Ben Folds - rockin' the suburbs

It's MUCH better when accompanied by the video. Ben busts out the Limp Bizkit gear, and it's easier to hear him say "You better watch out or I'm gonna say F*CK!!" when he's over-acting Shatner style.

That said, I'll take his over-the-top pastiche of the gothy doom-&- gloom industrial peeps via "Underground". While "Rockin'" ain't bad, it ain't great. When coupled with that digital turd called _Fear of Pop - Vol. I_, Ben Folds solo is proving to be a very, very, very bad idea.

The fact that Wierd Al is in the video speaks volumes.

Ben Folds always seemed to be someone who couldn't commit either way: "Should I go Flaming Lips, or should I do my cheap Gen-X Randy Newman impression?"

Fuck You All Ben Folds is a pop G-d and the new album swingd from suburban tragedy to ribald farce. Who else can pull that off. Plus he writes well . I would put him in my top 10 songwriters ! His elegant delviry cannot be expressed by crass videos.

Plus he is hot

I contemplate Ben Folds and somewhere I see lurking the horrible maw of doom that is Billy Joel having grotesque sex with the Barenaked Ladies and giving birth to an offspring that will rule the world. It's quite a vision.

weird al, in fact, isn't merely in the RTS video, but yea verily, directed it.

Yeah. Wierd Al also did the vdo for JSBX's "Wail" so I think he can do his shit, but this particular combination is kinda yucky.

Ned overstates the case, I think. A little bit of Ben goes a very long way, but the occasional exposure can be quite fun. Particularly "Song For The Dumped". Neither Billy Joel nor BNL could have come up with a song where the chorus was "Give me my money back you bitch/And don't forget to give me back my black t-shirt".

You CANNOT justify Ben's "elegant delivery" when he's spitting out mildly amusing crap like "I'm rockin' the suburbs / Just like Quiet Riot did", unless your definition of elegance is more forgiving than most.

Ben can be quite elegant and eloquent (either as the serious balladeer a la "Brick", or his more cheeky moments a la "Boxing"), but I dare say that the other 2/3rds of the Five kept his more annoying characteristics in serious check. Have you HEARD _Fear of Pop_, Anthony? I have - it's scary stuff. It's the Ben Folds that Ned envisions, a Ben Folds straight from the 9th circle of Kitsch Hell. It's a Ben Folds that takes cues from Weird Al and They Might Be Giants (The Not-So-Clever Years). It's a Ben Folds that'll crash any Open Mike Night, bust out an electric piano, and perform the most over-the-top, super-serious version of Billy Joel's "New York Trilogy" without cracking a goddamn smile. IT IS AN EVIL BEN FOLDS. Mildly amusing, sure, but still EVIL.

I R O N y i have heard the album. I think rocking hte suburbs is really funny and CArrying Cathy has helped me surrive the last week.
i love how he suddenly twists a metaphor to a cold realty.

did i mention he has this really cute chest .

― anthony, Tuesday, 4 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Shooting fish in a barrel (nu-metal fiends) with a REALLY BIG GUN (Mr Folds' obvious musical and songwriting talent) - and yet somehow that song misses the mark COMPLETELY. The bit where he sounds like he's doing a Zack De La Rocha (sp?) impression is nifty, but the song itself just isn't particularly good. Sad, I WANTED to like it. Clearly, no musician should record an album in Adelaide.

Ben Folds solo screams "novelty act" to me, which is rarely a good thing. I agree with EdwardO - easy target, the nu-metal boys, yet his heavy handed delivery manages to make the song as maddening and as disposable as those he's trying to parody.

And whilst I'd hate to stick up for Rage Against the Machine, o lord no, at least they had some semblance of politics behind their, uh, angst, not just pointless whinging.

did i mention he was a little ball of pure fuckabilty. Oh and the song is this clever and fun peice of end of summer fun. sure its obvious but its not meant to be deep.

ben folds is great.

The song's (and the video's) fundamental flaw is that I didn't realise it was a parody until about the third viewing (not that I was concentrating at all, but still).

And that Sucks/Rocks mixer bit is enough to have him killed, mainly because the song in no way rocks.

The Sucks/Rocks bit is fantastic and frankly it deserved to be in the video of a far better song. One that actually rocked.

