and culs-de-sac are hallmarks of suburban planning.]].]]

Suburb mostly refers to a residential area. They may be the residential areas of a city (such as in Australia and New Zealand), or separate residential communities within commuting distance of a city (such as in the United States and Canada). Some suburbs have a degree of political autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods. Suburbs grew in the 19th and 20th century as a result of improved rail and later road transport and an increase Suburbs tend to proliferate around cities that have an abundance of adjacent flat land. Any particular suburban area is referred to as a suburb, while suburban areas on the whole are referred to as the suburbs or suburbia, with the demonym being a suburbanite. Colloquial usage sometimes shortens the term to burb.

Etymology and usage

The word is derived from the Old French subburbe and ultimately from the Latin suburbium, formed from sub, meaning "under", and urbs, meaning "city". In Rome, important people tended to live within the city hills. "Under" in later usage sometimes referred variously to lesser wealth, political power, population, or population density. The first recorded usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from Wycliffe in 1380, where the form subarbis is used.

The word suburb is used a variety of ways around the world.

United States and Canada

In the United States and Canada, suburb can refer either to an outlying residential area of a city or town or to a separate municipality, borough, or unincorporated area outside a town or city. The latter definition is evident in the title of David Rusk's book Cities Without Suburbs (ISBN 0-943875-73-0), which promotes metropolitan government. Note, however, that this definition is not universal. In fact, many of the classic streetcar suburbs are within the political boundaries of their respective cities, such as West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a part of which has is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the West Philadelphia Streetcar Suburb Historic District. American journalist and social commentator Joel Garreau criticized the common use of the term solely to areas outside the political boundaries of major cities in his 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier when he discussed the phenomenon of edge cities in Atlanta (emphasis added): }}

For its part, the Canadian national statistical agency, Statistics Canada, uses a variety of definitions of "suburban" and "urban" depending of the context:{{cquote|The central municipality can be differentiated from the suburbs in a number of ways. We will try to impose some order on these ideas by presenting four ways of categorizing them, based on four criteria for delineation: 1) administrative or political boundaries; 2) the boundaries of the city’s central core... 3) distance from the city centre; and 4) neighbourhood density. As we will see, each one has its strengths and weaknesses... In the series of articles on life in metropolitan areas, we will rely on... three major distinctions: central and peripheral neighbourhoods, high-density and low-density neighbourhoods, and central and suburban municipalities. -Statistics Canada In the U.S, the development of the skyscraper and the sharp inflation of downtown real estate prices also led to downtowns being more fully dedicated to businesses, thus pushing residents outside the city center.

The history of suburbia is a subfield of urban history and enlists scholars across the world. Most published work looks at the origins, growth, diverse typologies, culture, and politics of suburbs, as well as to the gendered and family-oriented nature of suburban space. Many people have assumed that early-20th-century suburbs were enclaves for middle-class whites, a concept that carries tremendous cultural influence yet is actually stereotypical. Many suburbs are based on a heterogeneous society of working-class and minority residents, many of whom share the American Dream regarding home ownership as defined by developers and the power of advertising. Sies (2001) argues that it is necessary to examine how "suburb" is defined as well as the distinction made between cities and suburbs, geography, economic circumstances, and the interaction of numerous factors that move research beyond acceptance of stereotyping and its influence on scholarly assumptions.

Suburbia worldwide

United States

, Texas.]] , Louisiana.]] In the United States, suburbs have a prevalence of usually detached single-family homes.

Many post-World War II American suburbs are characterized by: Lower densities than central cities, dominated by single-family homes on small plots of land, surrounded at close quarters by very similar dwellings.

Zoning patterns that separate residential and commercial development, as well as different intensities and densities of development. Daily needs are not within walking distance of most homes.

Subdivisions carved from previously rural land into multiple-home developments built by a single real estate company. These subdivisions are often segregated by minute differences in home value, creating entire communities where family incomes and demographics are almost completely homogeneous..

Shopping malls and strip malls behind large parking lots instead of a classic downtown shopping district.

A road network designed to conform to a hierarchy, including culs-de-sac, leading to larger residential streets, in turn leading to large collector roads, in place of the grid pattern common to most central cities and pre-World War II suburbs.

A greater percentage of one-story administrative buildings than in urban areas.

A greater percentage of Whites and less percentage of citizens of other ethnic groups than in urban areas. Black suburbanization grew between 1970 and 1980 by 2.6% as a result of central city neighborhoods expanding into older neighborhoods vacated by whites.

Compared to rural areas, suburbs usually have greater population density, higher standards of living, more complex road systems, more franchised stores and restaurants, and less farmland and wildlife.

By 2010 suburbs increasingly gained people in racial minority groups as White Americans moved back to city centers. Many major city downtowns (such as Downtown Miami, Downtown Detroit, or Downtown Los Angeles) are experiencing a renewal, with large population growth, residential apartment construction, and increased social, cultural, and infrastructural investments. Better public transit, proximity to work and cultural attractions, and frustration with suburban life and gridlock have attracted young Americans to the city centers.

History

Prior to the 19th century, suburb often correlated with the outlying areas of cities where work was most inaccessible; implicitly, where the poorest people had to live. The modern American usage of the term came about during the course of the 19th century, as improvements in transportation and sanitation made it possible for wealthy developments to exist on the outskirts of cities, for example in Brooklyn Heights.

The growth of suburbs was facilitated by the development of zoning laws, redlining and numerous innovations in transport. After World War II availability of FHA loans stimulated a housing boom in American suburbs. In the older cities of the northeast U.S., streetcar suburbs originally developed along train or trolley lines that could shuttle workers into and out of city centers where the jobs were located. This practice gave rise to the term bedroom community, meaning that most daytime business activity took place in the city, with the working population leaving the city at night for the purpose of going home to sleep.

