i had spent a long time coming up with the perfect question to ask... it was a good question on robert and his bass playing.  me, being the faithful fan that i am, called in at 10:00 (the show starts at 10:30 eastern time) and then every 5 minutes until someone picked up the phone.  when someone did, i was elated, and waited nervously for an hour praying that my question would be aired... unfortunately, i didn’t seem to fit the profile of teenage boy from the south that 98% of the other questioners were... not that there’s anything wrong with teenage boys from the south (i’ve met some and they’re quite nice)… or not that i’m bitter or anything... ;)  here it is, bff on modern rock live.  enjoy it... i’ve not seen it on any other web site, so i guess this could be considered a feature on the page... please don’t use it anywhere without my permission, which i will more than likely give if you ask.  thank you.
 
 
 

Max:  Thank you very much, we’re back, and this is modern rock live.  Joining us tonight from the Point in St. Louis is Ben Folds Five.  They’ll be playing live, we’ll be chatting live, we’re doing everything live tonight.  If you have a question for Robert, Darren, or Ben-- We’re going to call them Ben Five tonight-- Give us a call toll free at 1-800-223-ROCK, and remember everybody who gets on the air with Ben Folds Five will get a copy of Whatever and Ever Amen courtesy of Sony 550 records and Modern Rock Live.  You guys there?  You back?

Two BFF people:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re here.

Max:  How’s the weather in St. Louis, is it nice?  Is it foggy?  Is it snowing?  Is it hot?

Darren:  A little muggy, a little hot.

Ben:  The mold spore and ragweed index is up a little bit, but basically it’s clear, uh, the humidity is 85%.

Max:  Excellent.  Alright, let’s go right to the phones, we’re going to take some phone calls from your adoring fans who’ve been lining up for weeks to ask you questions.

One of the guys in a weird voice:  Mm hm, okay.

Max:  Mike, you’re on the air with Ben Folds Five.

Mike:  Hey, um, what do you guys like to do in your free time?

(pause, then laughter)

Darren:  Free time?

Max:  Who wants to answer that first?

Darren:  What is that thing known as free time?

Robert:  Yeah, in the five minutes that I was off between tours I built a stereo cabinet.

Max:  Excellent.

Darren:  I stained some shelves.  On accident (I think that’s what he said...).

Max:  Who’s that?  Who said that?

Robert:  Darren said shelves, I said stereo cabinet.

Max:  Okay.

Robert:  I’m Robert.  He’s Darren.

Max:  So--

Ben:  I like to boogie board.

Max:  Alright, so it’s basically carpentry and boogie boarding?  Alright, thanks Mike.

Darren:  And body surfing.

Max:  And body surfing.  Bret, you’re on the air with Ben Folds Five.

Bret:  Hi, how’d you guys get hooked on to the Godzilla soundtrack?

Ben:  Uh... That, um, we’re on the Sony label, and it’s a Sony project, and so, uh, we were kind of, sort of, in it that way, sort of obligated to do it, and um, so we did it, and uh, we haven’t seen the movie yet.

Max:  What do you mean, you’re sort of like contract players?  Sony calls you up and goes, "Ah, we have this movie coming out, we uh, we need a song from you, for Godzilla."

Darren:  They don’t really call you, they send a couple guys over--

Ben:  Yeah.

Max:  Yeah.

Darren:  And um, you kind of wake up with them breathing down your, (laughter from Max) neck... (more laughter)

Max:  They send a couple guys over, what, like big guys in dark suits with sunglasses?

Ben:  They’re not that big, that’s the scary thing, they’re real quiet, and real small--

Darren:  --and they have real dark tans though--

Ben:  --and they suck their teeth.

Robert:  And they look like those music express car guys, you know the ones.

Max:  Uh uh--

Ben:  --Yeah, you think you’re at the airport, but you’re not.

Max:  Right, and they’re going--

Ben:  --But uh, basically the affiliation was the, the, uh, the Sony, thing, um, because, well, I think most of the acts-- uh, most of the-- a lot of the album was Sony acts.

Robert:  Except for the Wallflowers.

Ben:  Except for the Wallflowers.

Max:  I can’t believe they didn’t let you see the movie.  Alright, uh--

Ben:  Well I don’t think they let anyone see the movie, there’s a secret in it, and so they want to keep the secret, you know.

