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3-6-02 // 9.54 am y'all don't know what it's like being male, middle class and white The drive to Carbondale took longer than I remember it. Guess that's 'cause I'm still mostly used to going there from Cape, not St. Louis. But in any case, still met up with Steve on time, and we managed to get to the venue early enough to get a decent place to stand...I think we ended up about five rows of people back. There was support, which wasn't listed on the ticket. Some guy with long-ish, floppy blonde hair came out with an acoustic guitar. Took me a few minutes to realize that it was Neil Hannon out of the Divine Comedy (I guess Neil Hannon kind of is the Divine Comedy)! He introduced himself as such...and I think I was probably the only person in the entire place who knew who he was. At one point he said "I don't think anyone here even knows who I am"...I shouted out "I do!" which got a smile out of Neil. He then instructed me to sing along to the chorus of the next tune ("National Express"). So he played a fantastic set, though the crowd was extremely indifferent, and perhaps even a bit hostile. Which he totally didn't deserve. I guess that's what happens when you just drop something so very British in on a crowd of Midwestern college kids. His biggest cheer of the night was actually when he announced "just one more song to go"... Bah to that. OK, so just for Melissa, here's the Ben Folds setlist as best I can remember it. I'm pretty sure this is pretty close to the actual order of things. Oh, and by the time he got about four songs into the set, he more or less just took requests the rest of the night. Which is pretty impressive as he was able to remember basically anything people threw at him. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces Then there was a section where he played what he termed "4.6 songs he had to write to get out of his record deal". He said the 0.6 of a song was "Air" from the "Godzilla" soundtrack. He didn't play that, though -- it was all stuff I'd never heard before. There was one with words like "1 down today 3.6 to go", and another which apparently was a UK b-side and is some sort of joke deal where he tried to write the perfect boy band song. Philosophy Not the Same Selfless Cold and Composed Song for the Dumped [last verse sung in Japanese] So yeah, that's that. I was a bit miffed at the dominance of the "Whatever and Ever Amen" material. Well, it is my fave BFF album, but he only played one tune from the first album and only two from "Reinhold Messner". And I wanted to hear Still Fighting It! But alas, it was not to be. I'm extremely tired at the moment...didn't get home and asleep until about 2.30am. And I had to be up at 7 o'clock. Not fun. Thankfully today's a pretty light day at work...at when compared to how busy Monday and Tuesday were. Mostly meetings later today...which is both good and bad. Hopefully I'm not bored to death. Tonight's the big date with Erin. You wouldn't believe how excited I am. She just makes me happy...hopefully I can show her a great time tonight and not make a complete jerk out of myself. Wish me luck. Oh, and she asked me for a picture of myself to put up in her cube with all he other pictures. I thought that was cool and a very cute thing to do. So yeah...I've gotta wait out the rest of the working day, but come 7pm, all will be great. Oh, and for no good reason, here's a bit of a Neil Hannon lyric that I forgot how much I loved until he played the song last night... Give me your love and I'll give you the perfect lovesong
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