Economic growth in the United States encouraged the suburbanization of American cities that required massive investments for the new infrastructure and homes. Consumer patterns were also shifting at this time, purchasing power was becoming stronger and more accessible to a wider range of families. Suburban houses also brought about needs for products that were not needed in urban neighborhoods, such as lawnmowers and automobiles. During this time commercial shopping malls were being developed near suburbs to satisfy consumer needs and their car dependent lifestyle..

Long Island, New York in the United States became the first large scale suburban area in the world to develop, thanks to William Levitt's Levittown, New York which is widely considered to be the archetype of Post-WWII suburbia. Long Island's significance as a suburb derived mostly from the upper-middle-class development of entire communities in the late nineteenth century, and the rapid population growth that occurred as a result.

As car ownership rose and wider roads were built, the commuting trend accelerated as in North America. This trend towards living away from towns and cities has been termed the urban exodus.

Zoning laws also contributed to the location of residential areas outside of the city centre by creating wide areas or "zones" where only residential buildings were permitted. These suburban residences are built on larger lots of land than in the urban city. For example, the lot size for a residence in Chicago is usually deep, while the width can vary from wide for a row house to wide for a large standalone house. In the suburbs, where standalone houses are the rule, lots may be wide by deep, as in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. Manufacturing and commercial buildings were segregated in other areas of the city.

Increasingly, more people moved out to the suburbs, known as suburbanization. Moving along with the population, many companies also located their offices and other facilities in the outer areas of the cities. This has resulted in increased density in older suburbs and, often, the growth of lower density suburbs even further from city centers. An alternative strategy is the deliberate design of "new towns" and the protection of green belts around cities. Some social reformers attempted to combine the best of both concepts in the garden city movement.

In the United States, since the 18th century urban areas have often grown faster than city boundaries. Until the 1900s, new neighborhoods usually sought or accepted annexation to the central city to obtain city services. In the 20th century, however, many suburban areas began to see independence from the central city as an asset. In some cases, white suburbanites saw self-government as a means to keep out people who could not afford the added suburban property maintenance costs not needed in city living. Federal subsidies for suburban development accelerated this process as did the practice of redlining by banks and other lending institutions. Some cities such as Miami and San Francisco, the main city is much smaller than the surrounding suburban areas, leaving the city proper with a small portion of the metro area's population and land area. Cleveland, Ohio is typical of many American central cities; its municipal borders have changed little since 1922, even though the Cleveland urbanized area has grown many times over. Several layers of suburban municipalities now surround cities like Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, San Francisco, Sacramento, Atlanta, Miami, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

Canada

is Canada's most suburban metropolitan region, with 67% of the population living in low-density neighbourhoods in 2001.]] .]] , north of Toronto.]]

In determining which areas are considered "urban" and which are "suburban", the national statistical agency, Statistics Canada, has examined a number of potential methods for drawing the distinction, including municipal boundaries, age of the housing stock, distance from city hall or the central business district, and housing (but not population) density. It considers the last two, distance from centre and housing density, the best measures of suburban or urban identity. Suburbs are defined as primarily single-family housing located at distance from the centre of the city, while urban areas are primarily multi-family buildings near the centre.

Canada is an urbanized nation where over 80% of the population live in urban areas (loosely defined), and roughly two-thirds live in one of Canada's 33 census metropolitan areas (CMAs) with a population of over 100,000. However, of this metropolitan population, in 2001 nearly half lived in low-density neighbourhoods, with only one in five living in a typical "urban" neighbourhood.

Despite these caveats, the trend in Canada has been of steady suburbanization. Population and income growth in Canadian suburbs has tended to outpace growth in core urban or rural areas. The suburban population increased 87% between 1981 and 2001, well ahead of urban growth. The majority of recent population growth in Canada's three largest metropolitan areas (Greater Toronto, Greater Montreal, and Greater Vancouver) has occurred in non-core municipalities, although this is not the same as total suburban growth, which often occurs within core cities boundaries, particularly in geographically large cities like Calgary and Edmonton.

Transportation in Canadian suburbs is dominated by private automobiles. Between 1992 and 2005, automobile dependence rose in Canadian suburbs, while bicycle usage declined.

The political independence of suburban municipalities from the nearby city is sensitive political issue, since the provinces have the power to re-write municipal boundaries at will, and they have often dictated mergers without input from residents (recently in Nova Scotia in 1996, Ontario in 1997 and Quebec in 2002). The percenage of a CMA's population located in the core municipality varies substantially. For this reason, Statistics Canada does not use municipal boundaries to delineate "suburbs" from "cities".

Canada's largest administratively independent suburban municipalities are those surrounding the four largest cities. Montreal is neighboured both by municipalities that lie on the same island in the St. Lawrence River, as well as "off-island suburbs" including the two largest, Laval (located on a neighbouring island) and Longueuil (on the mainland), as well as a "ring" of smaller municipalities on the South and North shores of the river. From 2002 to 2006 the entire Island of Montreal was merged into one city, but this policy was partly reversed when a different party captured the provincial government. Ottawa and its large neighbour of Gatineau—both expanded greatly by city-suburb mergers in the early 2000s—face one another on the Ottawa River; the two, together with neighbouring suburban towns in both Ontario and Quebec, form the National Capital Region. Toronto annexed many of the outlying suburbs in 1998. The Greater Toronto Area has many large suburban cities with its two largest being Mississauga and Brampton. Greater Vancouver has seven suburban municipalities with at least 100,000 people, with the largest being Surrey and Vancouver's direct neighbours Burnaby and Richmond. Edmonton is neighboured by St. Albert and Sherwood Park among others.

