Ben Folds let me down.

Last night Torsten and I went to a Ben Folds concert, the fifth time I've seen him live. It was held downtown in Constitutional Hall, which was great because most big concerts around here seem to be held out in the Maryland or Virginia suburbs, which are a giant pain to get to. I was the one who wanted to go and talked Torsten into it, but I think he wound up enjoying it more than I did. Although we both had our issues with it, at least Torsten wasn't really familiar with Ben Folds, so he didn't have all the complaints that I did.

I think part of my problem with the whole thing is that I've been a huge fan of Ben Folds since high school, and my favorite stuff of his is from the Rockin' the Suburbs era, and so that's all I really want to hear him play. And that must suck for musicians, because they move and evolve and their styles grow with them, and yet their fans are still stuck back in the glory years, screaming for them to play "Zak and Sara" just one more time.

So, he totally flouted us and played only new songs that nobody recognized. But that wasn't the whole problem. Part of it was the venue, which had a lot of reverb. And part of it was that it wasn't just Ben Folds up there--there were four other guys. And my preference when it comes to Ben Folds is just him and a piano up on the stage. Admittedly, two of the guys weren't doing much--but it was like a huge competition between the drums and the piano to see who could play louder. It was seriously an assault on the ears.

And it was just... a lot of it felt very experimental, very esoteric, very postmodern. Like they were just up there banging around on instruments and were as surprised as the rest of us at what sounds came out. And there were none of the fun, sarcastic stories that Ben Folds always used to tell during his concerts. And it was so loud during the songs that you couldn't hear the lyrics, which are usually clever and a very important part of his performances. And he didn't do any of the audience participation stuff that he usually does, like having people clap along and sing parts of the chorus and whatnot.

And I know I wasn't the only one who felt disappointed, because it was the first of the five Ben Folds shows I've been to where the majority of the audience wasn't standing up dancing. Everyone was just sitting there, not looking into it at all, with the exception of six college students in the very back row. They seemed to be having the time of their lives, and it made me wonder if maybe you have to be in college to enjoy a Ben Folds concert.

The best one I ever went to was my junior year of college, I think. He came to my campus and tickets were only $9 for students, and it was general admission so my friends and I camped out in line for about five hours and wound up in the second row. Everyone in the audience was a huge Ben Folds fan and knew all of his songs, and he was totally eating it up and playing to the audience. It was super interactive and he played one fantastic song after another. He even played some of the old Ben Folds Five stuff and since it was just him, he set up different sections of the audience to play the other instrumental parts. It was the best concert of my entire life and you could tell that he really loved it too. It was exceptional from start to finish. And afterward I ran into him on the lawn outside my dorm and we had a chat about the town we're both from and how he hoped that when his daughter grew up she would go to my school, and he autographed a dollar bill because that was all I had.

This was the opposite of that. Very weird, very removed. He did play a few old songs that people recognized during the encore, but only four of them and not even his best ones. I recognize that he wants to try out and promote his new material, but just mixing in a couple of songs that people could sing along to early on in the show would have really warmed them up for the new stuff. Instead I could tell we all felt alienated. It was like going to a Beatles show and hearing the White Album when what you really wanted was A Hard Day's Night.

All in all, a disappointment. The opening act was good, though. Her name was Missy Higgins and I had never heard of her, but she was great. Not worth the price of a Ben Folds ticket, though.