The voice in red is Rick Dees, the DJ, and the other person is Ben.
It’s a pleasure. Now you’re from a town we’re very fond of - Chapel Hill, North Carolina, home of the university of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, one of the greatest party towns in the whole world. What is your favourite hangout in Chapel Hill, Ben , so we’ll know to track you down when we’re there.
Well you know there’s this place downstairs called JF (Grins?) from I think the radio station you worked at had a monkey stand outside and the guy got uh, uh, he was like dressed up as a monkey and occasionally people threw things at him and the guy had to quit someone threw a bottle and hit the monkey in the head with the bottle...
(laughs)
...so, uh, so JF (Grins?) is no more.
I can ima... he’s not grinning about that for sure. Let me, let me shift gears for a second, Ben, because let’s talk about Brick. Now it’s based on an event that actually happened to you and your girlfriend back in high school, and this is kind of emotional strain but, Ben, if you don’t mind, could you paint a picture for anyone listening now of what it must have been like.
Well, okay, I’ll try. Um, I think we’d been dating for like six months all total and I think that’s when it happened. I think we dated, see, we dated over the summer between eleventh and twelfth grade, and then this happened, um, sometime in I guess the fall semester and it really was the day after Christmas, or it was at least it was two or three days after Christmas, it was sometime right afterwards. I, I had mono, um, and strep throat and at the same time I had like a 102 temperature, and I had to get in this car... if I can be long winded (??) say the story. I got in the car and to go pick her up and the sun hadn’t come yet, up yet, and I, I had to stop and, uh, I’d sold a bunch of stuff in order to get the money for this and I went by, um, a, uh, like a 7 - 11 to get a money order and this car that I had had this weird cracked engine block thing where it started to, um, it started to burn antifreeze, and I went inside, and there’s a cop in there and I’m getting my thing out and I left the car on cause I knew it, if it cut off, it wouldn’t come back on. It starts flooding the neighbourhood with fumes, it’s like, you couldn’t see traffic, you couldn’t see anything, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a car do this, but it’s like...
No, I have.
It’s like a smoke bomb, you know, or something like that. The cop’s like, ‘son, is that your car’ and I said, ‘uh, yes sir, yes sir it is’ and he’s like ‘you’re gonna have to turn that off’. ‘I, I can’t, I can’t turn it off, cause I have to go, have to go, I can’t turn it off’, and he goes ‘you’re gonna have to turn it off or I’m gonna have to take you downtown’, it’s like, ‘no, no, no, please, please, just let me drive off in my car’, and he’s like, he’s like, ‘son, if you don’t turn this thing off, well, I’m gonna have to arrest you right now’, and, and, like, there’s all there’s all these people in there, this is my first, my first brush with not being private, it was like, ‘officer, I’m 16 years old, my girlfriend’s pregnant, it’s the day after Christmas, I’m sick with strep throat and mono, I’m going to pick her up and we’re going to an abortion clinic, I’m not turning the car off’. And he’s like, ‘okay’.
Oh, now with that image fresh in your mind, as a listener, this is Ben Folds Five right here. Ben of course on piano, Darren Jessee on drums, Robert Sledge, bass. Brick.
(music - ‘Brick’)
Ben Folds Five, he’s here, Ben himself, on the countdown. Ben, great to have this man here. If that song is any indication I’d say you had a rough senior year, ha ha.
That whole year, that whole year was horrible. Teenage years can be the worst. Everyone’s like, this is the time of your life, this is the greatest. I, I swear, man, I wouldn’t, I would never go back. I have never seen things so rough as that.
Oh.
And you run into teenagers today, like when we play shows for kids and you can tell, they’re all going through something really, really... like, you look at them and you just know that they’re going through it, you know, at the moment, it’s, like, rough.
It is rough. And at number 16, though, that’s not rough. An amazing job of turning this horrible year into something positive - music, which is the universal language. Oh, and, Ben, let me get really serious, even more serious for just a second, let me verify - is your true favourite song of all time Disco Duck? You twisted fool.
If you don’t mind I’ve brought a copy with me here if you wouldn’t mind signing it. Uh, it’s not your version, actually, it’s uh, Dan Warwick’s version...
(laughter)
...of Disco Duck, but would you sign it anyway?
Get off the show! Get, no, I’m serious, I want...
(laughter)
...you to, security... get this, this, this, get this person... this mean spirited individual, get him off the show! Send him back!
No problem, Rick.
Send him over to Duke, send him to Duke, they’ll take care of him...
(clunking)
...nice wooden shoes, too, Ben, unbelievable, yeah, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll look great in Holland with those, ha ha. Ben Folds Five, and a (medley?) he’ll go far, at number 16 on the countdown...