History

In the 1890-1930 era part of Toronto' east-end district now known as "the Beach" changed from a "cottage colony" of summer second-homes into a metropolitan suburb dominated by the middle classes. The Beach is a representative type of pre-World War II suburban growth since it emerged slowly and piecemeal, and was inconsistent in pattern and form with a mix of housing types. The Beach exemplifies how social classes sorted themselves by income level and neighborhood. The Beach was dominated by the middle classes, with some working-class areas.

In sharp contrast to the haphazard development of "the Beach" stands the elaborately designed Montréal suburb of Mount Royal. The Canadian Northern Railway built Mount Royal northwest of Montréal in 1910 to 1925. It was a corporate suburb that was planned, designed, and developed as a real estate venture to help offset the costs of building a railway tunnel into the center of Montreal. Its main designer was Frederick Todd, a protégé of the junior Olmsted and Canada's most prominent landscape architect of the early 20th century. His design was influenced by the City Beautiful ideals of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and the Garden City Movement principles of Henry Vivian.

After the Second World War, a serious housing shortage and the return of large numbers of veterans led the national government, through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), to promote suburbs by offering very low cost mortgages, with small down payments and easy terms.

Other countries

In many parts of the developed world, suburbs are different from the American suburb, both in terms of population and in terms of what they represent. In some cases suburbs of cities outside of North America are economically distressed areas, inhabited by higher proportions of recent immigrants, with higher delinquency rates and social problems. Sometimes the notion of suburb may even refer to people in real misery, who are kept at the limit of the city borders for economic, social, and sometimes ethnic reasons. An example in the developed world would be the banlieues of France, or the concrete suburbs of Sweden, even if the suburbs of these countries also include middle-class and upper-class neighborhoods that often consist of single-family houses. Thus some of the suburbs of most of the developed world are comparable to several inner cities of the U.S. and Canada.

The growth in the use of trains, and later automobiles and highways, increased the ease with which workers could have a job in the city while commuting in from the suburbs. In the United Kingdom, railways stimulated the first mass exodus to the suburbs. The Metropolitan Railway, for example, was active in building and promoting its own housing estates in the north-west of London, consisting mostly of detached houses on large plots, which it then marketed as "Metro-land".he Australian and New Zealand usage came about as outer areas were quickly surrounded in fast-growing cities, but retained the appellation suburb; the term was eventually applied to the original core as well.

, a suburb of Mexico City.|left|thumb|250px]] In Mexico, suburbs are generally similar to their United States counterparts. Houses have much different architecture which is a mix of Spanish, Aztec and American architecture, and are generally bigger or smaller and called lomas (literally Spanish for hills). Suburbs can be found in Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey, and most major cities. Lomas de Chapultepec is an example of an affluent suburb. In the rest of Latin America, the situation is that similar to Mexico, with many suburbs being built, most notably Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, which have experienced a boom in the construction of suburbs since the late 70s and early 80s. As the growth of middle-class and upper-class suburbs increased, low-class squatter areas have increased, most notably "lost cities" in Mexico, barriadas in Peru, villa miserias in Argentina, asentamientos in Guatemala and favelas of Brazil.

In Africa, since the beginning of the 1990s, the development of middle-class suburbs boomed. Due to the industrialization of many African countries, particularly in cities such as Cairo, Johannesburg and Lagos, the middle class has grown. In an illustrative case of South Africa, RDP housing has been built. In much of Soweto, many houses' architecture are American in appearance, but are smaller, and often consist of a kitchen and living room two or three bedrooms, and a bathroom. However, more affluent neighborhoods more comparable to American suburbs, particularly east of the FNB Stadium.

In the UK, the government is seeking to impose minimum densities on newly approved housing schemes in parts of southeast England. The goal is to 'build sustainable communities' rather than housing estates. However, commercial concerns tend to retard the opening of services until a large number of residents have occupied the new neighbourhood. in Soweto, suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa.]] In the illustrative case of Rome, Italy, in the 1920s and 1930s, suburbs were intentionally created ex novo in order to give lower classes a destination, in consideration of the actual and foreseen massive arrival of poor people from other areas of the country. Many critics have seen in this development pattern (that was circularly distributed in every direction) also a quick solution to a problem of public order (keeping the unwelcome poorest classes together with the criminals, in this way better controlled, comfortably remote from the elegant "official" town). On the other hand, the expected huge expansion of the town soon effectively covered the distance from the central town, and now those suburbs are completely engulfed by the main territory of the town. Other newer suburbs (called exurbs) were created at a further distance from them. , a suburb outside of downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia]]

In Russia, the term suburb differs from the American term, but also differ from the Western European term. In North America, suburbs often refer to residential areas that house the middle and high class and are made up of single-family homes. In Russia however, a suburb refers to high-rise residential apartments which usually consist of two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. These suburbs, however are usually not in poor neighborhoods, as with the banlieues of France.

In China, the term suburb is new, although suburbs are already being constructed rapidly. Many new suburban homes are similar to their equivalents in the United States, primarily outside Beijing and Shanghai, which also mimic Spanish and Italian architecture. In Hong Kong, however, suburbs are mostly government-planned new towns containing numerous public housing estates. New Towns such as Tin Shui Wai may gain notoriety as a slum. However, other new towns also contain private housing estates and low density developments for the upper classes.

In Japan, the construction of suburbs have boomed since the end of World War II. They are very similar to their US counterparts, and many cities are experiencing the urban sprawl affect.

