The debut album from piano-playing Ben Folds' smart-ass trio is a potent, and extremely fun, collection of postmodern ock ditties that comes off as a pleasantly workable combination of Tin Pan Alley showmanship, Todd Rundgren-style power pop, and myriad alt-rock sensibilities. The gimmick here is that not a single guitar was used on the 12 songs; but the way that Folds and his bandmates unravel their instruments (piano, bass, and drums make up this combo), even the most hardened noise enthusiasts will hardly miss it (it's the melodies that carry this album, and Folds has plenty of them up his sleeve). Some of it is a bit coy -- Folds plays the joker as much as he does the musician -- but with the dead-on "Underground," they manage to skewer, and pay loving tribute, to the oh-so-hip indie scene from which they came.
As much as I sincerely wish that I could say I've been in on the MOG scene since it's inception, I have to admit, I'm one of the "Facebook immigrants". I've been doing this for about a week or two.Somehow I just got out of the "Under the Radar" stage. I'm not entirely sure how that happened. I haven't really done shit yet. My entire iTunes library just now finished being MOGified. It took a few...
This is my generation's Billy Joel plus some....I got to see Ben Folds perform at Vegoose at Sam Boyd Stadium in Vegas in 2006. I moved out there for about a year and a half; the show was directly across Boulder Highway from my apartment so I naturally attended the day show and a few of the Vegoose at Night Shows. The festival was not a big hit in the Vegas valley, but I would not expect it t...
"Although the counterculture spawned many new mediums, it was the music scene (with its viable commodities: graphics, posters, magazines, and records) that brought the revolution and the corporation into face-to-face confrontation. The counterculture didn't possess the means or the infrastructure to distribute its wares. For a split second everything was new, pure and untarnished, before the sc...
As much as I sincerely wish that I could say I've been in on the MOG scene since it's inception, I have to admit, I'm one of the "Facebook immigrants". I've been doing this for about a week or two.Somehow I just got out of the "Under the Radar" stage. I'm not entirely sure how that happened. I haven't really done shit yet. My entire iTunes library just now finished being MOGified. It took a few...