An addendum to the trivia note above from the Rockin' the Suburbs tour:
Last night I saw
Ben Folds (and a piano) at a club in
Westport in Kansas City. It was my first time seeing him and it was excellent. The crowd was pretty dedicated and was heartily
singing along to the extent that I've not witnessed before at a show... So much so that halfway through the gig he was assigning singing parts to various portions of the audience. He mentioned that he had decided against playing
Not the Same (one of my favorites from RTS) on the tour because of the lack of backup, but he was gonna play it because the crowd was so *
musically inclined*. He treated us to a crashing
Narcolepsy and a fine rendition of
Army and assigned the bridge
brass licks to either side of the room. While ranting
'but my redneck past is nipping at my heels' the crowd lamented together in a particularly poignant moment - this is Missouri, kids. The encore ended with an exceptional
Song for the Dumped, starting out in the normal crashing way and ending up with the 'more subdued version' where he completely changed the melody and actually sang bridge lyrics that
Darren had originally wanted, but which he initially *refused* to sing...
you fucking whore.
It was kickass...
Before playing Rockin' the Suburbs, Ben explained his inspiration. In a 1998 issue of Spin magazine, KoRn had affirmed that 'Ben Folds Five sucks. It's Cheers music.' Ben had picked up the magazine in an airport and was pissed. 'Whatever, they can't even spell corn right,' says Ben. heh heh...
So Ben devised a song lambasting KoRn, but realized that it probably 'wouldn't have a very long shelf-life' if released in the heat of the moment. What was delivered three years later, and 'more fleshed out' was Rockin' the Suburbs...
So now you have it, straight from Mr. Ben.