Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Anna and Ben: a tale of a blogger returned

Too enjoyable to reproduce too much from, and she should get the hits to get her blogging more regular, but it's good to see Ben Folds gets Anna back in the blogworld. Just a taster then, which really brought the gig to life in my mind:
"TELL 'EM TO STAND THE F*** UP, BEN!" Someone obviously wasn't having it. The crowd surges towards the stage and the whole room lifts, the happiness-factor (it exists!) is raised ten-fold. Ben smiles and nods like he's proud that his followers have come to join him - "The people have spoken!" he says, and starts rocking out to the fantastic 'You To Thank'. A few of the vastly-outnumbered audience members not of university age mumble about this having been advertised a 'sit down concert'. No-one cares. No-one cares because all eyes are fixed firmly on one middle-aged guy with thick-rimmed glasses breaking a piano as he hands round the Jammy Dodgers he's just been given by a fan... a roadie comes on to sort the piano, but Ben's not one for silence. Maybe he'd have told us a story if we'd been sat down, as it is, he drums out the famous riff from Nina Simone's 'Baby Don't Care' and adlibs for a good five minutes, his awesome band jamming with him in an instant. 'Looks like I f*cked up my piano', he sings, and then: ''The folks in Sheffield stand like they hate to sit down'.

We all feel a little proud.
As someone who has in the past also stood at sit-down gigs (an especially weird demand for those in the ground floor/stalls area), I giggled at the description of the crowd being swept along with standing even though I felt for the older fans who wanted to sit down. Mind, I often think if you're gonna be seated, why not be at home? I do think that for classical music, with its softer, contemplative (and perhaps even more complex?) musical artistry, sitting down allows an appropriate attentiveness. Not that pop/rock music doesn't deserve that attentiveness, but there should be something more raw and expressive, communal even, that gets you on your feet.

Anyway, nice blog: I almost felt like I was there!

1 comment:

Anna Lowman (annawaits) said...

Why thank you! Glad you enjoyed reading :)