Ben Folds

Last night was the Ben Folds concert in Denver, and it didn't fail to please me. If you don't know who Ben Folds is, you're seriously missing out.

It was an annoyingly early show (5:30 doors, 6:30 start), and we consequently missed the first act - Ben Lee. I've been wanting to see Ben Lee live for a long time, but as he's an Aussie, he doesn't tour the states much. And when he does, Denver must not be a priority stop. I think we got into the Fillmore shortly after 7 and he was already done playing, so I guess he did a really (really) short set. What a bummer, because sandwiched between the two artists I actually wanted to see was one that I wasn't too excited about - Rufus Wainwright.

I bought Rufus Wainwright's debut CD in the late 90's because I like the single (), but the rest of the CD was pretty blah and lacked variety. That aspect of his style was as un-changing as his music. About 4 or 5 songs into his set Christine and I got bored with it and stepped outside. There's not doubt the guy has some talent. He's probably a classically trained pianist and he can belt a tune, but his voice always takes on the same droning flavor and it shortly drives me nuts. The songs were all about the same tempo, even after he said "This next one's a fast one." (It wasn't. Not even close.) In a nutshell: blah, uninspiring, craptastic.

Then came Ben Folds. I LOVE seeing Ben Folds live; his different solos and improvs are as good as and better than the album versions that I'm in love with. There's not enough time for him to play all of my favorites, but there were plenty of awesome familiar songs, along with some surprises. He brought out Rufus Wainwright for a surprisingly good cover of George Michael's "Careless Whisper". Rufus sounded good on that song, and the harmonies were great (as they were for the whole Ben Folds set actually). Ben even busted out with some gangsta rap via his cover of "Bitches Ain't Shit" by Dr. Dre. (This was available exclusively on iTunes a while ago, which forced me to install that god awful, piece of crap, file association stealing, crappy CD burning program. It has since been removed because it is, as previously mentioned, the suck.)

Ben played as a trio with a bassist and drummer, much like the good 'ole days of Ben Folds Five. If he's going to rehash the 3-piece thing, I wish he would have just reunited with the old band because the on stage presence was very fun to watch. Not that his current touring band isn't well qualified, I'm just sayin'. I particularly like his Australian drummer singing a verse of the Dr. Dre classic.

The drive home left (more than) a little to be desired. We were tired (despite the early 10:30 finish) so we skipped the Merc and headed straight home. Little did we know that our usual 1 hour trip would double in time. We didn't realize that they were closing down I-25 at 120th to put in a new overpass and as you can imagine, this caused a GREAT amount of traffic backup and plenty of frustration. Had I known, I would have taken 287 or something. Due to that mess, it took us over an hour to get from the Fillmore to 120th. Ugh! And if that wasn't enough, there was an accident near Longmont that caused another 15 minute delay.