Max:  Why--

Darren:  Godzilla’s a lesbian.

(laughter from Max)

Max:  I was going to say Godzilla’s a lizard, but okay, if, lesbian it is then.

Darren:  It’s true.

Max:  A lesbian lizard, perhaps.

Darren:  Yes.  No, there’s lesbians in, uh, in the animal kingdom.

Max:  Alrighty then.

Darren:  It’s true, it’s a fact.

Max:  Okay.  Kenny you’re on the air with Ben Folds Five.

Kenny:  Howdy, who’s been you guys’ biggest influence?

Darren:  (in an exasperated "I’m really sick of this question" tone) Jesus!

Ben:  Biggest influence...  um... probably (don’t even ask me what he says here...)

Robert:  Yeah, Dr. Hatkins.

Darren:  And Silverchair.

Max:  That’s uh, a heavy alliance of uh... (that name again... it could possibly be Deepac Cheaupra)?  Pretty interesting.

Ben:  And Deaf Leopard’s second record.

Max:  Very good, alright.

Ben:  We all read the Celestine Prophesy the same week.

Max:  That would be a major influence.  Alright Kenny, thank you.  You guys are set up to play live there in St. Louis, uh, piano, bass, drums, it’s all ready to go?

Ben:  (grunt-like) Mmmmmm...

Darren:  Yeah that’s right.

Max:  Alright.

Ben:  (grunting in a very heavy southern accent) Mmmmmm, I reckon that it is.

Max:  Why don’t you, uh, bang out a tune for us, what are you going to play?

Ben:  Um, this one’s called Selfless Cold and Composed.

Max:  Okay, it’s Ben Folds Five, live, on Modern Rock Live.

(Darren does a drum solo, then they do a very sweet rendition of the song with some variations from the CD version, of course.)

Max:  Ben Folds Five playing live on Modern Rock Live, the song was Selfless Cold and Composed, you’ll find it on the album.  According to the uh, your own notes for the song it’s kind of about "your average middle class white guy, the kind of guy that can’t express his emotions and has a hard time caring about others."  Until of course he takes a rifle into the clock tower, and uh, shoots an entire town right?

Ben:  (pause)  Yeah.  (laughter)  That’s part two.

Max:  Oh, that’s part two.

Ben  (complaining about the day of the week, which was Sunday):  I don’t like Sundays.

Robert:  Yeah, that’s the next record, it’s going to have Rifle in the Clock tower.  Then um, it’s going to be the sequel to that song.

Ben (playing piano and singing an improvised Rifle in the Cloctower song):  Rifle in the clocktower, don’t know what went wrong...

Max:  I love the notes to your songs, cause you know, I don’t know if you’re going to play Brick live later or not, but here you have these great explanations for all the songs, you get to Brick, and you go, "Brick:  it’s really self explanatory."  I’ve heard the song 10,000 times, I don’t-- you-- explain it to me.

Ben:  Uh, when you were a teenager, did your girlfriend have to have an abortion?

Max:  No.

Ben:  That proves my theory.

Max:  Okay, which is?

Ben:  It’s-- It’s about that, that’s what it’s about, and I think the people that have been through that, it’s self explanatory and they understand it,

Max:  Ah.

Ben:  and otherwise you get the feeling of it without necessarily getting the um, you know, the details of it, and that’s fine with me too, I kind of like songs that are ambiguous enough to convey a feeling, but you don’t know exactly what it’s about, but I got a lot of letters from people who’ve gone through that before, and they know it from the first time they hear it which is kind of interesting.

Max:  Huge hit, by the way.  It’s good to see.  It was a giant hit this year.  Are you happy about that?

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, it was really nice to get a little bit of, uh, a little bit of help, besides the touring.

Max:  Alright let’s go back to the phones.  Josh you’re on the air with Ben Folds Five.

Josh:  Hi, uh, my question is, uh, what was the first concert you ever went to?

Ben:  First concert?  Uh, for me it was Neil Sedaka, and uh, it was like 1978 I think.

Max:  Wow.

Robert:  I saw, uh, Molly Hatchet, (laughter from everyone) and Leather’s Finest (I think... don’t quote me on that).  (more laughter)

Ben:  This makes so much sense.

Robert:  It was great!

Ben: One of the-- One of the members of Molly Hatchet and Neil Sedaka would probably make the same sort of music (more laughter).

