who can help..... [:>)
Love and Weasels,
Max
<wallmr@whitman.edu>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 97 23:38:01 EDT
From: shultz@bme1.image.uky.edu (Jason Shultz)
Subject: Re: Bootlegs
>I never understood why the recording industry,
>bands, and even a lot of fans are so hung up over bootlegs. Unless the
>bootleg attempts to duplicate an album that's currently in print and
>available through "official" avenues, the band and label loses ZERO (i.e.
>NOTHING, NADA, ZIP) from 99.9% of bootleg sales since most of the fans who
>are devoted enough to pay $20 (or more) for a questionable sounding live
>CD, for ex., are usually true fans who have all of the official releases
>already, sometimes in multiple formats, and I'm sure that there's many of
>us who this definition applies to.
Why does it have to necessarily be a matter of money? That's not what
I was implying. It's a matter of ethics. By buying unauthorized bootleg
CD's, you are supporting some greedy son of a bitch who
took advantage of a band who is generous enough to allow their fans to
tape live shows.
Take care,
Shultz
***************************************************
* Jason Shultz *
* Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratory *
* Wenner-Gren Center for Biomedical Engineering *
* University of Kentucky *
* shultz@bme1.image.uky.edu *
***************************************************
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 1956 01:33:44 +0000
From: Coleambally Central School Library <d4348cn1@ozemail.com.au>
Subject: Ben Folds Is Sexy!
Hello there all you fello Ben Folds Five Fanz, and i know this sounds
corny, but i think that Ben is a babe and wanted to marry him (is
anyone else in the same boat?), anyway, i've only been reading the
armchair stuff for a few weeks now, and have found out loads of stuff.
Recently i found out that Ben was married (thanX to Cassie), and was
quite upset. I don't know how long he's been married for (can anyone
help me out?).
Cutting the crap, i live in a little country called Australia and was
wondering if there are anyone Australians on this list. Well? If you
are in the Riverina region, or even in the NSW area, then drop me a
line !! perhaps we could organise something massive for when and if
they come to tour australia.
I hardly know anything about Bff and would greatly appreciate it if
anyone could pass on any info about them coz then i'd be able to say
"well i know this about them" instead of saying, "well, they sing...".
"Philosophy" is excellent as is "brick" and "song for the dumped".
I'll stop jibbering now and say good-bye!!
Good-bye
>From Alison "i don't wanna be kate, julianne will do" Ward.
P.S Ben, if you read this, I love you always and forever (well for the
time being anyway!)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 21:27:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Aziza Tullia <depst@proaxis.com>
Subject: Satan Is My Master
i saw the lyrics and my bff-obsessed friend played me the sound file on her
couputer, but where can i find a cd with Satan Is My Master on it???? it's
the best song and i want to hear i on something better then crappy computer
speakers with lots of breaks.
- ------------------
"pardon my being sincere for a moment"
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Alley/2605/
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 97 01:25:26 -0500
From: Michael Bluejay <bluejay@pobox.com>
Subject: Cover Song Election: The Results!
Well, I finally got around to counting the ballots in the cover song
election. For those who are new to the Armchair (or who forgot the
details), I held an election so Armchairites could vote on the songs they
would most like to see BF5 cover. I let people suggest songs to put on
the ballot for about three weeks. Then I took all the suggestions for
songs I received, put them on a ballot, and let everyone pick their
favorite five from that list. Ballots were cast by email or the web. I
received over 100 ballots back.
We all know that BF5's strength is their original music, but we also
appreciate BF5's expert and often humorous renditions of other band's
songs. I'm going to send the election results to the band, although of
course there's no guarantee that they'll decide to start playing any of
the songs we picked.
Before I list the results, I'd like to post an excerpt from Dan
Goodspeed's interview with Ben in which he discussed the topic of cover
songs:
- ------
"Q: How do you choose what covers to do? On your e-mail discussion list,
fans have suggested everything from Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls" to the
theme from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. I know you've played a variety of
covers.
BF: Not really, the only covers we've really consciously really done have
been: "Video Killed The Radio Star," which we were asked to do for a
record, which never came out; "She Don't Use Jelly" by the Flaming Lips,
which was our choice, but we were asked to do it for a compilation of
lounge songs; then a Built To Spill cover, called "Twin Falls". The rest
of the those things are spur of the moment, we may do them like for an
entire tour, we might do them some night as things kind of start to
evolve and happen. I mean that's the way those happen, but for the most
part I don't think its a good idea for us to play songs that already are
us anyway. That's not really interesting for us to play a Queen song, or
something like that; I'd rather hear the Queen record. But I would be
interested in seeing what we'd do with a Queensryche song."
