Ben Folds / Clem Snide

Support tonight is in the form of singer/guitarist Eef Barzelay, from Clem Snide (named after an asshole character in one of William S. Burroughs’ spoken word shows). Dressed in white suit and tie, the Tennessee songwriter does an impressive job of warming up the crowd, with quite comical yaps and somewhat painful sounding vocals in songs like the slow ‘Buffalo’, about the place in New York.



He adds short statements to keep the crowd entertained, like the fact that a woman came up to him after a previous show and asked if he was autistic, as she worked with autistic kids and his movements on stage resembled theirs (yes, he does seem to point a lot with his fingers, but that could be just his way of overly expressing things). ‘Jews For Jesus Blues’ comes after a story about a t-shirt that had a Jean Claude Van Damme-looking Jesus on it with the slogan “What part of love do you not understand?” You can’t make it up. The song’s lyrics “Now that I’m found I wish I was lost/Now that I’m Saved I wish I was damned” brings to the attention the indecisiveness of human beings and their need to belong, or so they think.

Barzelay like his covers too, with acoustic variations of The Carpenter’s ‘Close To You’ and Christina Aguilera’s ‘Beautiful’. The final song ‘The Ballad Of David Icke’ is a vocal only heartfelt nod to the Leicester-born footballer turned Green Party member/writer/truth seeker, who has been quoted by many bands including Carter USM, Leatherface and The Waterboys. Many Clem Snide CDs are sold after his performance.


The stage is already set for Ben Folds and his live band consisting of drummer Sam Smith “this is his third show” and Jared Reynolds on bass “this is his third show without his mum”. The comedy keeps on coming between songs as the trio look very comfortable on stage and joke with one other. Ben sits at his grand piano for the entire set, sometimes turning to the side to play on his synth with one hand and the piano with the other. The occasional odd synth sound would ‘sneak’ out, creating a snigger in the audience. Ben’s request for crazy lighting to accompany the sounds was funnily ignored though!

The highlight of the show is the unpredicted stage dancing of one eager audience member, who had been dancing with huge amounts of energy to the side of the stage (the venue is seated). He impresses Ben so much that he is invited to, shall we say, frolic on stage to ‘There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You’. (The guy also had the cheek to pinch Ben’s water from the stage, and dance erotically around a bemused Reynolds). He raised the largest cheer of the night, and even prompted a mini Mexican wave.


There is a little ditty about how Ben ate too much pasta before the show, and may vomit if not brought a Guinness, which is obliged by a sound guy. The well-documented cover of Dr Dre’s ‘Bitches Ain’t Sh*t’ is very amusing; to hear so many obscenities uttered over such a nice sounding melody is weird! Especially with the three layers of calming vocals. Ben shows how versatile he is on the piano by muting the strings through the lid, and then the sound becomes crazy with frantic playing from all on stage. To follow this is a solo effort in the form of the beautiful ‘Gracie’, about Ben’s daughter (he does mention the order of the setlist!).

The set is full of classics and a pleasure to witness for people who are not familiar with his music. Songs such as ‘Still Fighting It’ and ‘Rocking The Suburbs’ (changed to “Rocking Sheffield”) from ‘Rocking the Suburbs’ and ‘Bastard’, ‘Jesusland’ and ‘Landed’ from ‘Songs For Silverman’ are all crowd favourites. Ben is a natural performer, and though not the most in-tune singer, his musical and song-writing skills make up for it.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.