Max:  There you go.  I believe they were on tour together, the Neil Sedaka/Molly Hatchet tour.

Ben:  Neil--

Robert:  They wrote a lot of songs together too.

Ben:  Neil Hatchet.

Max:  Neil Hatchet.  The Rap Boys tour.

Ben (erupting into a happy sounding swinging song):  I’m floating down the road, and I’m flirting with disaster...

Max: (laughs)  Brian you’re on the air with Ben Folds Five.

Brian (very fuzzily): Uh, hey guys.  Um, oh, uh, I was wondering, if you hadn’t become musicians, what would you be doing today?

Max:  Asking Brian to... turn his radio down in the background...  sorry...

Darren:  Uh, I like weather, I would have been into photographing weather and being a meteorologist or something, probably.

Max:  Maybe you’d be on the Weather Channel.

Darren:  I-- uh-- maybe.

Robert:  I like swimming.

Ben:  I’m certain I would be an organic garlic farmer in Mexico.

Max:  Organic garlic farmer in Mexico.  Alrighty.  I like the Weather Channel option though.  Maybe you would have been, like you know a--

Robert (from a distance):  I’d take the Weather Channel.

Ben:  Yeah, no, we’ve got the Weather Channel music going on here.

Darren (making noises and talking in weather channel announcer voice):  Beow,  beow, be-beow, beow, forecast at 11.

Max:  (laughs) And now it’s time for your local forcast.

Darren (in dangerous sounding voice):  When disasters strike.

Max:  Do you want to play again?

Darren:  Yeah we could do that.

Max:  What are you going to play this time?

Ben:  Uh, do you have a request?  Where’s Josh?  Is he gone?

Max:  Josh is gone, no, Brian.  Where’s Brian?

Darren (confused from the background):  What?

Max:  Brian what do you want to hear them play live?

 Brian:  Uh, Brick.

Max:  You’re so obvious Brian.

Ben:  Uh, that’s the only one we’re not set up for, because it requires a bowed bass.  Try again.

Max:  Alright Brian, try again.

Brian:  Um... maybe... oh damn, what was the name of the first single... uh...

Max:  Yeah, see we’re going to find out if Brian really knows their songs.  How about--

Ben:  It was called Battle.

Max:  Yeah, Battle of Who Could Care Less, maybe?  How about that?

Darren:  That’s his request.

Max:  Okay.

Darren (in dangerous voice again):  Here, on the Weather Channel.

Max:  Alright, here we go, Ben Folds Five, playing live, once again.

(They play the song, then break for commercial.  Then they play the Harvey Danger song Flagpole Sitta, which has gotten to be very annoying, though I liked it at first.  After a blurb about Harvey Danger, the interview continues...)

Max:  You know Ben, we did lie before when we said you had a 9 ft Steinway, I should just correct everybody, or correct myself because you told me it’s only 5’8".  (pause)  Is that true?  (another pause)  Ben?  (pause again)  Ben?!  (and another pause)  BEN?!

Robert (hurriedly):  We’re back, Ben what, now, what do you want?

Max:  (laughs)  Where’s Ben?

Robert:  Right here.

Max:  Alright.

Ben:  Hey.

Max:  Ben, I know I lied before, about the size of the piano, I said it was 9’ but it’s really 5’8".

Ben:  Yeah.

Max:  We just wanted to correct that.

Ben:  That’s okay, that-- I don’t think that was a lie.

Max:  Alright.

Ben:  I just-- you just didn’t know, which was fine.

Max:  The small exaggeration of the truth.

Robert:  Darren, are you alright with that?

Darren (from the background):  What was the question?

Robert:  Are you alright with that.

Max:  There’s no question yet, we’re going to go to the phone calls, are you guys ready to go?

Robert:  Yeah.

Max:  Okay, here we go.  Brandon, you’re on the air with Ben Folds Five.

Brandon:  Hi guys, uh, I was wondering, what was the pinnacle of your careers?

(the side of the tape I was using ended here.  I don’t remember the answer very well...  When I flip the tape over and press play, the first thing I hear is something about a penis with a Cowboy hat on the back of a tee shirt (I think it’s a tee shirt) that said "Garth Brooks"... something about one of them wearing it and an audience seeing it I think...)

