THE MAGICAL ARMCHAIR
The Ben Folds Five Digest
Issue #1519 - May 9, 1999
Magical Armchair Digest Sunday, May 9 1999 Volume 01 : Number 1519
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TOPICS IN THIS DIGEST:
Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 02:22:40 PDT
TUBORM = Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Re: Magical Armchair Digest V1 #1515
TUBORM
Disclaimer
TUBORM Pics
bff article in village voice!
Kansas City Show
Re: No peices of metal
Sonicnet
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 02:22:40 PDT
From: "Stephen Jackson" <distilled_spirit@hotmail.com>
Subject: Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 02:22:40 PDT
Barenaked Ladies suck
My friends who like BFF also hate BNL
in fact, I don't know anyone who likes BNL.
Maybe it's an Aussie thing.
"you"
- -Evaporated (just in case you couldn't tell)
B.F.f
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 11:15:43 +0100
From: Paul Mawdsley <pmm26@cam.ac.uk>
Subject: TUBORM = Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
>there's also a really crzappy review of TUBORM on www.sonicnet.com (where
>they compare the whole thing to "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"...as IF!!)
When I read that line I was also rather surprised, and I couldn't really
see where the reviewer was coming from. However, I've got a copy of the
Lamb album, and I've had a listen. I don't agree with the reviewer when he
says that the whole TUBORM album is similar to the Lamb, but the track 'The
Carpet Crawlers' does have an almost identical left hand piano part in it.
But as a whole the song is a million miles away, which is presumably why I
didn't spot it myself.
Paul
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 09:23:28 -0400
From: Sean Kiely <seank@CYBERNEX.NET>
Subject: Re: Magical Armchair Digest V1 #1515
Frank -
the Army Tshirt is a promo only item which was apparantly distributed to
radio stations and friends of the band I guess. It wasn't for sale at
Irving plaza, to my knowledge the only way you can get one is if you
know somebody or are willing to fork over a bit of money on eBay.
sean
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 11:29:16 EDT
From: Slk24kgj@aol.com
Subject: TUBORM
I work at a Barnes & Noble in New York and we have a music department in our
store. TUBORM went to number 31 on the top 50 CD's and it is also on a
listening station so I get to listen to them on my break or whenever I am
slacking off.
-Doug
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 08:41:05 PDT
From: "Steve Warden" <warden_s@hotmail.com>
Subject: Disclaimer
I herad somebody saying something about a disclaimer or explanation note
that would let you tape a concert w/o problems, but I can't find where to
get it. Where is it???? I'm going to the St. Louis show and I will need
it. Please respond privately.
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 09:03:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Lori M." <lbm1124@yahoo.com>
Subject: TUBORM Pics
In the liner notes of TUBORM, photograhy is credited to
"The Jessee Archive", now, does anyone know if this
is Jessee as in Darren Jessee, and who the pictures are of?
I am really curious about this!!
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 13:09:16 -0400
From: "Jenny Harrison" <jh593@columbia.edu>
Subject: bff article in village voice!
hey guys, i was flipping through the village voice this morning before i
used it as packing material and was stopped by a picture of robert draped on
ben's piano from the irving plaza show. anyway, it's a review of tuborm.
here it is:
Every Bit Counts by Eric Weisbard
The notorious thing about the "college rock" I grew up on, over a decade
ago, the same time Ben Folds was gestating in the university nexus of Chapel
Hill, was that college kids by and large hated it. Too willfully marginal:
too drop-out. Ben Folds Five, like Chapel Hill's Squirrel Nut Zippers, and
not like Chapel Hill's SUperchunk or Archers of Loaf, is rock for the real
college audience, plus or minus a few years. Meaning fun to the point of
corny, clever without requiring that its audience be hipsters, admittedly on
the make and willing to pay later. Also meaning record sales. Ritually
mocking the cliches of subculture, as on "Underground," or "Battle of Who
Could Care Less," or now "Your Redneck Past," has long been Folds's
stock-in-trade.
That's because he acts out a different position on the social map, not
one of the arty rebels but the clown who breaks from the margins by making
everyone like him (as in his new song "Regrets"), and then isn't sure what
he stands for. The worst case I ever saw was Brad Roberts of the Crash Test
Dummies, who'd call imself a pathetic runt in concert, get everyone singing
"Fuck-ing shit-ty" to the tune of "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm," and even rag on his own
testicles. There's rarely that level of self-deprecation about Folds,
though he did write "One Angry Dwarf and Two Hundred Solemn Faces" about
being beat up after class. His payback fantasy isn't Littleton, it's living
large and in charge: the dwarf song's chorus goes "If you really want to see
me/ Check your papers and the T.V./ Look who's tellin who what to do." In
the poignant moments he regularly and more surpridingly achieves, his
failure fantasy surrenders that control, as in the institutionalized "Eddie
Walker" or "Boxing," where Muhammad Ali tells Howard Cosell about loding his
greatness. On 1997's Whatever and Ever Amen, Folds, emotionally strip-mined
by his girlfriend's abortion in "Brick," nex cut hurls out "Song for the
Dumped": "Give me my money back/ You bitch." Such a crowd pleaser.
