2001-11-20 - 11:38 p.m.

Rockin' The Suburbs with Ben Folds

Tonight Lily and I went to see a concert, the first one we have seen together, I think.

Ben Folds, an artist that Lily is very fond of, was playing at a venue called Northern Lights, very near the Hamster Palace. It seemed like an ideal opportunity to catch a concert - I doubt it could have been more convenient if I'd planned it myself.

If only I'd known. Nothing is as easy as it seems.

This evening we were getting ready at a leisurely pace, planning on getting a little dinner before we headed over to the concert. It was about 6:30 when Lily happened to glance at the tickets. The concert was supposed to start at SEVEN, not EIGHT. Holy crap! Dinner plans were thrown in the dumper and we made tracks for Northern Lights as quickly as possible.

When we got there, there was a huge line. Even though the concert was supposed to start at 7, the doors weren't open yet. What the hell was up with that? So we parked the car and took our place at the end of the line.

Northern Lights is in a strip mall, which is a strange place for a Rock & Roll venue, but it makes sense once you think of it. The space the club was in used to be a Toys For Joy that went out of business years and years ago, and it was better to have a club there than nothing at all. Also, in a strip mall there are no neighbors to piss off with loud music.

Anyway, we stood out in the cold, waiting to be let into the club. Nearly everyone there seemed to be Lily's age or younger. I maybe saw one or two other people all night older than their mid-30s.

While we were waiting outside, I was glad that I'd brought my jacket - but I was to regret it later.

We finally got into the club at about 7:30 and it was plain that no music was going to be starting soon. In fact the opening act took the stage about 8:20.

Northern Lights was just a big empty place with a stage at one end and a bar at the other. No tables, no chairs. We spent the entire night standing, and twenty minutes after we were let in it was obvious that moving from our spot to get a drink or go to the bathroom was going to be very tough, so for the rest of the evening we just stayed where we were.

The opening act was merely okay, and the audience was pretty polite, considering that they had already been waiting over an hour and they really wanted to see Ben Folds. It was a two man group and I couldn't remember their name until I looked it up in the newspaper just now - Clem Snide.

The lead singer/guitarist looked like he was trying to do Elvis Costello, circa 1979 - pompadour, glasses, skinny tie and all. Too bad he didn't have Costello's great songs to sing. As I mentioned, the mainly-captive audience had plenty of reason to be crabby, but the singer seemed to be able to handle it. Just after their third song someone shouted: "That sounded just like the last one!" The lead singer replied: "Yeah, all our songs sound alike, now fuck off."

It was about 9:20 when Ben Folds finally took the stage. At that point I'd already been on my feet for over two hours and was already suffering.

Still, Mr. Ben really did rock out and did a great job entertaining the crowd. He played almost every song on his new album "Rockin' The Suburbs" and a few tunes that apparently he hasn't recorded yet.

The highlight of the night was clearly the title track, "Rockin' The Suburbs" which made fun of alternative band white-boy angst. It has some great lines in it: "You don't know what it's like, being male, middle-class and white!" the song begins, and the chorus:

I'm rockin' the suburbs,
Just like Michael Jackson did,
I'm rocking the suburbs,
Except that he was talented,

I'm rocking the suburbs,
I take the checks and face the facts
While some producer with a computer
Fixes all my shitty tracks.

Now I don't really have to tell you that the crowd was about 98% white and probably all middle-class - how else could they afford to get in? Irony has been a necessary ingredient in popular music for the last 20 years or so.

Ben found it pretty funny that he was playing at a venue in a strip mall. More irony! Dancing amid the suburban wreckage!

Folds didn't do any Ben Folds Five material until the encore, and he didn't do the hit song, "Brick." It's a tribute to how loyal and enthusiastic his fans are that I don't think anybody noticed. Folds is far from a one-hit wonder: he has a wealth of good material and a charismatic stage presence. Also he seems to have the field of piano-driven rock all to himself these days - Billy Joel and Elton John don't seem to be doing much of anything.

The music was great, but the issue of physical comfort made the concert an endurance test. By the time Ben was going his encore, I was almost crippled from standing for nearly five hours. Some fool next to me starting pogo-ing and I realized that my legs couldn't do that even if I'd wanted them to. Also, things were hot, damn hot. There were so many people packed closely together in a poorly ventilated place that toward the end of the evening people started to feel drops of water landing on their heads. All the condensation from our breath had coated the ceiling and was now dripping back down on us. Eeewww.

And here's another old-fart complaint: the music was too loud, especially at the end. We were pretty near the stage and the speakers were about 20 feet away from us, but the music seemed to be at the threshold of pain. I almost felt the need to put my fingers in my ears to preserve my hearing, and I've listened to a LOT of loud music.

My legs are killing me. I have the feeling that for the next few days I'm going to be hobbling around like Popeye the Sailor. I blame the idiots at Northern Lights. A concert scheduled to start at 7PM should start then, not an hour and a half later.