Monday, April 30, 2012

Steven's Last Night in Town - Ben Folds Five

To continue the trend from my post earlier, here is a song that has heavy swing influence with a modern voice thrown on top of it. I have always been a huge fan of Ben Folds, and can still remember the first time I heard his single 'Rockin the Suburbs.' Ever since, I have loved everything I have heard done by him, and this piece is no exception.

The story behind this song, is that in the town where Ben grew up, there was this guy named Steven who came into town one day, and goes around saying that he used to work for Paul McCartney. He stayed in town a little bit, and then eventually said that it was time for him to go. So everyone threw him a big farewell party. But the next day, he came back, saying that his flight was delayed, and asked if everyone could throw him another party, so they did. Eventually, after several more times of this happening, the town was over it just ignored him.

The song starts off with a shrill note from the Clarinet, quickly joined by a swinging rhythm from the drums and a scat chorus. This repeats one more time, with the addition of a trumpet added in. Then we move into the first verse. The clarinet drops out and there is just Ben, his piano, and the drums with a standard swing rhythm. Then it catapults into the chorus, with a Clarinet solo going on underneath. They then repeat the intro and first verse, with an addition of the scat going through till the chorus again. Once the chorus rolls around again, the horns join in this time. We then go into the bridge. The bridge is interesting, because we got small solos from almost all of the instruments, first the trumpet, then piano, then the drums have a little bit of a solo until the song moves into the third verse.

The third verse is fun, is it starts out slow, then slowly starts to build with an odd addition of an oboe backing up Ben's vocals. After this, it goes straight back into the chorus again. The drums break out a bit more, and the trumpet lets loose with a mute. The outro of the song is fantastic, with the scat chorus laying the base as all of the other instruments seem to improve at the same time around them.

I thoroughly enjoy this piece, and this is not the first nor the last time Ben will use older styles in his music. Other pieces that he has done include Lost in the Supermarket, Hiro's Song, and The Secret Life of Morgan Davis.

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