Ben Folds rocks NYC, then meets BK & KT

Well, the Ben Folds show at Radio City Music Hall rocked Monday night -- despite the stupid 11 p.m. curfew imposed on him that resulted in Ben closing with just the crowd-sung harmonies of "Not the Same" instead of the full song. If he had gone one minute over, he would have been charged $10,000.

So while Ben didn't play standards like "Philosophy" and the full version of "Not the Same," Katie and I did get to hear nuggets like "Don't Change Your Plans" and "Where's Summer B.?"...and the CD version and the reworked, stadium rock version of "Jesusland" (if you can figure out this RapidShare site and manage to download this FLAC file of the song, congrats...it took me awhile to figure it out). The stadium version -- think U2 meets Ben Folds -- kicked ass and was a whole lot of fun. I hope it gets recorded at some point and becomes a B side.

Anyway, tonight's show ranks up there with among the best I have ever seen...probably because Ben and the boys were in top form and it was in such a hallowed venue like Radio City Music Hall (its policies notwithstanding). You could tell Ben was having fun playing there and seeing all those people at one of his shows.

And, as I posted earlier, because Katie won a contest on BenFolds.com, we got kick-ass seats (Row EE) that were an upgrade over the ones I had purchased (Row F...of the second mezzanine) and we were able to meet Ben after the show. It was very quick, though, and kind of awkward. We just stood there in his dressing room on an upper floor of the venue until some others moved out and we were able to grab a few seconds of his time. While we were in there, though, Ben appeased the crowd gathered on the street below by tossing bananas out the window to them.

Oh, and props to Colin, the college rep for Sony, who worked everything out for us and got us the free CDs (Ben's "Songs for Silverman-Deluxe Edition" and The Fray's CD) and the passes to the mysterious Roxy Suite.

OK...here are some pics from the evening: