Ben
Folds Five news
Sept. 2012. The
newly-reunited Ben Folds Five releases a new album, The Sound of
the Life of the Mind, and launches their first tour in over a
decade. The Magical Armchair has the
tour dates.
Stuff on this site
• Ben Folds Five FAQ
• MP3 of me sitting in
with BF5 on "Best Imitation of Myself"
• Order albums and sheet
music
• Chord charts for some songs
• My lousy MIDI recording of Best Imitation
• Similarities between BF5 songs and other songs
• A Who's Who Guide to Ben Folds Five
• Interviews with the band from the 1990s
• BF5 Haikus
• Picture of my BF5 tattoo
• The piano market (piano stocks)
• BF5's shows in Austin
• SXSW 1996 concert photos
Other sites
• The band's official site
• Magical Armchair (well-known fansite)
• Wikipedia article about the band
• Lyrics at BestLyrics.com
• Misheard lyrics
• Ragogna interview, Oct. 2012. Excellent interview with Ben; touches on some technical aspects of the music as well as the meaning behind some of the lyrics.
• BF5 All Together Now. Japanese fan site, in
English & Japanese. Doesn't seem to have been updated since
2000, but has some cool GIF animations of the band.
• The Strangest Thing. This large fansite died
in 2002, but here's the archive.
• 1997 interview
• Hotel
Lights. Darren Jessee's critically-acclaimed other band
• ChuckFolds.com.
Ben's brother's site about his own music
• Phil's Finest Hour was an Australian band with a
BF5-like sound. Unfortunately they seemed to have disappeared,
and I can't find any recordings of them listed anywhere.
Ben
Folds Five timeline
1966. Ben born on
Sept. 12.
Mid-1980s. If
the song "Army" is truly
autobiographical, Ben works at Chik-Fil-A, contemplates joining the
army, and plays in an unsuccessful band.
~1987-90. Ben
forms Majosha with Millard
Powers. Band wins a "Battle of the Bands" contest.
1994. Band forms in
Chapel Hill, NC, with Folds,
Darren Jessee on drums, and Robert Sledge on bass guitar.
1995. Debut
eponymous album on Caroline Records.
"Underground" is a semi-hit single.
1996. The band gets
a large following in Japan, courtesy of a
Japanese TV drama in which one of the characters is a big fan, but gets
a lot less attention the U.S.
1997. Second album, Whatever
and Ever Amen.
The single "Brick" launches the band to stardom, and "Song for the
Dumped" and "Battle of Who Could Care Less" hits the Top 25.
1998. Ben releases
his first solo album, Fear
of Pop, though Ben Folds Five is still going strong.
1999. Third album, The
Unauthorized Biography
of Reinhold Messner. "Army" charts in the Top 20.
2000. The band
breaks up amicably in October. The bandmembers' projects
post-breakup aren't detailed here; instead see the Wikipedia articles
about Ben,
Darren, and
Robert.)
2005. A remastered
and expanded edition of Whatever and Ever Amen is released,
including seven new bonus tracks.
2008. The band
reunites for a single show in Chapel Hill. (NME)
2011. The band reunites to
record three new songs for the compilation album The Best Imitation
of Myself: A Retrospective.
2012. The band releases their fourth
studio album, The Sound of the Life of the Mind, and begins
their first tour in over a decade.
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Ben Folds Five Tattoo
 In 1996 I wanted a piano tattoo, and I chose the logo from
Ben Folds Five's first album. It wasn't completely
and obsessed-fan thing, I really did want a piano tattoo, and I liked
theirs.
The album logo had been originally drawn by Summer
Burke, a
friend of the band, and the namesake of their song "Where's Summer
B?". By sheer coincidence, I met Summer here in Austin in
February
2003 when I attended San Francisco's Cyclecide Bike Rodeo, which she
was touring with. She'd heard that some guy got a tattoo of her artwork
but we'd never met before. She was nice enough to draw me an
impromptu
stick piano on a newspaper as a keepsake.
Notice that the piano on the debut CD is actually
backwards — it's longer on the right-hand side, instead of on the
left. The version that Summer drew for me, at right, correctly has the
longer side on the left.
I didn't even realize that the original piano logo was
backwards until well after I got the tattoo, when a coworker and fellow
pianist emailed me, saying, "I was just looking at my BF5 CD and I
notice that the piano is backwards, and wonder if your tattoo bears the
same peculiarity?" I had to look down at my arm to see — and what a
surprise!
 The next time I saw Ben I asked him if the backwards
piano
was intentional, or if the image just got reversed during production.
He said, "Oh, my friend Summer drew it for us, not realizing it was
backwards, but I realized it immediately, and thought it would be cool
for us to use it like that."
Years later when I met Summer and related Ben's story, she
said, "That's bullshit. I intentionally drew it backwards."
Coincidentally, later that year I moved into a little cottage
house, and the guy who lived in the other cottage on the property had a
girlfriend, who was the tattoo artist who inked the piano for me seven
years earlier.
On my other arm, I have a band of piano keys that goes all the
way around.
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