I got to see Ben Folds play at Gammage!
Ben Folds played the ASU Homecoming Concert tonight at Gammage Auditorium, and since Luke is pretty banged up and couldn't go to the show, I got to take his spot.
Now, I've gotta say, the show was really good, but it stopped short of life-changing, which is kinda what I as hoping for based on how much I love Ben Folds' music. Some would attribute that lack of life-changing-ness to the admittedly lackluster atmosphere of the crowd, but I blame the relative lack of bitches. See, Ben neglected to perform "Bitches Ain't Shit" and didn't even play "Rock This Bitch." Still, he did play the fake version of "Bitch Went Nuts," which was aptly titled "Bitch Went Nutz."
The story behind these fake songs, which made up a major portion of the "new shit" half of the concert, is that Ben and the band threw together a bunch of tracks with similar titles to those on his new album, "Way to Normal," and leaked them on the Internet ahead of the album's release date to give the kiddies on teh interwebs something other than the real songs to file-share. Turns out, the half-assed songs are pretty good. In fact, I like some of the fake versions better than their real counterparts. For instance, "Bitch Went Nuts" is quality, but "Bitch Went Nutz" just won't get unstuck from my head.
Bitches aside, though, it was really freakin' sweet to be able to see Ben Folds live. I had heard a Ben Folds Five song or two in high school, but I really started listening to Ben Folds stuff my freshman year of college, and as such, Ben Folds is an indispensible part of the hypothetical soundtrack to my college years. So needless to say, it was awesome to get to see the man in concert before those years officially end.