The Automatik

House of Blues
March 9, 2002

Do you ever see someone play and kick yourself that you never listened to them before? I’m kicking myself twice today.

For once a New Orleans show started on time, so as I got inside a little after 9:30, I realized I’d missed most of Neil Hannon’s set. DRAT. The four songs I did hear, however, were amazing. I was struck by how Hannon looked eerily similar to Steve McDonald from Redd Kross. Then I was struck by how much I liked his voice and how great his tunes were. He was delightfully charming and witty; after one song, “Mutual Friend,” he asked if the crowd liked it. Their cheers were met with a sweetly sarcastic, “Well, that’s good, cos if you didn’t I’d just throw the song away and never play it again.” Hannon’s songs have the same kind of tuneful melancholy as early Bowie, and his delivery is so heartfelt and passionate (without being overly dramatic) that you can’t help but love him.

After he’d explained that his band were called The Divine Comedy, he turned to “introduce” them and dryly exclaimed, “Oh shit, where’s the band?” As Ben Folds mentioned later, The Divine Comedy have put out six albums and had many hit songs in the UK, and I think it’s a real shame that this was the first time many in the crowd had heard of him. And now they’ve broken up. Pity that. Some of his fans in the audience were invited to sing along and after they took him up on the offer, he laughed and said, “I wish you were better singers, but oh well, I’ll work with what I’ve got.” What a darling man! The last song, “Regeneration” was so enthralling, I could feel my mouth fall open in an awed smile. The crowd started cheering during the coda and he waved them away with, “Just a little bit longer now please” and a smile. I wish he would have played for another hour.

A trip to the merch table later and the already crowded place had become almost intolerably so, and I pushed my way to the other side in the hopes of finding a square of floor upon which to stake my claim. A few false starts and then some nice guys let me stand in front of them, because, like everyone else in the world save midgets, I was shorter than they were. I was also lucky enough to stand behind another nice guy and his friends and we were all one big happy family. Until HE showed up. But more on that guy in a bit.

Ben Folds took the stage to raucous applause. The crowd adored him and you could feel the wave of happiness coasting over everyone. Despite the extremely cramped conditions and the quickly rising temperature, there was an overwhelming sense of joy and excitement and it was highly infectious. Ben Folds is a real talent, with humor, intelligence and some serious piano-playin’ fingers. The first set of songs had the sprightly bittersweet feeling of Jellyfish, but without the schmaltz (Sorry Andy Sturmer, it had to be said.) Then he veered into more wry, yet tender, territory, while still remaining as hilarious as could be. It was too crowded for me to keep fishing pen and paper from my purse to write down all the things he said that were amusing, not to mention many of them were situational and wouldn’t be nearly as funny out of context.

Everything was going well until halfway through the show, when some tall guy shoved his way in the middle of us without even so much as an “excuse me” or “sorry.” The noive. He proceeded to ram his hip into my arm while struggling with his coat. A girl eased her way through the crowd (one of about fifty that night–these damn girls and their small bladders) and he took the opportunity to just shove his way in front of me. As if! He was well beyond 6 foot tall and I was incredibly insulted. I pushed him away gently and chastised him thoroughly. “I’m sorry, but you cannot stand in front of me. You are too tall and I’ve been here too long.” He acquiesced grudgingly, giving me that creepy blank smile at which only assholes excel. As the songs kept spilling like pieces of bliss from Ben’s piano, Tall Guy insinuated his elbow in my shoulder. I was incredibly cramped and uncomfortable now, so I nudged his arm away and said, “Can you go shove someone else? You’re pushing into me and it’s really rude and you need to stop. Thank you.” Zombie smile. No response. But he moved.

Yet another girl excused herself by us and the guy finally spoke, in a voice that could only be described as slack-jawed idiot. “Well, how come you didn’t get mad at her when she walked by?” I sighed. “Because she’s just trying to get through the crowd. She didn’t try to stand in front of me after I’d already been here for a half hour and then shove herself into me. That’s just rude!” The guy next to me turned around and voiced his support. “She’s been here all night and you tried to stand in front of her.” And then I added, “And she did say Excuse Me, which you didn’t, dude.” Score! He shut up from then on and never touched me again. Now back to the show.

Since most of the songs seem to have been originally recorded and/or performed with a full band, the crowd filled in the missing parts with impromptu singalongs when necessary. This seemed to touch Mr. Folds rather profoundly and he encouraged them more and more as the night wore on. It warmed my heart to see how much the audience loved him and was ecstatic to be there, enjoying his astonishingly well-crafted and poignant, and at times wildly comical, songs. I couldn’t help but imagine how happy they must have been feeling to be there.

He had us all in stitches with the story of how he had to write 3.2 songs to get out of his recording company contract, and then he nabbed us with two of those 3.2 songs. The story behind what was originally title “Korn Sucks” was uproarious, as was the song, and of course “Rockin’ The Suburbs” was just a wonderful nugget of pop culture trivia, all the while remaining as deeply affecting as all of his songs were. What a cool guy. I will wear my t-shirt with pride.