The Luckiest

So there was big excitement last night. Something I have been looking forward to since before Christmas. Something big enough to make my little sister drive down to where I live on a school night and drag her boyfriend with her. It also involved Aaron, one of my favorite singers, and a taxi driver.

Last night, we went to a Ben Folds concert. And it was awesome.

I had so many thoughts during the 2 hour plus concert. I first saw Ben when he was the leader of Ben Folds Five back when I was 17 (holy hell, that was almost 10 years ago!), they were opening for Beck, and I didn't know who he was at that point. Brick had just come out on the radio so I knew that song when they played it, but I didn't know any of their other songs. What I did know was that anyone who can play the piano like that is cool in my book. That probably comes from 20 years of playing the piano, but it still does it for me.

Have you ever wished that you could record moments of your life so that you could remember every single detail forever and ever? Concerts are often like that for me. I have so much fun and enjoy seeing my favorite artists live. Even though I can't record the concerts, I do usually seem to remember everything I want to from the night. There are lots of things I want to remember from last night.

Ben is what I've decided to call fantastically geeky. I figure there's levels of geeky from disgustingly geeky (the gross nerds that no one wants to hang out with), to regular geeky (the kids who are smart and not exactly popular but not exactly uncool), to fantastically geeky (so geeky it's awesome and everyone wants to hang out with the geek). He's definitely fantastically geeky. If I saw him on the street and didn't know who he was I would label him as geeky. But he's also an awesome musician and singer, and really funny. He seems to have a great time up on stage and has a ton of energy. He didn't play my favorite song, but he did play a few of my other favorites along with some of his newer songs, which make me feel the need to go out and buy another of his albums.

All in all it was a great concert. Not the best concert I've ever been to, because that place is still held by the Weezer/Foo Fighters Concert I went to last fall that has caused partial deafness in my right ear, but which was totally worth it. But it was as good as I expected. It was my sister's boyfriend's first concert and I think he was impressed. (He's also fantastically geeky but also pretty and nice so he has it all going for him.)

The taxi driver was a big part of the concert. This guy is a taxi driver for a local company that was assigned to drive Ben and the band around town yesterday, and he's apparently also a musician. He definitely plays a mean harmonica, which is how he played in to the concert last night. Ben had him play a couple of songs and then had him add a couple lines to songs later in the night. It was pretty funny, especially since I think he's the guy who used to drive my friends and I to parties back in the day. It was pretty cool that he got to be in the concert.

The best thing about the concert was that I realized how awesome it must be to be a "rock" star. Or just a famous musician I guess. To have that many people know all the words to all the songs you play, things that you have created from your own mind, must be incredibly awesome. I'm too much of a scaredy-cat to ever want to be that famous - my piano teacher told me I was the only person he's ever seen that looked like she was going to throw up on the piano during recitals, because I was just that nervous - but it must really be awesome.

Even though we got home way past my bed time last night, I'm not too tired today, which is good. We had a great time and I would totally go see him again any day.