Ben Folds Five - Live at the London Astoria, 1997 (Audience Video)

Performed live on March 7th, 1997, at the Astoria in London, England.
Audio and video remastered by Hollie Taylor.

This concert, performed on the eve of the release of Whatever And Ever Amen, captures an incredibly lively performance by the trio. It's filled with improved bits, beautiful harmonies, and unprompted audience participation. The crowd in this concert may be the most chaotic of all, with about 40 people jumping on stage throughout the performance (the number is likely higher but since the cameraman does several closeups on Ben all throughout the performance, we can't give an exact number).

We’d like to credit the kind folks over at Kineko Video (   / @kinekovideo  ) for digitizing this tape for us! They do an amazing job in terms of tape transfers and preservation, and they were an amazing help throughout the whole process. The VHS tape is of curious origin, it was found through Yahoo Auctions JP, and the initial setup looks like it came from a Japanese VCR. While it's definitely a second or third generation tape, it's completely watchable and the audio was salvageable. The tape came in its own custom made case, so the best we can theorize is that it was sold in small bootleg oriented stores in Japan, or was sold online on Japanese forums.

The restoration and remaster process for this tape was unique. While the video didn't have to be touched up much beyond basic color correction and cropping, the audio was supremely messed up. The first 2 songs are entirely in mono, then Philosophy constantly cut between mono and stereo with the shifts being extremely jarring and glitchy sounding. Then, through the entire rest of the tape, there was an obnoxious amount of popping and crackling. I used RX to remove as many artifacts as I could and edited Philosophy to remove all the weird jumps to stereo, matching it as best as I could to the mono track. Then in FL I took the first 3 songs and applied stereo EQ and reverb to approximate the difference and get the jump in quality from Philosophy to Selfless to not be as jarring. After that, the remastering process was normal and the final result came out great.

We also scanned the cover of the tape, then flipped it and made it the thumbnail of this video. It originally had really weird colors but I was able to normalize it a bit with a very specific color curve to get the thumbnail to look more appealing. Darren is a ghost though 👻

☆Timestamps☆
00:00 Missing the War
04:36 Emaline
08:14 Philosophy
13:06 Selfless, Cold and Composed
19:11 Video
23:18 Kate
27:36 Steven's Last Night in Town
32:24 Brick
37:24 Alice Childress
42:13 Sexy Motherfucker (That's What I Am)
43:31 Where's Summer B.?
47:55 One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
51:31 Fair
57:33 Battle of Who Could Care Less
1:00:40 Best Imitation of Myself
1:03:31 Theme from "Dr. Pyser"
1:05:26 Champagne Supernova
1:06:56 Uncle Walter
1:10:52 Song for the Dumped
1:15:39 Underground
1:20:44 Cheering
[ENCORE]
1:21:24 Julianne

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