- -------
I guess I'm gonna toot my own horn here and mention that I'd made a
nearly identical comment here on the Armchair, months before that
interview was done. And my cover suggestion was the closest one on the
ballot to Queensryche ("Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana). I had
hoped that BF5's choices of "Satan is My Master" and Jimi Hendrix's
"Crosstown Traffic" would have inspired some of you to suggest songs
along those lines, but I'm afraid that didn't happen. And I guess Ben &
Co. won't be too impressed by all the Queen songs that were suggested
instead... Finally, I had hoped that "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
would have received more votes, since there is absolutely no more ironic
song that BF5 could do. But democracy rules, so there you have it! :-)
Anyway, if BF5 decides to do one of the songs we voted on, then
next year I'll hold another election and we'll have the opportunity to
start our suggestions from scratch.
Voters picked their top five favorite songs, ranking their favorite song
a "5", their next favorite a "4", their next favorite a "3", and so on.
I added up all the numerical votes for each song to arrive at the total
number of points given to each song. The results are below. Thanks to
everyone who participated! :-)
=================================================================
Votes
Rec'd Song Title Original Artist Suggested by
===== =================== ================ ===================
132 Come on Eileen Dexy's
Midnite Runners YQCN18A@prodigy.com
109 Bohemian Rhapsody Queen PERCYSTAR@aol.com
89 You're So Vain Carly Simon TreeSapper@aol.com
71 Smells Like Teen Spirit Nirvana bluejay@pobox.com
71 Stayin' Alive Bee Gees GenLand18@aol.com
65 Kung Fu Fighting Carl Douglas KOENIJ22@uwosh.edu
62 Kiss Off Violent Femmes Heyzeus@swbell.net
59 Fake Plastic Trees Radiohead scoco@netspace.net.au
58 While My Guitar
Gently Weeps Beatles damer@nwu.edu
56 Piece of My Heart Janis Joplin dmauer@earthlink.net
54 Conjunction Junction Schoolhouse Rock driver8_@hotmail.com
53 Good Vibrations Beach Boys stuart@optics.rochester.edu
52 Somebody to Love Queen mcdonpj3@wfu.edu
50 I Touch Myself The Divinyls EtKreitzer@vassar.edu
47 Shaft (Theme from) Isaac Hayes Shan111111@aol.com
47 Africa Toto sjlewis@students.uiuc.edu
44 All For Lena Billy Joel SoapScribe@aol.com
42 Cornflake Girl Tori Amos Bnanakingg@aol.com
41 Fat Bottom Girls Queen RAVESLAVE@aol.com
40 Let's Go Crazy Prince un036034@wvnvaxa.wvnet.edu
32 Synchronicity I The Police Brad654@aol.com
32 Kiss Prince LaRubia@compuserve.com
32 Great Balls of Fire Jerry Lee Lewis rosaliem@bbs.exoticomm.com
31 Tear the Roof
off the Sucker Parliament eh204@is6.nyu.edu
28 Take Five Dave Brubeck? RFAA93A@prodigy.com
28 Jungle Boogie Kool & the Gang? chakroff@ee.net
28 Dirty Work Steely Dan Qualitease@aol.com
23 The Tick (Theme to) ??? jschweiss@sirus.com
23 Get into the Groove Madonna holyboy@minn.net
18 We're Gonna Groove Led Zeppelin sexysamselvaggio@msn.com
15 Paradise by
the Dashboard Light Meatloaf mcdonpj3@wfu.edu
12 Second Hand News Fleetwood Mac mhfoster@artsci.wustl.edu
9 Desafinado Antonio Carlos Jobim KingBuzz3@aol.com
7 Three Years Ago Today Built to Spill MERSSM@rascal.guilford.edu
7 99 Toto cynthia@people.timeinc.com
5 After the Gold Rush Neil Young franbu@mail.bogo.co.uk
3 Social Disease Elton John DBombay1@aol.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 03:20:20 -0400
From: Porter Jarrard <porterj@uky.campus.mci.net>
Subject: The DT's
What,
No cynicism about Chuck's posting? Ben does have a brother Chuck. Chuck
fuckin' played kick-ass tunes with the fuckin' DT's...fuckin' A.
- -PJ
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 18:34:08 +1100
From: Alex <hayfamily@wr.com.au>
Subject: just livid about...
greetings.....
im sure all BFF fans south of the equator are now aware that the boys
are part of the brilliant line-up (veruca salt, cake, dinosaur jr,
spiderbait just to name a few) at the Livid festival in Brisbane,
Australia on oct 4th...
was just wondering if the band will be doing a solo tour aside from the
festival?...perhaps just the big cities like sydney (my hometown!),
melbourne ect....?...
i will most surely be in Brissie on the 4th, a surprise KISS reunion
tour (oops, too late) couldn't keep me away...but it'd be so great to
see the band here in sydney...if anyone knows if they will be touring
nationally, post it up!...i read all the posts, even the depressing ones
where people north of here complain that they only saw 4 out of the five
BFF shows in their town, and could they *please* have another signed
poster?...*weep*..
