ben folds/ jon auer
tuesday, november 5, 2002 • the moore theater, seattle wa • review by janice


review: YAY YAY YAY! This might be one of the most fun shows I've ever been to! It's a cliche, but I laughed, I cried, I went home happy. : )

So Mike and I got to the show, and honestly, we were tired. So tired, in fact, that before the bands started, I kept closing my eyes and almost drifting off! And thank goodness we got there early and scored some great seats in the balcony because the show was completely sold out, and the Moore is a rather large theater, too! One thing we noticed that we found kinda interesting is there were tons of annoying frat boys in attendance with their marijuana-acne-ridden-complexions, university-logo sweatshirts and backward baseball caps. : / What's up with that?

Jon Auer: So, Jon got up on stage with only a guitar and his cute fabric-covered amp sitting behind him. Kids jumped up from the chairs and immediately swarmed the stage, which seemed to alarm him. "You kids are just excited to see someone on stage, huh?" he jokingly said. He politely introduced himself saying, "Hi, I'm Jon. I play in a band called The Posies..." and the audience totally roared with applause, much to our delight! We were like, "Yay! Jon!" It's just always nice to see an opening act receive such a warm welcome. Usually the audience are politely impatient, waiting for the headliner to take the stage. But I guess The Posies are hometown heroes, after all!

He opened with "I May Hate You Sometimes", and my ears were aching to hear Ken's lovely harmonies, but Jon still sounded fine without him. Then he introduced the next song as a cover from Ween (crowd goes crazy) and proceeded to play "Baby Bitch". The crowd roared with approval at all the cussing in the song, with Jon quipping in between singing, "Oh, hey, you like that? It gets better!" before kicking into the next verse.

Jon couldn't have been more funny and charming that night! At one point, he said something along the lines of "I've got a few more songs, and then Ben Folds will come out..." and when he said "Ben Folds" the audience screamed with delight. Jon seemed amused and was toying with the audience, saying, "What would you guys do if I said...Ben Folds!?" and the audience screamed again! He was soo funny!!! And even when he did slower, sappier songs, he still kept the audience entranced. Some people were calling out for more Posies songs, but Jon did mostly cover songs, like on his recent solo EP. He closed with a great cover of that 80's Joe Jackson song "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" As he sang, "Look over there" the audience, without even being prompted or coached, all shout out in unison "WHERE?" and Jon was so blown away, he totally stopped playing, smiling to himself, and then re-composed, said, "Hey, that was really good!" before continuing the song. And at one lyric, instead of singing "Here comes Jeanie with her new boyfriend", he sang "Here comes Ben Folds with his new girlfriend." Then he stopped again saying, "Wait, that's not nice..." and someone in the audience shouted out, "He's Married!!!" Everyone laughed and then Jon continued the song. It was so so so funny! Huge YAY for Jon Auer! He played a great show!

Ben Folds: Ohmigawd. I don't know if I can even explain the magnitude of cheering that Ben got throughout the entire show! Seriously, it was astounding! Plus, everyone knew all his lyrics. And lemme tell you, Ben's excessively wordy! He squeezes in as many words as he can into a verse!!! So, the fandom was spectacular, and made for a really, really fun show.

He opened with "Don't Change Your Plans", and then played a few others. His energy was overwhelming! He was smiling, pounding away at the piano keys with delicious fervor, his feet pounding out a beat beneath him, flailing about. He was just astounding!

A couple of songs into the set, he told us about how he made this tape when he was young of himself singing Joe Jackson songs a capella! (Mike would love to hear this!) And then he was like, "Wow, hearing Jon do all those covers totally inspired me!" and he started to play Wham!'s "Careless Whisper"! It was soo hysterical, 'cause Ben was belting it out so passionately, especially that part where it kinda breaks it down and George wails "So no-o-o-o-w, who's gonna dance with me?" Ben nailed it! It was so hilarious! Then he followed it with a cover of Elliott Smith's "Say Yes" which was just gorgeous. Really pretty.

He played some more great stuff, including old Ben Folds Five songs like "Kate", and even jokingly started to play "Chopsticks".