In Malaysia, suburbs are common, especially in areas surrounding the Klang Valley, which is the largest conurbation in the country. These suburbs also serve as major housing areas and commuter towns. Terraced houses, semi-detached houses and shophouses are common concepts in suburbs. In certain areas such as Klang, Subang Jaya and Petaling Jaya, suburbs form the core of these places. The latter one has been turned into a satellite city of Kuala Lumpur. Suburbs are also evident in other smaller conurbations including Ipoh, Johor Bahru, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and Penang.

Traffic flows

Suburbs typically have more traffic congestion and longer travel times than traditional neighborhoods. Only the traffic within the short streets themselves is less. This is due to three factors: almost-mandatory automobile ownership due to poor suburban bus systems, longer travel distances and the hierarchy system, which is less efficient at distributing traffic than the traditional grid of streets.

In the suburban system, most trips from one component to another component requires that cars enter a collector road, no matter how short or long the distance is. This is compounded by the hierarchy of streets, where entire neighborhoods and subdivisions are dependent on one or two collector roads. Because all traffic is forced onto these roads, they are often heavy with traffic all day. If a traffic accident occurs on a collector road, or if road construction inhibits the flow, then the entire road system may be rendered useless until the blockage is cleared. The traditional "grown" grid, in turn, allows for a larger number of choices and alternate routes.

Suburban systems of the sprawl type are also quite inefficient for cyclists or pedestrians, as the direct route is usually not available for them either. This encourages car trips even for distances as low as several hundreds of yards or meters (which may have become up to several miles or kilometers due to the road network). Improved sprawl systems, though retaining the car detours, possess cycle paths and footpath connecting across the arms of the sprawl system, allowing a more direct route while still keeping the cars out of the residential and side streets.

Cultural depictions

Suburbia was the subject matter for the American photojournalist Bill Owens, whose books documented the culture of suburbia in the 1970s, most notably his book Suburbia.

The 1962 song "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds lampoons the development of suburbia and its perceived bourgeois and conformist values.

In Britain, television series such as The Good Life, Butterflies and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin depicted suburbia as well-manicured but relentlessly boring, and its residents as either overly conforming or prone to going stir crazy. Contrastingly, U.S. shows - such as Desperate Housewives or Weeds - portray the suburbs with perfectly manicured lawns, friendly people, and beautifully up-kept houses. However, shows from both countries depict the suburbs as being full of drama, secrets, and hidden motivations amongst its residents.

See also

Boomburbs

Commuter town

Developed Environments

* Rural

* Exurban

* Urban

Edge city

Ethnoburb

Exurb

Faubourg

Inner suburbs

Levittown, Pennsylvania

List of largest suburbs by population

London commuter belt (Stockbroker belt)

Microdistrict

Penurbia

Settlement types

* Hamlet

* Village

* Town

* City

* Megalopolis

Streetcar suburb

Suburbia bashing

Urban rural fringe

Urban sprawl

References

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External links

A Future Vision for the North American Suburb

Kingston University">Europe's first interdisciplinary research centre for the study of suburbs, based at Kingston University

Images of a mature north London suburb illustrating a wide range of domestic architecture

Sierra Club stopping sprawl

The end of suburbia (documentary film)

Why Does Hollywood Hate Suburbia? - The Wall Street Journal

An online companion to the book, "Suburban Transformations", this site serves to encourage discussions about the potential for growth inherent within suburbs, and looks to find a solution to the problem of unmitigated suburban sprawl

"Which is Worse: Rape or Living in the Suburbs?". An online discussion going on at rottentomatoes.com

Category:City Category:Populated places by type *

Name	John Peel
Caption	John Peel pictured in a BBC studio
Birth name	John Robert Parker Ravenscroft
Birth date	August 30, 1939
Birth place	Heswall, England
Death date	October 25, 2004
Death place	Cusco, Peru
Country	United Kingdom
Website	BBC minisite

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967, until his death in 2004. He was known for his eclectic taste in music and his honest and warm broadcasting style. He was one of the first broadcasters to play psychedelic rock, reggae and punk records on British radio, and he is widely acknowledged for promoting artists working in various genres including alternative rock, indie rock, pop, hardcore punk, grindcore, death metal, British hip hop and dance music.

Peel's Radio 1 shows were notable for the regular 'Peel sessions', which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist live in the BBC's studios, and which often provided the first major national coverage to bands that later would achieve great fame (These 'sessions' are similar to 'Live Lounge' sessions recorded today for the station). Another popular feature of his shows was the annual Festive Fifty countdown of his listeners' favourite records of the year. Peel appeared frequently on British television as one of the presenters of Top of the Pops in the 1980s, and he provided voice-over commentary for a number of BBC programmes. He became popular with the audience of BBC Radio 4 for his Home Truths programme which ran from the 1990s, featuring unusual stories from listeners' domestic lives.

Life and career

Early life

Peel was born in Heswall Cottage Hospital in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula, near Liverpool, and grew up in the nearby village of Burton. His father was an upper middle class cotton merchant, and he was sent away to be educated as a boarder at Shrewsbury School. His housemaster, R H J Brooke, whom Peel described as "extraordinarily eccentric" and "amazingly perceptive", wrote on one of his school reports, "Perhaps it's possible that John can form some kind of nightmarish career out of his enthusiasm for unlistenable records and his delight in writing long and facetious essays." In his posthumously published autobiography, Peel revealed that he had been raped by an older pupil while at Shrewsbury.

After finishing his National Service in 1959 in the Royal Artillery as a B2 Radar Operator, he worked as a mill operative at Townhead Mill in Rochdale and travelled home each weekend to Heswall on a scooter borrowed from his sister. Whilst in Rochdale Monday to Friday he stayed in a bed and breakfast in the area of Milkstone Road and Drake Street. Peel was a vegetarian.