I giggled too, for a while, at Irving Plaza last Wednesday. A novelty
trio-- Folds on baby grand piano and melodica; Robert Sledge on fuzz bass
and f/x keyboard; Darren Jessee's drum kit more like a playpen, with tympani
and orchestra gong-- BF5 sell their good times with a frothiness that
borders on the maniacal. Folds pounds boogie barrelhouse standing up and
makes faces; Sledge and Jessee play equally heavy, deliberately more like
and overripe metal band. Plus more backing oh-ohs and ah-ahs than any group
I can remember this minute. The audience, bommitted cultists made
two-handed Ws to cue "Who Could Care Less"'s "whatever and ever amen" part.
"Underground" kicks off with arch vocals by Jessee and then Sledge, who lies
on teh piano making eyes at Folds. Bits, they got bits! Not as good as
Barenaked Ladies bits, but slightly better songs! Still, bt the time the
overlong "Fair" came up 10 songs in, I was ready for something besides
antoher cup of bug juice made from sugary concentrate.
Folds is way ahead of me. The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold
Messner, released last week, mostly throws out the showboating, or at least
finds new forms for it. "Narcolepsy" is a tightly composed piano piece that
explodes at intervals in a perfect fusion of classical and rock conventions;
"Hospital Song" attempts the rare gesture of setting up a scenario lyrically
and then, instead of resolving it with another verse, letting a musical
passage do that work. "Don't Change Your Plans" pays homage to Burt
Bacharach with a muted horn section, inspired by the group's role as
representative of the younger generation on the Bacharach TV tribute last
year. But the song wears its period clothing to reinforce the mood of
emotional numbness, with heart strokes of dated lyricism like the way Folds
croons "The leaves are falling back east." The confidence and
pleasurability here must stem from his being a keyboardist: between Tori
Amos, Quasi, and Sarah Dougher's work with Cadallaca it's the only
instrument anyone in rock seems to enjoy playing lately. Maybe that's
because it's not so tapped out: Folds draws rock conclusions from classical,
from waltzing rhythms, and from the piano-saturated schlock-pop songbook.
As Imperial Teen say with different intent, he's a fan of Liberace too.
Reinhold Messner's concept album grandeur doesn't give BF5 and fans much
to drool over, save for "Your Redneck Past" and the first single, "Army,"
which begins "Well I thought about the army/ Dad said 'son you're fucking
high'" and gets more demented from there. Ben Folds Five played it on
Letterman with a middle-aged horn section chosen for goofy looks; Folds
rewrote the ending to go "I though about your mommy." Ever the clown, but
that's all right: he's too intricate in his words and orchestrations to be
dismissed, too serious about his manner of not taking himself seriously. At
32 he's got two ex-wives and he's still rooted in the under-21 set (Reinhold
Messner was a name Jessee used ages ago for his fake ID), such a cheesehead
he couldn't resist getting William Shatner to sing on his solo album last
year, but now he tells the world with utter conviction on "Mess" tha de
doesn't believe in God. There's a lot of pride in that mewl of his, and the
funniest thing is, there should be.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 14:40:55 EDT
From: GTIbean@aol.com
Subject: Kansas City Show
hey hey hey folks
curious if anyone is going to the starlight theatre on the 3rd to see the boys
because I AM! ! !
anyone have any info about the place or anything fun to do around there
it's going to be a decent roadtrip for me to get there but. . .oh yes. . .it
is worth it
any info you could throw my way would be much appreciated
now, about the dave matthews and ben gettin together thing. my thought is
that would be really cool but i really don't think their voices would
complement each other. . .i don't know, i've been called crazy
did i mention i am going to see ben live?
i'm giddy
- -ben
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 18:02:35 EDT
From: Snlpiscopo@aol.com
Subject: Re: No peices of metal
<<<Nope. It's called a harpsichord. You know, the instrument before they
developed before the piano-forte. No little pieces of metal between the
strings and the hammer. Sorry.>>>
If You're Reffering to mess, yes there are, it's an upright with the little
peices of metal you were reffering to, he says it on the truth & rumors cd.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 8 May 1999 18:12:01 EDT
From: Slk24kgj@aol.com
Subject: Sonicnet
Just to let everyone know, I went to the site www.shockrave.com and there you
can listen to different radio stations while you are online and I picked one
called SonicNet, you can pick from categories of music and I went to
alternative and the very first song on was ARMY. Now that's awesome...
Doug
------------------------------
End of Magical Armchair Digest V1 #1519
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