So Ben just finished playing a song, and the audience was cheering. Some overly-enthusiastic kid in the audience shouted out gleefully "Rock This F*cker!!!" and Ben kinda stopped and was like, "Rock This F*cker, huh?" and then he started to play on his piano repeating "Rock! Rock! Rock! Rock This F*cker!" And he just completely improvised this song, singing "Hey Little Boy/In the front row/Thank you for requesting/My favorite song"! I was laughing so hard I thought I was gonna cry!!! And then Ben got the audience to chant "Rock! Rock!" with him, before he trailed off into this high falsetto wailing "Ro-o-ock This F*cker" and then ending the song to WILD applause! Ben smiled and then said something along the lines of, "Yeah, be careful what you ask for!" HA!

Lessee, he played "Fred Jones Part 2" which he explained was about his friend's Dad who got laid off from a newspaper where he wrote for 25 years. So that made me cry. He followed it with a cute cover of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" which never got campy. He told a great story about how he came to write "Army". It's surprisingly autobiographical, but no, Ben never had a mullet, and he never worked at Chic*Fil*A. He worked at HARDEE'S! Just like Mike did, once upon a time! : D YAY!!!

He did "Rockin' The Suburbs" which was awesome! Instead of the lyrics "I'm rockin' the suburbs/Just like Jon Bon Jovi did/I'm rockin' the suburbs/Except that he was talented"... Ben sang "I'm rockin' the suburbs/Just like The Posies did/I'm rockin' the suburbs/Except that they were very talented"!!! HEE! YAY! Mike and I cheered like crazy!

So, I haven't even talked about the sing-a-long portion of the show! First off, everyone sings along at his shows. If you have his "Ben Folds Live" CD you'll know a little of what I'm talking about. So, you can sing aloud to his song, but he also has songs where he coaches the audience. He's say, "Okay, this half of the audience, you guys are trumpets and you sing 'Ba da ba! Ba da da!' and you other half, you guys are saxophones. You guys sing 'Baaa Baaa Daa Daaa'!" and then we'll run through it once to make sure we have our parts, and then Ben will sing the song, nodding exaggeratedly at us when it's time to play our parts! It's soo cute and sooo fun! : )

Another cool thing that happened was Ben did "Steven's Last Night" (which I wanna dedicate to a certain friend of mine, *cough*cough*) and at the end when it has that amazing drum solo, a techie ran out on stage, carrying a drum to Ben who was seated at the piano. Ben leapt from the piano seat with drumsticks, and began pounding out the drum solo as the guy carried the drum backwards to another part of the stage. Ben followed him directly, still pounding away the drum solo. The guy put the drum down and Ben kept playing. Then another techie came out, bringing another piece of the drum kit. Quickly, piece by piece, the two techies built the drum kit around Ben as he continued playing this amazing drum solo!!! It was sooo fantastic!! One piece fell over, so it was a perfectly smooth construction, but it was still super-cool.

Ben closed his set with another gorgeous singalong. It was my favorite one of the night: we did "Not The Same" with it's gorgeous three-part harmonies going "Aaaaah-AAAAHHHH"! At the end of the song, Ben stopped playing, jumped on his piano, and using his arms, directed us to sing. It was really powerful and amazing. I could hear Mike saying softly next to me, "Wow..." It was just sooo cool and beautiful sounding with all these people singing together!

Then Ben came back for an encore, an emotional double-whammy of "The Luckiest" and "Brick" which of course, made me cry and cry and cry. Stupid Ben. But then he did "Song For The Dumped" which was HYSTERICAL! He told a story about how when they did the "Ben Folds Live" CD they wanted to get more audio of the audience singing along to this one, but the mics just picked up random conversations in the back of the theater instead. And Ben was jokingly imitating someone who was in that audience, saying, "Damn, that Ben Folds Motherf*cker is even skinnier than the last time I saw him play! Can I get some popcorn in this place? I'm gonna go to the bathroom..." He started to play "Song For..." and then stopped saying, "Doesn't this piano part sound like some Aerosmith song?" and an audience member shouted out "Dream On!" so Ben started playing and singing like Steven Tyler, "Dream On/Dream On/Gonna go to the bathroom/And get myself some popcorn"! He finished playing "Song For..." and towards the end quickly said, "It'd be great if you guys all sang 'Dream On' as I walk off the stage." So he ended the song, took a bow, and we all kept singing "Dream On" as he walked off. And that was it, no second encore, but still. As you can see from the excessive wordiness of this review, the show was AWESOME!!!!!! : )