Max:  Um, but it’s safe to say that the true pinnacle may not have even come yet.

Ben:  Yeah that’s possible, that’s a good way to think.

Max:  You have a few good years of life--

Ben:  Well, if you check these things off you start to go "wow, we’ve done it all."  We’ve done all the TV shows, that’s all I kind of really just wanted to play Saturday Night Live.

Max:  Who is, uh--

Robert:  Yeah we played Saturday Night Live--

Max:  Which was the most--

Robert:  Come again?

Max:  Which one was the most fun of all the shows you’ve done, you’ve done Leno and Letterman, and Saturday Night--

Ben:  Larry Sanders.

Max:  Really?

Ben:  Larry Sanders.

Darren:  Yeah, absolutely.

Max:  That’s--

Ben:  And Conan, Conan’s good to do too.

Max:  Because he’s loose, and sort of a rock ‘n’ roll guy?

Ben:  Yeah, it’s-- it’s-- you know, it’s relatively comfortable to play that show, but any of the shows, it’s not an experience that you carry with you, you leave and you don’t remember playing it, um, the Larry Sanders show though was really nice to play.

Max:  Seth, you’re on the air with Ben, Darren, and Robert.

Seth:  Alright, this question’s for Ben, who’s your favorite pianist?

Ben:  My favorite pianist.  Besides, uh, Garth Brooks?

Max:  (laughs)

Ben:  Um, God, I don’t know, uh, I don’t really have a favorite piano player, I think there’s a lot of really good piano players around, they’re all so different, there’s people I know that I would never play like and I admire, I admire that, I think Oscar Peterson, or um, Glenn Gold, I mean there’s millions of them, really, no thousands of them, and um, and a lot of the pop piano players are really great, I think Tori Amos is great, and um, I think Fiona Apple is actually a really good piano player too.  Bruce (somethingorother)’s great, we played a show with him, and I stood behind him and watched him do stuff that, *pff*, um, I could never do.

Max:  Uh, you know I was going to say, I’d love to hear you and Tori Amos doing something on stage together.  That would be amazing.

Robert:  I couldn’t watch.

(laughter from both sides)

Max:  Eh, rebellion in the ranks already.  I love it.  Alright Seth, thank you very much, you guys want to play some more?  What are you going to play this time?  Can I make a request, or do you already know what you’re going to play?

Ben:  We have one more song that we know that we’re going to play for sure, but we’ll, (switches to low, thicker voice) we’ll hear your request.

Max:  Oh, we’ll go to my request later.

Ben:  Hey.

Max:  What are you going to play?

Ben (still in voice):  No, what’s your request?

Max:  One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces.

Ben (back to normal voice):  We’ll go out with that, how’s that?

Max:  Alright, fine.

Ben:  This-- This song’s called, um, Eddie Walker, and um, it’s-- it’s one of the first songs that we, um, recorded as a band, it was on the first album, well it wasn’t on the first album, it got cut off, so...

Max:  Oh, okay.

Ben:  That’s the story.  And here’s how it goes, it’s in the key of A for those of you who want to play along.

(launches into Eddie Walker.)

Max:  Modern Rock Live, and it’s Ben Folds Five playing Eddie Walker, live, exclusively here on the show, which was uh, never made it even onto the last album, you’ve just been holding on to it all this time.

Ben:  Yeah, um, it was caught in business limbo for awhile.  It just came out on um, Naked Baby Photos, which is um, uh, kind of an oddities record, or whatever you (cough, cough) call those things.

Max:  Yeah.  Um, let’s--

Ben:  B-sides.

Max:  Let’s go back to the telephone,

Ben: Heres (I think that’s what he said).

Max:  and find out what Mark has to say, Mark you’re on the air with Ben, and Robert, and Darren.

Mark:  Hi, how did the Japanese version of Song For The Dumped come about?

Ben:  Um, we were in Japan touring, and, uh, we just thought it would be nice to do a song in Japanese, they were really good to us over there, and um, so we just, we learned it, it took about a week with a translator, but it’s evahobaoahg (stuttering sound) the song doesn’t have many words in it, so um, so it’s a little easier, seems to roll off the tongue in Japanese really nicely too.

Max:  So you learned just enough Japanese to take care of the lyrics to the song,

Ben:  Hy!

Max:  sort of doing it phonetically...