United States

In 1960, he went to the United States to work for a cotton producer who had business dealings with his father. Once this job had finished, he took a number of others, including working as a travelling insurance salesman, remaining in the United States until 1967. While in Dallas, Texas, where the insurance company he worked for was based, he spoke to John F. Kennedy as the presidential candidate and his running-mate Lyndon B. Johnson toured the city during the 1960 Presidential election campaign. Following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, he passed himself off as a reporter for the Liverpool Echo in order to attend the arraignment of Lee Harvey Oswald and he and a friend can be seen in the footage of the November 22/23 midnight press conference at Dallas Police Department when Lee Harvey Oswald was paraded before the media. He later phoned in the story to the Liverpool Echo.

While working for the insurance company, he filed card programs for an early IBM 1410 computer (which led to his entry in Who's Who noting him as a former computer programmer), and he got his first radio job, albeit unpaid, working for WRR (AM) in Dallas. There, he presented the second hour of the Monday night programme Kat's Karavan, which was primarily hosted by the American singer & radio personality Jim Lowe. Following this, and as Beatlemania hit the United States, Peel got a job as the official Beatles correspondent with the Dallas radio station KLIF due to his connection to Liverpool. He later worked for KOMA in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma until 1965 when he moved to KMEN in San Bernardino, California, using the name John Ravencroft to present the breakfast show.

While in Dallas, in 1965, he married his first wife, Shirley Anne Milburn, in what Peel later described as a "mutual defence pact". The marriage was never happy and although she accompanied Peel back to Britain in 1967, they were soon separated. The divorce became final in 1973.

Return to Britain

Peel returned to England in early 1967 and found work with the offshore pirate radio station Radio London. He was offered the midnight-to-two shift, which gradually developed into a programme called The Perfumed Garden (some thought it was named after an erotic book famous at the time - which Peel claimed never to have read). It was on "Big L" that he first adopted the name John Peel (the name was suggested by a Radio London secretary) and established himself as a distinctive radio voice.

Peel's show was an outlet for the music of the UK underground scene. He played classic blues, folk music and psychedelic rock, with an emphasis on the new music emerging from Los Angeles and San Francisco. As important as the musical content of the programme was the personal—sometimes confessional—tone of Peel's presentation, and the listener participation it engendered. Underground events he had attended during his periods of shore leave, like the UFO Club and "The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream", together with causes célèbres like the drug "busts" of the Rolling Stones and John "Hoppy" Hopkins, were discussed between records. All this was far removed from Radio London's daytime format. Listeners sent Peel letters, poems, and records from their own collections, so that the programme became a vehicle for two-way communication; by the final week of Radio London he was receiving far more mail than any other DJ on the station.

After the closure of Radio London in 1967 Peel wrote a column under the title The Perfumed Garden for the underground newspaper the International Times (from autumn 1967 to mid-1969), in which he showed himself to be a committed, if critical, supporter of the ideals of the underground. A Perfumed Garden mailing list was set up by a group of keen listeners, which facilitated contacts and gave rise to numerous small-scale, local arts projects typical of the time, including the poetry magazine Sol.

BBC career

When Radio London closed down on 14 August 1967, John Peel joined the BBC's new pop music station, BBC Radio 1, which began broadcasting the following month. Unlike Big L, Radio 1 was not a full-time station, but a hybrid of recorded music and live studio orchestras. Peel recalled, "I was one of the first lot on Radio 1 and I think it was mainly because ... Radio 1 had no real idea what they were doing so they had to take people off the pirate ships because there wasn't anybody else." Peel presented a programme called Top Gear. At first he was obliged to share presentation duties with other DJs (Pete Drummond and Tommy Vance were among his co-hosts) but in February 1968 he was given sole charge of Top Gear; he continued to present the show until it ended in 1975. Peel played an eclectic mix of the music that caught his attention, which he would continue to do throughout his career.

During 1969, after hosting a trailer for a BBC programme on VD on his Night Ride programme, Peel received significant media attention because of admitting on air to having suffered from a sexually transmitted disease earlier that year. This admission was later used in an attempt to discredit him when he appeared as a defence witness in the 1971 Oz obscenity trial.

The Night Ride programme, advertised by the BBC as an exploration of words and music, seemed to take up from where The Perfumed Garden had left off. It featured rock, folk, blues, classical and electronic music. A unique feature of the programme was the inclusion of tracks, mostly of exotic non-Western music, drawn from the BBC Sound Archive; the most popular of these were gathered on a BBC Records LP, John Peel's Archive Things (1970). Night Ride also featured poetry readings and numerous interviews with a wide range of guests, including personal friends Marc Bolan, journalist and musician Mick Farren, poet Pete Roche, and singer-songwriter Bridget St. John and stars such as the Byrds, the Rolling Stones and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The programme captured much of the creative activity of the underground scene. Its anti-establishment stance and unpredictability did not find approval with the BBC hierarchy, and it ended in September 1969 after 18 months. In his sleeve notes to the Archive Things LP Peel calls the free-form nature of Night Ride his preferred radio format. His subsequent shows featured a mixture of records and live sessions, a format which would characterise his Radio 1 programmes for the rest of his career.

After separation from his first wife, Peel's personal life began to stabilise, as he found friendship and support from new Top Gear producer John Walters - and from his girlfriend Sheila Gilhooly, who he identified on-air as "the Pig". Peel married Sheila on 31 August 1974. The reception was in London's Regent's Park, with Walters as best man. Peel wore Liverpool football colours (red) and walked down the aisle to the song "You'll Never Walk Alone". Their sheepdog, Woggle, served as a bridesmaid.

