Ben Folds/Nick Hornby - Lonely Avenue

Cover of Ben FoldsSeveral weeks ago, I decided to start a blog series following a theme.   I have to admit that the theme is a bit of a winding path.   I posted part one on Jan 21 and it sat at the tail end of a blog about my lazy day and the need I have to park my brain for a while to recharge and gain creative energy. In that blog I featured Steve Johnson and the Multi-sketch video "Eureka Moments are Hard to Come by".  That was all about innovation.

This blog, the second in the series, is all about some pretty neat innovators and the collaborative project undertaken by the musician Ben Folds and the writer Nick Hornby.

I first heard Ben Fold's music on the CBC's Radio 2 Morning Program with Molly Johnson several months ago.  She talks so warmly and personally about the musicians she features and my ears perked up when I heard his name because  it was not familiar to me.  When she played "From Above",  I loved the song.  The melody is upbeat and the lyrics tell a story.  Hearing "From Above" led me to the You Tube I included below and then to the internet to "follow the links" to learn more about Ben Folds.  It also led me to discover more about Nick Hornby - but that will be the subject of the next blog.

Firstly, according to wiki:
Benjamin Scott "Ben" Folds (born September 12, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and the former frontman of the alternative rock band Ben Folds Five who now performs as a solo artist and collaborates with many other musicians.

Ben Folds also was featured as a judge on the TV a cappella competion  The Sing Off  in 2010 during the 2nd season of this NBC program.

If you listen to pop radio, you will know Ben Folds from his hit "You Don't Know Me" which features Regina Spektor.

Ben collaborated with William Shatner to produce the album "Has Been" in 2004. I listened to the samples on the Amazon site it is an interesting album and some of the songs are pretty funny. I wouldn't buy the album although I would like to listen to it once.  I don't suspect any of my friends have a copy, so probably no chance of that.


What you might not know is that Ben became a contributing photographer at National Geographic in 2010 and was invited to speak and present photographs live at National Geographic as a part of their new series "Music On Photography".   He is one of our many musician/photographers (the most notable of which, to my mind is Bryan Adams.)

Lonely Avenue

Folds' newest album, a collaboration with English author Nick Hornby, is titled Lonely Avenue and was released on September 28, 2010.  Hornby is well known for his novels "About A Boy" and "High Fidelity", which were both adapted for screen to critical acclaim.  Hornby wrote the words and Ben created the melodies to the songs in this album.  By and far the song  From Above is my favourite.  It is a pop album, not likely to garner a place in the top 500 albums of all times, but most of the songs are a good listen, although there are is one I didn't much like at all -  Levi Johnston's Blues. The songs on the album are each quite different - some of vaguely Beach Boys sounding, with orchestral accompaniments and vocal harmony during the chorus - others are not at all like that.  Go here to check out the BBC review of the album.

"From Above" is the first single from the album which received air play.   I have since purchased the actual CD, which is a hard cover book/CD combination.  The book includes 4 short stories by Nick Hornby and wonderfully illustrated pages containing lyrics from the songs on the CD.

You will notice that the Video which accompanies the song is in a format used by Steve Johnson the "Eureka Moments" video. In this type of animation,  referred to as "multi sketch" ("RSA Animates" is used by RSA but is a branding of the technique), the story is illustrated by a series of pictures that is drawn as the narration or song unfolds.

Visual communication combined with verbal/narrative communication is a very powerful way to get your message across. From the website of Cognitive Media, I learned that the work that the illustrators do is called "scribing" and that they specialize in providing a visual synthesis to accompany an oral presentation.  Since seeing my first "scribed" video presentation, which was an RSA Animation in a previous blog, I have seen this type of video increasingly on You Tube.  It adds measurably to the Video accompanying the song From Above.  Interesting to watch what happens in the video to illustrate the lyrics.

From Above

Music by Ben Folds
Words by Nick Hornby




They even looked at each other once across the crowded bar
He was with Martha, she was with Tom
Neither of them really knew what was going on
A strange feeling of never, heartbeats becoming synchronized

It's been that way forever but most of the time it's just near misses
And kisses once at a bookstore, once at a party
She came in as he was leaving and years ago at the movies
She sat behind him, the 6:30 showing of "While You Were Sleeping"

He never once looked around

It's so easy from above
You can really see it all
People who belong together
Lost and sad and small
But there's nothing to be done for them
It doesn't work that way
Sure we all have soulmates but we walk past them every day

And it's not like they were ever actually unhappy in the lives they lived
He married Martha, she married Tom
Just this fake notion that something was wrong
An ache, an absence, a phantom limb

An itch that could never be scratched

It's so easy from above
You can really see it all
People who belong together
Lost and sad and small
But there's nothing to be done for them
It doesn't work that way
Sure we all have soulmates but we walk past them every day

Neither of them knew what was going on
A strange feeling of never, heartbeats becoming synchronized

It's been that way forever

Who knows whether that's how it should be
Maybe a ghost lived in that vacancy

Maybe that's how books get written
Maybe that's why songs get sung
Maybe we are the unlucky ones

It's so easy from above
You can really see it all
People who belong together
Lost and sad and small
But there's nothing to be done for them
It doesn't work that way
Sure we all have soulmates but we walk past them every day

Maybe that's how books get written
Maybe that's why songs get sung
Maybe we are the unlucky ones
Maybe that's how books get written
Maybe that's why songs get sung
Maybe we are the unlucky ones

About the Collaboration




I have since started reading Nick Hornby's book "Songbook", referred to in the video explaining the Folds/Hornby collaboration. In the book, Hornby has written an essay for 31 songs which have in some way "gotten under his skin". There are some interesting song/musicians in the list and some that I have not heard of - he is from England and some of the musicians are not as well known in North America. I am still reading it so I will save the detail for a blog when I get it finished. Just to whet your appetite, from the back cover:

Quintessentially Hornby: an idiosyncratic and charming exploration of the meaning of music and how it changes as we grow up and grow old" SeattleWeekly.com.

More about Nick Hornby in a blog to come.