Ben Folds Live at Summerfest - July 4, 2005 Jul 05 '05    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music Revelation [Digipak] by Journey From $12 Machine Gun Etiquette by The Damned From $40 The Bottom Line Come pick me up, I've landed. The solid masses of people to fight your way through. The overpowering smells of food, from the greasiest of all-American burgers to exotic ethnic treats. The beer vendors at every turn. And of course, the constant chest-pounding thump of music surrounding you on all sides. To call Summerfest a concert, or even more accurately, a set of concerts, just doesn't cut it. Summerfest is an experience. Head down to the Summerfest grounds at Milwaukee's lakefront during the days that straddle June and July, and there are a few things you can count on. It will either rain on the day your favorite band is playing, or the temperature will be well over a hundred degrees. Someone will spill something on you. You'll run into someone you know but haven't seen in years (for me this year, it turned out to be Nadia from my old high school theater days, whom I hadn't seen since she headed off to New York three years ago). You'll lose count of how many drunks you've seen before you get to the first stage you're looking for (I didn't even bother trying to count this year). You'll always end up standing next to someone who doesn't care at all about the concert you've come to see and will try to talk on their cell phone the whole time. Most importantly, though, there are always just so many great performances to chose from. Just look at last night's offerings. All at roughly the same time, your general admission ticket let you chose from Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Little Feat, Story of the Year, Bret Michaels, and comedian Louis Black. Clearly something for everyone, but I passed them all by, determined to see Ben Folds, also performing at the same time. Now I use the term "see" rather lightly. Combine Summerfest's relatively low stages, the festival seating set-up for the concerts, and the fact that the gates open at eleven in the morning, and it means that if you want even halfway decent seats to a night concert, you have to get there early in the afternoon and camp out, ready to defend your seats aggressively as the day wears on. Since I was heading to the concert with my friend Ryan who wasn't even available until after dinner time, I knew we'd be lucky to find a spot where we'd even be able to see to the top of Folds' head over the crowds in front of us. Turns out the timing had its advantages. Sporadic rainstorms throughout the day had kept the crowd levels to a reasonable level, and we got there just as the last of the rain cleared up. We found ourselves a space right next to the stage's sound board where we could see a bit of the stage (although the view was overshadowed by the giant Miller Light sponsorship sign hanging on the back curtains), and moments later the eight o'clock act took the stage. It's another truism of Summerfest that you'll have to sit through some god awful act before the show you're really interested in seeing. We lucked out this time, as American Minor turned out to be pretty decent. The look and sound of the band reminded me a lot of the fictional Stillwater from Almost Famous. They didn't exactly blow me away, but they were a far cry from the worst act I've seen at Summerfest over the years. Amongst the more pleasant guarantees of Summerfest is that the shows tend to stick to the schedule. Five minutes before their scheduled ten o'clock start time, Ben Folds strolled out onto the stage with his current backing band, Jarrod Reynolds (bass) and Lindsay Jamieson (drums). Right from the start, it was clear that this wasn't just another hype-the-latest-album-and-toss-in-a few-older-tracks-as-an-afterthought concert. Folds immediately struck up the energetic intro to The Cure's In Between Days, much to the delight of fans familiar with the trio of independently produced EP's that Folds put out back in 2003 and 2004. The band continued through older material with the solidly layered pop waltz Gone from Rockin' the Suburbs and the celebratory geek rock anthem There's Always Someone Cooler Than You from the EP Speed Graphic. Of course, Folds and company had to get around to material from their new album, and they soon moved on to Jesusland and Bastard, both from this year's Songs for Silverman. I don't know if it's just a special attachment to Folds' earlier material, but these songs just didn't connect as well with me and couldn't hold up to their respective studio recordings. Jesusland felt overly stiff and formal, and felt lacking without the electric keyboard fills towards the end, while Bastard felt flat without the melodica fills behind the choruses. Maybe it was just my personal preferences, but when Folds continued on with earlier material things just seemed to jive right. Folds sucked the audience in with the strong sing-along choruses of the bouncy