We just saw Ben Folds at the Ann Arbor Folk festival last weekend. Pheeeee-nominal, and I am not a hugely rabid fan of BF. I enjoy him, sure, I have 3 or so albums, but I have no idea in which order they were released, or what gaps are in between them. I’m only casually rabid.

Anyhoo, the concert was superb. It was one of those weird performances you sometimes see where an artist isn’t really promoting anything, but turns up out of nowhere for a good cause…Howie Mandel co-hosting on Regis and Kelly, Patti Labelle or REM on Sesame St., that sort of thing.

I love to see how stuff works. I don’t want to know something is awesome; I want you to take apart and show me why. I want to figure out that cool thing I see. It’s what makes crafting tick for me. I like a work in progress. This show was a work in progress. Ben is currently recording an album and used the audience as a sounding board for the new stuff. Every other song was hit, but sandwiched between was a song with a bass part that had only been explained to the bass player in the hotel before the show, or a song with an effect that didn’t work, so was scrapped in the middle and another method tried. He spoke on the complexities of distortion and the baby grand piano, and the idea of putting a tin pie plate inside the piano to work as percussion. There was a great casual atmosphere that might have been a recipe for destruction in a less respectful crowd, or if it had been cultivated by a less intensely talented musician. It was fascinating, and a total departure from what you normally get at a show. One of the coolest things was the fact that, as Ben said during the concert “It’s good and bad. On one hand, you get to hear this stuff before anyone else…on the other, you may never hear this stuff the same way again because it still has so many changes to go through.” It gave the show a feeling of being a slice of time, and made the audience feel as though they belonged to that slice. Pheeee-nominal.