Ben Folds & Nick Hornby's brilliant collaboration

Last year Ben Folds put out a CD (Lonely Avenue) of songs written by himself and author Nick Hornby. Hornby wrote the lyrics and Folds composed the music, this song-writing was done by e-mail. Each song is like a mini-story often told in the first person. The songs can be very personal and in many ways could be taken as metaphor for other life experiences.

Jessica is a big fan of Ben Folds and went to one of his concerts when she was in year 11. I remember siting outside the Palais waiting for the concert to end to pick her up and thinking I didn't need to be inside to hear the music and you could even hear Folds between songs banter. I bought Lonely Avenue for Jess's birthday which she was very pleased to receive.

One song I particularly enjoyed is Levi Johnston's Blues, which is about the young man who was boyfriend to Bristol Pallin (former Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Pallin's daughter) it includes lines paraphrased from Johnston's pre-infamy MySpace page: "I'm a f___ing redneck, I live to hang out with the boys/Play some hockey, do some fishin' and kill some moose".

The full lyrics are worth checking out and are pure poetry;

http://www.songlyrics.com/ben-folds/levi-johnston-s-blues-lyrics/

Rain in the morning and then scattered cloud with sunny breaks, very steamy Max 27 C min 14 C rainfall to 9 pm 18 mm. Odd jobs around house, finally re-erected the shade sails over the verandah decking. It was only 2 years ago we rebuilt the verandah that had a lot of rotting timber in the structural components.