Jukebox Playing at 12 Steps Right Now Part 4

13. Ben Folds Five - Best Imitation of Myself (dedicated to Cole Hamels for going 2008 tonight)

14. Bruce Springsteen - I'm Goin' Down (dedicated to the Dodgers)

15. Johnny Cash - I Still Miss Someone (dedicated to the lack of Romero & Myers & Moyer)

16. Guns N' Roses - Estranged (dedicated to the Phact that some Phans I love won't be with me tonight)

17. Weezer - Only In Dreams (dedicated to the Dodgers winning the NLCS)

18. Television - Marquee Moon (dedicated to it's own awesomeness and the fact that it extends my Jukebox buy another 10 minutes after two other over 8 minute songs)

Jukebox Playing at 12 Steps Thanks to Me Part 3

9. Iggy Pop - Nightclubbin

10. Led Zeppelin - Since I Been Lovin' You

11. Rolling Stones - Under My Thumb

12. Beatles - Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Jukebox Playing at 12 Steps Thanks to Me Part 2.

5. Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls

6. Built to Spill - Big Dipper

7. Radiohead - A Punch Up At A Wedding

8. Clash - I Fought The Law

Currently Playing on the Jukebox at 12 Steps Down thanks to Yours Truly

1. Hooked on a Feeling (Reservoir Dogs)

2. Huey Lewis - If This Is It

3. Joe Jackson - Is She Really Going Out With Him?

4. Flowers on the Wall (Pulp Fiction)

Setlist, Comments & Nonsense from Ben Folds in Wilmington 10.05.09

First things at the top...the Setlist in Chronological Order.

Free Coffee

Last Polka

Gone

Sentimental Guy

Effington

Still Fighting It

Jesusland

Annie Waits

Brick

(New Album with British (awesome) Author Nick Hornby on Lyrics Portion of the Show)

"Days Like These"

"Levi Johnson's Blues"

aside where he plays a Japanese radio jingle he wrote for a radio station

"Belinda"

pt 2

You Don't Know Me

Birthday/I Wanna F U/Rock This Bitch

Kate

Selfless, Cold and Composed

Landed

Dr Yang

Zak and Sara

Philosophy

Army

Purple Haze

Not the Same

One Angry Dwarf and 200 Angry Faces

25 Songs total, by Album.

Ben Folds Five

Ben Folds Five - 2

Whatever and Ever Amen - 4

The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner - 1

Ben Folds One

Rockin' the Suburbs - 5

Songs for Silverman - 3

Way to Normal - 4

Miscellaneous

Covers - 1

Improv - 1

Collaboration with Nick Hornby - 3

Random - 1

Lots of thoughts on the show will have to will until the morrow. Highlights included head-butting my brother when he played Philosophy. Also he has clearly become a superbly more amazing piano player since I last saw him during an XPN Live at Noon event about 7 years back.

This was my (and Nick's) first time seeing him without a band and it was strange. He has great stage presence, a seriously intense control of the crowd and a great sense of modest humor. But what threw us (I think I can speak somewhat for the duo) was that it was a seated show in an opera house and there was no rhythm section. Don't get me wrong...he is amazing and does a great job of filling in those holes with just a piano and sheer will.

One who has been listening to the Five since 1995 and seeing them play since almost as long as that can't help but play drums on their legs, hear missing background vocals and long for the old days. I'm thrilled that Ben has got his shit going on almost 15 years later. I was fortunate to see him play new and old songs and to hear stuff with an author I respect deeply.

Remembering seeing the Five play Brick live for the first time before it became a single, and hearing all those bass lines that were only in my mind was a definite sense of nostalgia.

And knowing that two of my favorite people and biggest fans weren't in attendance was also a touching reminder that no matter what we see, there is always something more under the surface.

Why The Hell Do I Like this Song or Even Have it in my ITunes - 10.05.09

Deana Carter - Strawberry Wine

Lyrical highlight: "...and he had a car."

I have some vague memory of hearing this by accident while driving circa 1995-96 and leaving the radio on 92.5 WXTU for a hot minute. Seems I might have been in my mother's white station wagon driving through Haddonfield. I was very down about being "old" because of turning 18, so that's a possible explanation. I also had a very awesome high school girlfriend who I was sad about leaving to head off to college. As it turns out, I commuted that year to college and spent most of my spare time with her and in the process, failing French I.

Anyway, this song absolutely stinks. But when it came up on Shuffle thanks to ITunes and old MP3 CD's from college and pre-college being a primary source of my computer's music collection, I did say out loud (to myself) "ooh! Strawberry Wine..."

Hence this post.

Link to Listen and (GASP!) Watch a Live Performance of Deana Carter - Strawberry Wine on Last.FM

Look Into My Musical Soul

HERE

My Last.fm musical profile. If you're not familiar with Last.fm it's like a social networking site that tracks your musical listens and allows you to get recommendations, download tracks, see what other people around the world are listening to and most importantly, shows what I've listened to most over the past week, 3 months, 6 months and year...by artist and even by individual song.

I find this site fascinating because it combines music with statistics. And much much more.

A Time to Be So...Excited About Visiting Delaware

Ben Folds is playing tonight at the Wilmington Opera House. Who knew there would EVER be a good reason to actually stop in Wilmington instead of heading through it to Baltimore, DC, Philadelphia or New York?

This is going to be a night to remember. Mr. Folds has a fantastic DVD of him playing Live in Perth with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and so expectations are high. Also I have not seen him live since before the demise of the Ben Folds Five somewhere around 1999.

Set list and update later.

Interpol - A Time to Be So Small (EP version)

Ben Folds - Best Imitation of Myself (Live)

Shaky Premise

That I will keep this blog updated... Thanks to Julie and DC for the inspiration to actually do this.

Follow those ladies, will ya? They're awesome. And "It's a Hard Knit Life" is a brilliant title for a blog. This will be one about music, but it somehow is 8:32 and I'm getting increasingly swine flu'd with each passing minute, so I best get ready for work. Here's the breakdown from the Meat Locker (1635 #$%^ton Street) from last evening in reverse chronological order... All selections from Waldo's IPOD, chosen by Waldo and/or this Wiggins.

Miles Davis - (soundtrack to a French film about an elevator...chosen for purposes of putting us all to sleep since work was happening upon the outset of sunlight)

Jets to Brazil - Four Cornered Night (props to Trash Pie and the Hammer for the love of JtB, discussion of JtB vs. Jawbreaker ended in a draw btw Waldo and Wiggins)

Hail Social - Modern Love and Death (a very pleasant surprise for both Waldo, Wiggins and Dr Dre. first song found Dr Dre bopping her head and Waldo commenting "what is this?" and Wiggins responding "Hail Social...they're local boys...or maybe they're from New York..." and then laying head on pillow in exhaustion)

punk band that has that song "is my dick big enough...is my brain small enough?" which Waldo once told Wiggins a very awesome story about them performing and royally shafting whoever was hosting the performance (some major label record company scumbags) via some sort of obnoxious intentional costume snafu

Jeff Mangum - Live in New Zealand, mostly just Oh Comely and Two Headed Boy (discussion of how "batshit insane" this dude is, whether or not Avery Island is worth the trouble, agreement that Aeroplane is magical, which led to a Waldo miscalculation of Anne Frank's birth year and Wiggins messing up the lyrics to Holland, 1945)

some band that Waldo said "would be perfect right now"

Jackson was taking nap, so who knows?

...before that is less relevant to music than to life, art and sex, so we'll save it for another blog.