Army - Ben Folds Five - The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner - 1999

I was having weird nostalgia for this song and decided to download it a couple of weeks ago. I had a fragment of the chorus stuck in my head and couldn't quite remember how the rest went. I could also hazily remember a party in May of 1999 where it was played and wanted to bask in that brief moment of long forgotten nerdy youth. It's odd the details I remember from the night, as it's mostly a blur. I remember a lot of making out in my pantry. I remember there was an SNL on TV that Sarah Michelle Geller hosted and she did the skit about a magazine that was just about women holding their own boobs a la Janet Jackson on Rolling Stone. I remember jello shots. And I remember me and some friends trying drunkenly to sing along to this song at the top of our lungs, though none of us knew the words. The thing is once I reheard the song, I instantly remembered why it was not entirely successful and doesn't even really hold up as a guilty pleasure in the way that other BF5 songs have in my subconscious.

I never understand the strategy of having a loud verse followed by a restrained chorus. I mean, I understand it as like a contrarian artistic choice...the typical structure of a pop song is to have a verse that climaxes in the chorus. Though hardly the inventor, Cobain popularized the formula of quiet verses that explode in the chorus (with an acknowledged nod to The Pixies of course)...so the late 90's tried to turn that on it's head by reversing the equation. The problem with this course of action is that...the verse-chorus-verse structure just works! And while you may get style points for defying our expectations, it is ultimately a frustrating experience. The verses work to build excitement for a climax that is downplayed, again...full marks for fucking with your audience, but at the end of the day the pay off is why I listen to music.

Alice Childress - Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five -1995

Back in the summer of 1998 I had a couple of friends move down to Bowling Green, Kentucky. I went down to visit them a few times that summer, as even they realized pretty quickly that Bowling Green is one of the more hellish places in this country. I was in the Ben Folds phase then, so this album as a whole and this song in particular always make me think of that summer. Sitting on the porch in the ungodly southern summer heat, sweating out the beer you were drinking, and waiting for the grill to get going. There was really nothing else to do.

It had it's charm, of course, but I like my life to have more gears than 1.

Air - Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen (Expanded Edition) - 1997

My friend Dave loves to hear about my first couple of years out of college, primarily because it was one of the most miserable, painful periods of my life. And while there were many things about that period I am embarrassed about: living my bloated life, with my bloated girlfriend, in a shitty Northern Kentucky suburb, working at a cubicle farm, eating fast food...few things are as embarrassing and painful as admitting how much I LOVED the Ben Folds Five at the time.

All in all though, this isn't a terrible song.