Ethan is right. Can someone tell me what, exactly, people don't like about the Fear of Pop album? To me, it's the summation of hilarity in music: several people with a high amount of musical talent (Folds, Southern, and John Mark Painter from Fleming and John are all multi-instrumentalists and have quite a comprehensive grasp of musicality and theory) and very wacky senses of humour decide to get together and exploit the recording studio as a means of having a lot of good silly fun and sharing it. Most of the songs on there are very, very funny, even the one in which Shatner gives his by-now self-consciously campy vocal delivery. "Rockin'" works the same way. Folds is most likely finding a middle ground between the two--Sledge and Jesse, the other constituents of BFF, also had his sense of humour, but were both more musically "grounded," as it were. They kept his inanity in check (Ben has acknowledged this several times in the past).

Anthony is right, too.

"several people with a high amount of musical talent (Folds, Southern, and John Mark Painter from Fleming and John are all multi- instrumentalists and have quite a comprehensive grasp of musicality and theory) and very wacky senses of humour"

The key word here I fear may be "wacky".

What is there to fear about wacky humour? I would rather wacky or silly than snide or sarcastic any day.

And I absolutely the reverse. There's a thread in that, but it's an ILE one. (Anyway as I understand it RTS is trying to be snide and sarky about nu-metal bands).

Yes, he surely is--I was pointing out my particular preference, not saying that Ben is somehow immune or has a distaste for being the other. His sense of humour is surely bent towards the silly, but he's also clearly not without sarcasm (as in "Sports and Wine," for example).

Plus, I think looking at execution is important. Even when Folds is being sarcastic, he's being goofy, not snooty. It's as though he's chortling after the fact instead of smirking.

Rockin' The Suburbs sticks out like a sore thumb on the album. I hated it at first but have grown to tolerate it. Ben has said 'I needed a hit song so I shit this one out' and, as EdwardO said above, you really couldn't get an easier target. It sounds underwritten as well, although the spot-on production more or less saves it in my opinion.

I'm interested to see how this album goes down in America; BFF albums always seemed more suited to British audiences than American ones but Rockin' The Suburbs seems like a definite American album, with little of the irony and subtlety that distinguished the best BFF tracks. That's not to say it's bad, but I'm not liking it as much as the first two BFF albums.

Fear Of Pop was never intended as a proper album and is clearly supposed to be dicking about for Folds' own pleasure and possibly his fans. I would stand by In Love, which I think transcends it's kitschy Shatner usage. I also think I Paid My Money is a very fine track which has made me laugh on occasion. I would deny wacky. The rest of it, whatever, I got it cheap anyway.

John, could you enlighten me on the rest of the album? At Anthony's recommendation, I listened to "Carrying Cathy" and while I like it, it sounds too much like "Selfless, Cold and Composed" to really be effective. Is the rest of the album pretty much "normal" piano-type stuff like "Cathy"?

I note Tom's fear of the 'wacky' in music and approve. My favorite 'comedy' bands have a certain aesthetic above and beyond larfs that I enjoy -- Ween, say, with their genre-hopping and stoner approach (admittedly changing over time) or the Squirrels and Rob Morgan's desire to combine crowd-pleasing good times with his own deranged vision. Now Ben Folds has his own particular vision as well, yes, but it's not one that gets to me either musically or lyrically -- the music is dull, the humor seems forced. Ha ha...ha...er...

EdwardO, the album is all played by Ben (apart from the usual few guest spots you get on one-man albums, yada yada) and has a peculiar feel because of this. The piano isn't the dominant instrument at all; there's a fair bit of guitar and various keyboards all over the place. Because it's all overdubbed, there's not much of the reactionary, cohesive playing that makes BFF albums so distinctive and a much more straightforward rock feel to it. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, of course.

The songs are well crafted but I get the feeling that, now he's married with twins, Ben was writing the songs because he wanted to make an album, not because he had anything to write about. They're mostly story songs or break-up songs (or both, like Carrying Cathy). There are a few songs that are noticeably similar to BFF songs but he changes them around just about enough to get away with it.

It's an enjoyable record but it's definitely an attempt to make a big hit rock album rather than an artistic statement of any kind. Given how The Unauthorised Biography of Reinhold Messner turned out, that might be for the best. Let's see if he's suceeded.

I liked the video.

And taking the piss of nu-metal bands is, to my mind, a good thing, although you do have a point about it being shooting fish in a small barrel with a machine gun

I would just like to echo what people have said about the effect, both in terms of restraint, and musical synthesis that the fallen two brought to Mr Folds.

Many bands/artists have suffered IMO from having too much control of an album (from the viewpoint of a selfish fan). Certainly from seeing BFF improv live I can imagine that though he was the cheif, they made a huge difference.

Just listening to RTS for the first time. I was aghast when I heard and saw the single on MTV. Thankfully the rest of the CD seems to differ considerably.

But what do I know.