Peel's enthusiasm for music outside the mainstream occasionally brought him into conflict with the Radio 1 hierarchy. In early 1977 station controller Derek Chinnery contacted John Walters and asked him to confirm that the show was not playing any punk, which he (Chinnery) had read about in the press and disapproved of. Chinnery was evidently somewhat surprised by Walters' reply that in recent weeks they had been playing little else. In 1979 Peel stated: "They leave you to get on with it. I'm paid money by the BBC not to go off and work for a commercial radio station...I wouldn't want to go to one anyway, because they wouldn't let me do what the BBC let me do."

Peel's reputation as an important DJ breaking unsigned acts into the mainstream was such that young hopefuls sent him an enormous amount of records, CDs, and tapes. When he returned home from a three week holiday at the end of 1986 there were 173 LPs, 91 12"s and 179 7"s waiting for him. Another example in point is that in 1983 unsigned artist Billy Bragg drove to the Radio 1 studios with a mushroom biryani and a copy of his record after hearing Peel mention that he was hungry, the subsequent airplay launching his career.

In the 1970s Peel and Sheila moved to a thatched cottage in the village of Great Finborough near Stowmarket in Suffolk, nicknamed "Peel Acres". In later years Peel broadcast many of his shows from a studio in the house, with Sheila and their children often being involved or at least mentioned. Peel's passion for Liverpool F.C. was reflected in his children's names: William Robert Anfield, Alexandra Mary Anfield, Thomas James Dalglish, and Florence Victoria Shankly. His later shows also regularly featured live performances (broadcast live, unlike the pre-recorded Peel sessions), mostly from BBC Maida Vale Studios in West London, but occasionally in the Peel Acres living room.

In addition to his Radio 1 show, Peel broadcast as a disc jockey on the BBC World Service, 30 years on the British Forces Broadcasting Service BFBS (John Peel's Music on BFBS), VPRO Radio3 in the Netherlands, YLE Radio Mafia in Finland, Ö3 in Austria (Nachtexpress), and on Radio 4U, Radio Eins (Peel ...), Radio Bremen (Ritz) and some independent radio stations around FSK Hamburg in Germany. As a result of his BFBS programme he was voted, in Germany, 'Top DJ in Europe'.

Peel was an occasional presenter of Top of the Pops on BBC 1 TV from the late 1960s until the 1990s, and in particular from 1982 to 1987 when he appeared regularly. In 1971 he appeared not as presenter but performer, alongside Rod Stewart and The Faces, pretending to play mandolin on "Maggie May". He often presented the BBC's television coverage of music events, notably Glastonbury Festival.

Later years

Between 1995 and 1997, Peel presented a show about children, called Offspring, on BBC Radio 4. In 1998, Offspring grew into the magazine-style documentary show Home Truths. When he took on the job presenting the programme, which was about everyday life in British families, Peel requested that it be free from celebrities, as he found real life stories more entertaining. Home Truths was described by occasional stand-in presenter John Walters as being "about people who had fridges called Renfrewshire". Peel also made regular contributions to BBC Two's humorous look at the irritations of modern life Grumpy Old Men. His only appearance in an acting role in film was in 1999 as a "grumpy old man who catalogues records" in Five Seconds to Spare, although he had provided narration for others.

He appeared as a celebrity guest on a number of TV shows, including This Is Your Life (1996, BBC), Travels With My Camera (1996, Channel 4 TV) and Going Home (2002, ITV TV), and presented the 1997 Channel 4 series Classic Trains. He was also in demand as a voice-over artist for television documentaries, such as BBC One's A Life of Grime.

At the age of 62 he was diagnosed with diabetes, following many years of fatigue.

In April 2003, the publishers Transworld successfully wooed Peel with a package worth up to £1.6 million for his autobiography, having placed an advert in a national newspaper aimed only at Peel. Unfinished at the time of his death it was completed by Sheila and journalist Ryan Gilbey. It was published in October 2005 under the title Margrave of the Marshes. A collection of Peel's miscellaneous writings, The Olivetti Chronicles, was published in 2008.

Death

Peel died suddenly at the age of 65 from a heart attack on 25 October 2004, on a working holiday in the Inca city of Cusco in Peru. Shortly after the announcement of his death, tributes began to arrive from fans and supporters both in and out of public life. On 26 October 2004 BBC Radio 1 cleared its schedules to broadcast a day of tributes. London's Evening Standard boards that afternoon read "the day the music died".

Peel had often spoken wryly of his eventual death. He once said on the show Room 101, "I've always imagined I'd die by driving into the back of a truck while trying to read the name on a cassette and people would say, 'He would have wanted to go that way.' Well, I want them to know that I wouldn't." At one point, he said that if he died before his producer John Walters, he wanted the latter to play Roy Harper's "When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease". Walters having died in 2001, it was left to Andy Kershaw to end his tribute programme to Peel on BBC Radio 3 with the song. Peel's stand-in on his Radio 1 slot, Rob da Bank, also played the song at the start of the final show before his funeral. Another time, Peel said he'd like to be remembered with a gospel song. He stated that the final record he would play would be the Rev C. L. Franklin's sermon "Dry Bones in The Valley".

Peel's funeral, on 12 November 2004, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, was attended by over a thousand people, including many of the artists he had championed. Eulogies were read by his brother, Alan Ravenscroft, and DJ Paul Gambaccini. The service ended with clips of him talking about his life and his coffin was carried out to the accompaniment of his favourite song, The Undertones' "Teenage Kicks". Peel had written that, apart from his name, all he wanted on his gravestone were the words, "Teenage dreams, so hard to beat", from the lyrics of "Teenage Kicks". A headstone engraved in accordance with his wishes was placed at his grave in 2008.