Ben and Darren and Robert:  Hy!

Max:  Very good.

Darren (in Japanese):  Wakahemastah.

Max:  (laughs)

Robert:  Dutashmasteh.

Max: Josh, Josh you’re on the air with Ben Folds Five.

Josh:  Alright,

Darren:  Hey.

Josh:  Hi, I was wondering, uh, what your favorite band to go on tour with was.

Robert:  Well currently it’s Superdrag.  But before that our favorite band to go on tour with was uh, Robbie Fulks, and then there was Cameda, which were pretty cool, did I leave anybody out?  The Customers.

Ben:  Hootie, that was a pretty cool one.

Robert:  Yeah, we did a few shows with Hootie.  They’re party guys.  We-- we’ve um, toured with a lot of people that we’re pretty happy about.

Max:  Did you, uh, did you ever go out on the road with Radiohead?

Ben:  (coughs)

Robert:  We were asked once, um,

Ben:  Twice.

Robert:  Twi-- Twice (laughs)

Ben:  Three times.

Robert:  Yeah, and um, we just couldn’t do it, we were going to fall down dead if we did that, but they’re definitely one of our favorite groups, and uh, we would like to have done that.

Max:  It’s interesting, a lot of bands that have been through the show lately have said "yeah, we’d like to go out with Radiohead," or "we’ve been out with Radiohead and it was great," it’s kind of interesting.  Um, Ben, I have a question for you.

Ben:  Yeah?

Max: You decided to record this album at home.

Ben:  Mm hm.

Max:  How come?

Ben:  Well, um,

Max:  I mean you had to soundproof the house...

Ben:  I don’t know, that’s actually, you know what that’s kind of complicated, in a way because um, I think we just wanted to record it somewhere where we felt comfortable and we had control over what we were doing, and I think you know a second album is a kind of a scary thing to make, so, um we felt a little more comfortable about it in a house.  But we didn’t realize that the technical part of it is very difficult, a hard thing to do.

Max:  Meaning, what, all the hookups or you know, getting enough juice from the box--

Ben:  Well yeah, getting enough electricity, yeah, your stuff’s always breaking, and then you’re not, you know, you’re not able to fix it, and deadlines and stuff.  It’s a really tough way to make a record, but, the good thing about it and what I think ultimately you get from it is a postcard record, this is a record from our hometown, recorded there, it’s not really um, you know, it’s not a big deal, it’s a home record, you know?

Max:  By the way--

Ben:  The next record will probably be a big hairy deal.

Max:  Big hairy deal like full band, you know, $100,000 in the studio, I mean you could have gone that way on the second record, you could have gone into the studio--

Ben:  Yeah, I don’t think we were comfortable with the leap, we didn’t feel like it was, we felt it was a little too early to make a leap like that.  I mean we may have been wrong, but, but we just felt like it was too early to be--

Max:  That came out great, what did the neighbors have to say?  Any complaining from the neighbors?

Ben:  Eh, you know, Janet called the cops on us one time when we were rehearsing a long time ago.

Max:  Who’s Janet?

Ben:  My next door neighbor.

Max:  She called the cops?

Ben:  I think she did, I don’t know.  I think that was probably her, but actually I have no proof of that, that it was actually her, but the cop came up and since we saw the cars come up, we’d been practicing pretty loudly, we started going:  (plays a couple soft jazz lines on the piano), telling them we were practicing, you know, lounge jazz, the guy was going, (in policeman imitation voice with a slightly heavier accent and sounding kind of older) "I don’t know what people complain for around here, you know all these rock bands and you guys are just over here playing jazz.  Hell, I kind of like it."

Max:  (laughs)  Oh that’s insane, it’s like you’re making a lot of noise, but there’s not a single guitar in the band, you know, you can’t be busted for screaming loud guitars, it’s hysterical.  Alright, we’ll get back to more phone calls in a-- you want to play another song for us live?

Ben:  Yeah, you wanted dwarf?

Max:  I did.

Ben:  Correct?

Max:  That’s just me, you don’t have to play what I say.

Ben:  Oh no that’s fine, we have no direction here, so...  that kind of works.

Max:  Oh yeah?  It’s Ben Folds Five, playing live.

Ben:  Here we go, this is One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces.

(and they played.  and it was good.  the end, by the way.)
 
 

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