cheers, music and 200 solemn faces,
Alex
** I dig you cos you understand, why i wash my face and wash my hands
100 times a day...and does it really mean i'm going insane? **
- - You Am I
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 97 19:25:54 PDT
From: "Scott Hookway" <shookway@powerup.com.au>
Subject: One Angry Dwarf and non related (kinda)
First of all, One Angry Dwarf is released in Australia next week. Sorry
the names of the other tracks escape me now. While I was in the shop I
checked up on other BFF releases. The only singles I can get are BOWCCL
and Uncle Walter. I thought Underground was released. Jodie is your
single an import???
Also Triple J have details up on their page about the rest of Cake's tour
(as well as Livid) So my guess is give them a while and other BFF dates
will be announced.
Scott
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 09:36:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: Qualitease@aol.com
Subject: the result of my problem
Well you may recall that I mentioned that I could only stay at HORDE until
7:00, and I was complaining that I better get to see BF5. It looks bad now
that I won't be able to see them or Beck, or Morphine. So, as of now, I
place my ticket for sale. It is for The Meadows Music Theater, Hartford, CT.
8th row lower section! I payed $41 and some odd change for it. I guess
that I will take offers. The show is on Wednesday, August 6th. E-mail me if
interested. Hey, even if you are not interested, e-mail me and say hello.
We can chat about BF5 and life. :) And now, let the mail flow...
~Alan
bootleg list: http://members.aol.com/Qualitease/boot.html
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 09:52:04 -0400
From: "Brian R. Kessler" <bkessler@btv.ibm.com>
Subject: "For those of y'all who wear bum packs..."
Armchairites,
I've recently had the opportunity to work with several people from Ireland.
You wouldn't believe the reaction you get from Irish lads when you use the
term "fanny pack".
You see, the work "fanny" in Irish lingo refers to a part of the female
anatomy, in a most unflattering way. We call it "The 'c' word" here in
the US.
On an unrelated topic, the nite-DJ for Vermont's 104.7 - "The Point",
played "Brick" again last nite. Afterwards she went on a two-minute
speech about fantastic they are, saying "those three guys are simply
*amazing*".
Peace, skiing, & music,
Brian
- --
"Never seem to get far enough / Staying in between the lines..." - Son Volt
- --------
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 10:34:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: Patrick J McDonough <mcdonpj@wfu.edu>
Subject: Re: Magical Armchair Digest V1 #410
On Fri, 25 Jul 1997, Magical Armchair Digest wrote:
> From: Dan Mauer <dmauer@earthlink.net>
> Subject: BFF with string section avail. in RealAudio...
>
> Check http://www.liveconcerts.com/ in the KCRW Archives section... a
> 37-minute Ben Folds set including the string section is now available in
> realaudio format.
Dear Armchairites,
Please thank Dan for this tip. This broadcast with the strings is
great for those of us who can't catch the HORDE! Listen to the "Charlie's
Angel" nuances in Fair- oh, god, I broke out laughing in my office! I
have made a link to it off what will soon be a new, full BFF site, at
http://www.wfu.edu/~mcdonpj/bff/
One of the features will be a "strange bff tidbits" page that has
ludicrous pieces of information about Ben Folds Five. So far there is one
tidbit that I think those of you who have angsted a bit over recent
armchair issues will enjoy. If you have any to add that are sufficiently
strange, your tidbits will get added.
In BFFandom,
Patrick
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 11:12:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Lawrence J. Kim" <ljk1@cec.wustl.edu>
Subject: Greetings...
Just subscribed and thought I would say 'hello'.
My name is Lawrence and I go to school at Washington University in St.
Louis. I just went to my first BFF concert at HORDE Fest yesterday. They
were quite possibly the highlight of the whole day!
Hello to Tina, Jennifer, Eric, Staci, and Tony!
Other musical interests include: POE, Delerium, Enigma, Rose Chornicles,
Toad the Wet Sprocket, and Radiohead.
Okay...I've rambled enough.
Cheers,
Lawrence
************************************************************************
Lawrence Kim ChemE2B
Washington University in St. Louis ljk1@cec.wustl.edu
St. Louis, MO lawrence@poe.org
Maintainer of POE : The Mistress of Groove
http://www.cec.wustl.edu/~ljk1/poe.html
************************************************************************
------------------------------
End of Magical Armchair Digest V1 #411
**************************************
THE MAGICAL ARMCHAIR - The Ben Folds Five Mailing List
Submit articles to: armchair@maillist.il.fontys.nl
Send administrative requests to: armchair-request@maillist.il.fontys.nl
WWW homepage: http://oeonline.com/bff
List archive: http://oeonline.com/bff/list/