Life in music

Peel sessions

A feature of Peel's BBC Radio 1 shows were the famous John Peel Sessions, which usually consisted of four pieces of music pre-recorded at the BBC's studios. The sessions originally came about due to restrictions imposed on the BBC by the Musicians' Union and Phonographic Performance Limited which represented the record companies dominated by the EMI cartel. Because of these restrictions the BBC had been forced to hire bands and orchestras to render cover versions of recorded music. The theory behind this device was that it would create employment and force people to buy records and not listen to them free of charge on the air. One of the reasons why all of the offshore broadcasting stations of the 1960s were called "pirates" was because they operated outside of British laws and were not bound by the needle time restriction on the number of records they could play on the air.

The BBC employed its own house bands and orchestras and it also engaged outside bands to record exclusive tracks for its programmes in BBC studios. This was the reason why Peel was able to use "session men" in his own programmes. Sessions were usually four tracks recorded and mixed in a single day; as such they often had a rough and ready, demo-like feel, somewhere between a live performance and a finished recording. Peel remained on BBC Radio 1 for 37 years, until his death in 2004. During that time over 4000 sessions were recorded by over 2000 artists. Many classic Peel Sessions have been released on record, particularly by the Strange Fruit label.

Festive Fifty

An annual tradition of Peel's Radio 1 show was the Festive Fifty—a countdown of the best tracks of the year as voted for by the listeners. Despite Peel's eclectic play list, the Festive Fifty tended to be composed largely of "white boys with guitars", as Peel complained in 1988. In 1991 the broadcast of the chart was cancelled due to a lack of votes, although many have speculated that it was because it didn't feature a single entry from the dance acts that Peel had been championing that year. Topped by Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", this Phantom Fifty was eventually broadcast at the rate of one track per programme in 1993. The 1997 chart was initially cancelled due to the lack of air-time Peel had been allocated for the period, but enough "spontaneous" votes were received over the phone that a Festive Thirty-One was compiled and broadcast.

After his death, the Festive Fifty was continued on Radio 1 by Rob Da Bank, Huw Stephens and Ras Kwame for two years, but then given to Peel-inspired Internet radio station Dandelion Radio, which continues to compile it to this day.

Dandelion Records and Strange Fruit

In 1969 Peel founded Dandelion Records (named after his pet hamster) so he could release the debut album by Bridget St John, which he also produced. The label released 27 albums by 18 different artists before folding in 1972. Of its albums, There is Some Fun Going Forward was a sampler intended to present its acts to a wide audience, however Dandelion was never a great success, with only two releases charting in national charts: Medicine Head in the UK with "(And The) Pictures In The Sky" and Beau in Lebanon with "1917 Revolution". In 1972, the second album for the label by Tractor reached number 18 in the Radio Luxembourg chart and number 30 in the Virgin Shops best selling album chart. Peel continued throughout his career to maintain a close link with Tractor and Rochdale.

As Peel stated:

It was never a success financially. In fact, we lost money, if I remember correctly, on every single release bar one. I did quite like it but it was terribly indulgent. Not as indulgent as it would have been had I not had a business partner, admittedly... I liked having a label. It enabled you to put out stuff that you liked without, in those days, having to worry about whether it was going to work commercially. I've never been a good business man.

Peel appeared on one Dandelion release: the David Bedford album Nurses Song with Elephants, recorded at the Marquee Studios, as part of a group playing twenty-seven plastic pipe twirlers on the track "Some Bright Stars for Queen's College".

In the 1980s Peel set up the Strange Fruit Records with Clive Selwood to release material recorded by the BBC for Peel Sessions.

Favourite music

John Peel wrote in his autobiography, Margrave of the Marshes, that the band of which he owns the most records is The Fall. Regulars in the Festive 50, and easily recognised by vocalist Mark E. Smith's distinctive delivery, The Fall became synonymous with Peel's Radio 1 show through the 1980s and 1990s. Peel kept in contact with many of the artists he championed but only met Smith on two, apparently awkward, occasions.

The Misunderstood is the only band that Peel ever personally managed—he first met the band in Riverside, California in 1966 and convinced them to move to London. He championed their music throughout his career; in 1968, he described their 1966 single "I Can Take You to the Sun" as "the best popular record that's ever been recorded." and shortly before his death, he stated, "If I had to list the ten greatest performances I've seen in my life, one would be The Misunderstood at Pandora's Box, Hollywood, 1966 ... My god, they were a great band!"

His favourite single is widely known to have been "Teenage Kicks" by The Undertones; in an interview in 2001, he stated "There's nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it." In the same 2001 interview, he also listed "No More Ghettos in America" by Stanley Winston, "There Must Be Thousands" by The Quads and "Lonely Saturday Night" by Don French as being amongst his all-time favourites.

A longer list of his favourite singles was revealed in 2005 when the contents of a wooden box in which he stored the records that meant the most to him were made public. The box was the subject of a television documentary, John Peel's Record Box. In 1999 Peel presented a nightly segment on his programme titled the Peelennium, in which he played four recordings from each year of the 20th century.

Awards and honorary degrees

Peel was 11 times Melody Maker's DJ of the year, Sony Broadcaster of the Year in 1993, winner of the publicly-voted Godlike Genius Award from the NME in 1994, Sony Gold Award winner in 2002 and is a member of the Radio Academy Hall of Fame. At the NME awards in 2005 he was Hero of the Year and was posthumously given a special award for "Lifelong Service To Music". At the same event the "John Peel Award For Musical Innovation" was awarded to The Others.