All You Can Eat and sentimental Still Fighting It before coming back to Songs for Silverman with the forgettable Prison Food. I was beginning to think that the songs off of Folds' latest album just couldn't stand up next to the older material, but I still held out a few last hopes, and Folds more than delivered. With his musical tale of young, foolishly naïve love You to Thank, Folds pounded out the evening's first real unrestrained piano rocker, going all out for the instrumental breaks at the end of the song. With Landed Folds and the band pulled back on the volume and the aggression, but kept the musical intensity at its peak. The band continued on with one last song from Folds' new album, and proved that there is indeed still as much room for playfulness in the new material as there is in the older songs. Listeners who've heard Songs for Silverman know the song Gracie as a light, touching ballad written for Folds' four-year-old daughter. Folds introduced the song as such, and then the trio proceeded to transform the song into a quick and dirty garage pop / punk tune, taking away a bit of the song's emotional impact but more than making up for the loss by eradicating any lingering stiffness and uncertainty that I had been feeling thus far in the concert. Having fully loosened everyone up, Folds and his band real letting loose with a cover of Dr. Dre's Bitches Ain't Shit. For those who've never hear either the original version of the song or Folds' cover released a few months back as a special internet download, picture the softest, gentlest piano balladry imaginable mixed with the most explicit, misogynistic lyrics possible. Folds, Jamieson, and Reynolds each tackled a verse, all putting their own deadpan spin onto the lyrics and leading the audience along for the sing-along choruses. All semblance of decorum was not lost, though, as immediately afterwards the trio launched into a tight, richly harmonic performance of Loosing Lisa. Up to this point, the only thing missing was any of the songs from Folds' pre-solo career days. I wondered how he might tackle the older material without former bandmates Darren Jessee and Robert Sledge and the amazing chemistry they had together. I was almost starting to think that Folds might eschew his old Ben Folds Five material entirely, but then Jamieson and Reynolds walked off the stage, leaving Folds alone with his baby grand piano. The stage lights dimmed and focused over to Folds' side of the side of the stage as he started up the familiar opening piano rhythms of Brick. Even without a full band, the sound was rich and full, and the sounds of the full audience singing along more than filled out anything that may have been otherwise lacking. Alone on stage, Folds continues through solo performances of Evaporated and The Last Polka (which he pounded out with an intense, precise virtuosity). The brief solo set wrapped up with Army, during which Folds conducted the audience through an impromptu sing-along of the sax and trumpet break from the original version of tune. As the song drew to a close, the rest of Folds' band returned to the stage to wrap up this main set with a handful of fantastically rich, energetic songs. Where's Summer B, Rockin' the Suburbs, and Zak and Sara built up the energy in the air, and everything came to a head with the old Ben Folds Five hit Philisophy which segued its way into a blistering, piano fueled rendition of Dick Dale's surf pop masterpiece Misirilu. With the last of those surf chords dying away, Folds bit the audience a fond farewell, but he couldn't stay away for long. With the midnight hour approaching, Folds and company came back out to the stage to strike up Not the Same. Despite the song's more somber tone, there was a clear, giddy energy in the air as Folds leapt on top of his piano to conduct the entire audience through the sing-along harmonies. Finally, the trio wrapped up the evening with the geek-rock kiss-off anthem One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces. It seemed more than fitting in a tongue-in-cheek fashion to end the evening with Folds and just about everyone in the audience singing "kiss my ass, kiss my ass goodbye now." They could hardly have ended things on a higher note. Summerfest may not be ideal for people looking for a purely musical experience. The outdoor stages have sub-par acoustics. There are far to many people who just don't care too much about the concert going on in front of them. There's often interference from some other performance going on from another stage. The crowds, thousands upon thousands strong, are always way too dense and overwhelming. But Summerfest is about more than just the music. It's the unique mixture of the music and the cultural experience. Any visit to Summerfest guarantees the cultural experience. It's when you get to hear a performance as solid and energetic as Ben Folds' was that the evening becomes something truly memorable.

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