On Thursday, September 18th, I locked up and scored some last minute tickets to see the Ben Folds Five Reunion at Memorial Auditorium in Chapel Hill. The reunion was to play the entire 1999 album “The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner” from cover to cover.
The day the tickets went on sale, they sold out in under 5 minutes. According to friends who were also looking for last minute tickets, they were being sold on eBay for $250.
Since the announcement of the show, I had been digging right and left for the business card of one of my friends who works for a ticket agency. I felt sure I could get tickets from him, if I could just find his card! I tore up my office, house, and parent’s house, as well as my car, looking for his card. I checked out his company’s web site for his email address. Nothing.
I finally called his wife’s office and put in my crazy request for him to call me. He did so on the day of the show in the afternoon. He told me they would be releasing a few more tickets and was wondering if I was still interested. I gave him a reassuring “Hell Yeah”, and then it was off to the phone to call someone to take the last minute trip to Chapel Hill.
I snagged my boy Barfield and we took off to the show. It was my first time back in Chapel Hill to hang out since 2003. We parked by “Top of the Hill” and began the walk to campus. At the crosswalk, we actually passed Ben Folds and his wife. I was pretty excited, but seemed to be the only one at the crosswalk who recognized him. Should have known then there was going to be an opening act.
BFF drummer Darren Jessee has a project called “Hotel Lights”. It was a 30 minute alt-country snoozer, but I bet a full band performance of Hotel Lights would have been great. After he cleared the stage, all three members of Ben Folds Five took stage.
The show rocked! Personal highlights included “Magic” with a horn section comprised of 4 UNC music students, “Army”, and “Jane”. The whole album clocked in at under an hour. Even if BFF walked out then, I would have felt satisfied in the experience. However, they rolled into “Jackson Cannery” and “Where Summer’s B”. Fucking awesome!
I can’t remember if the show ended there, and they came back for an encore, or kept on rolling. I do remember they played for over two hours total. They also played “Battle of Who Could Care Less”, “Julianne”, and ended with “Song for the Dumped”. The crow antics & sing-a-longs were awesome! I had a grin on my face the whole time like a little kid. It was one of the greatest times I have had in a while.
Barfield ran into one of his co-workers from the newspaper at the show while we were leaving. The three of us walked over to “Top of the Hill” to have a few pints. We called it a night and headed back for Wilson. The nightcap was two cheeseburgers from Cookout.
Good times.