Tag: Darren Jessee

Sep172012 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
Listening Booth — Ben Folds Five (w/ Fraggle Rock), “Do It Anyway”

Listening Booth — Ben Folds Five (w/ Fraggle Rock), “Do It Anyway”

Listening Booth, Music
How do you make a Ben Folds Five reunion more awesome than it already is? Why, you add a beloved childhood TV icon - the cast of Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock! So that's what we have in the official video for "Do It Anyway," the first single from The Sound of the Life of the Mind. Yeah, this kicks ass. Not only is the video -- also starring Rob Corddry, Anna Kendrick, and Chris Hardwick -- clever and fun, but the song is great too. The classic BF5 sound is back, baby. Jazz-pop with that distinctive Robert Sledge fuzz bass. I don't think I'm letting nostalgia could my judgment when I say this crackles with the Five energy of old. It's certainly more upbeat than just about anything from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (save "Army" perhaps), an admittedly fantastic record. ...
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Oct232008 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
BFF + RM = GFS happy

BFF + RM = GFS happy

Music
It's a rare pleasure when one of your favorite bands gets back together to play, long after having broken up (well unless you're a fan of Kiss, Eagles, The Police, etc.).  It's rarer still when they spend their lone reunion show playing one of your favorite albums of all-time. But it happened for me when Ben Folds Five got together about a month ago for a one-off concert at UNC-Chapel Hill's Memorial Hall to play the entirety of their criminally overlooked swan song, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner.  That's right, the whole thing - Ben's dad even came out to recreate his answering machine message as heard on "Your Most Valuable Possession."  How fucking cool is that? To me, the band sounds like they've never been apart.  The only giveaways are Ben hiding what appears t
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