He was awarded many honorary degrees including an MA from the University of East Anglia, doctorates (Anglia Polytechnic University and Sheffield Hallam University), various honorary degrees (University of Liverpool, Open University, University of Portsmouth, University of Bradford) and a fellowship of Liverpool John Moores University.

He was appointed an OBE in 1998, for his services to British music. In 2002, the BBC conducted a vote to discover the 100 Greatest Britons of all time, in which Peel was voted 43rd.

Legacy

Since his death various parties have recognised Peel's influence. A stage for new bands at the Glastonbury Festival, previously known simply as 'The New Bands Tent' was renamed 'The John Peel Stage' in 2005, while in 2008 Merseytravel announced they would be naming a train after him. The BBC encouraged as many bands as possible to stage gigs on the 13th, and over 500 gigs took place in the UK and as far away as Canada and New Zealand, from bands ranging from Peel favourites New Order and The Fall, to many new and unsigned bands. A second John Peel day was held on 12 October 2006, and a third on 11 October 2007. The BBC had originally planned to hold a John Peel Day annually, however Radio 1 has not held any official commemoration of the event since 2007, though a number of gigs still take place around the country to mark the anniversary.

At the annual Gilles Peterson's World Wide Awards, the "John Peel Play More Jazz Award" award was named in his honour.

A number of Peel-related compilation albums have been released since his death, including , a project Peel started with his wife that was left unfinished when he died, and Kats Karavan: The History of John Peel on the Radio (2009), a 4 CD box set. Rock music critic Peter Paphides said in a review of the box set that "[s]ome artists remain forever associated with him", including ...And the Native Hipsters with "There Goes Concorde Again", and Ivor Cutler with "Jam". A sizable online community has also emerged dedicated to sharing recordings of his radio shows.

Peel's 1973 Peterloo Massacre project - a various artists album about a subject close to his own heart- the northern mill workers' rights to protest about their living and working conditions (Peel had worked in the cotton trade in Rochdale and USA) was finally released in 2009

Peel's adult sons Tom and William Ravenscroft have followed him into radio DJing and music journalism, with an emphasis on spotting new talent.

See also

List of Peel sessions

:Category:Peel Sessions recordings

Notes

References

Further reading

Margrave of the Marshes, Autobiography with Sheila Ravenscroft, Bantam Press, 2005. ISBN 0-593-05252-8

The Olivetti Chronicles. Articles for The Observer, Radio Times, The Guardian a.o., selected by his wife Sheila and their children. Bantam Press 2008. ISBN 9780593060612

External links

Radio 1's John Peel pages

John Peel Biography by BBC Radio 1 (PDF)

A sorted directory of links referencing Peel's working life

Category:BBC World Service Category:British music history Category:British radio DJs Category:British radio people Category:English radio personalities Category:Offshore radio broadcasters Category:Pirate radio personalities Category:English voice actors Category:Glastonbury Festival Category:Top of the Pops Category:English atheists Category:English vegetarians Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Old Salopians Category:People from Heswall Category:People from Mid Suffolk (district) Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Royal Artillery soldiers Category:1939 births Category:2004 deaths

Name	Ben Folds
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Benjamin Scott Folds
Born	September 12, 1966
Origin	Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Instrument	Vocals, piano, guitar, bass guitar, drums, keytar, melodica, Synthesizer
Genre	Piano rock, rock
Occupation	Musician, composer, arranger, bandleader
Years active	1988–present
Label	Attacked By Plastic, Epic
Associated acts	Ben Folds FiveThe BensFear of PopMajoshaPomplamooseJulia NunesCharlie McDonnellRegina SpektorAmanda PalmerAngela AkiKate Miller-Heidke
Spouse	Anna Goodman (1987–1992)Kate Rosen (1995–1996)Frally Hynes (1999–2007(Fleur Folds 2007-present
Url	benfolds.com

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.

Early life and career

Folds became attracted to piano at age nine. His father, a carpenter, brought one home through a barter trade with a customer who was unable to pay. During this time, Folds listened to songs by Elton John and Billy Joel on AM radio, and learned them by ear. During his years at R.J. Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Folds played in several bands as the pianist, bassist, or drummer.

In the late 1980s, Folds (as a bassist) and longtime friend Millard Powers formed the band Majosha. The group released several locally produced records. They played their first gig at Duke University's Battle of the Bands in 1988, and won. They played at bars and fraternity parties, and eventually put out a self-produced EP, which was sold at a few local stores called Party Night: Five Songs About Jesus (1988). The record featured only four songs, with none of them actually being about Jesus. They recorded Shut Up and Listen to Majosha in 1989. It contains, among other tracks, the four songs from Party Night (remixed and/or re-recorded) and what Folds would later record with his own band ("Emaline" and "Video"). At about the same time, they did a dance mix of "Get That Bug" that was released in Japan.

Majosha broke up in early 1990, and Folds formed Pots and Pans with Evan Olson (bass) and Britt "Snuzz" Uzzell (guitar and vocals), where Folds played drums. The newly formed band lasted for only a month, after which Olson and Uzzell went on to form Bus Stop with Folds' brother, Chuck Folds, on bass, and Eddie Walker on drums.

Folds eventually got a music publishing deal with Nashville music executive Scott Siman who saw Folds open for musician Marc Silvey (as well as playing bass for Silvey's band Mass Confusion), and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue it in 1990. He played drums for a short stint in Jody's Power Bill, headed by Millard Powers, Will Owsley, and Jody Spence. Jody's Power Bill was later renamed The Semantics. Folds did not take a creative role in the band. He, again, attracted interest from major labels. He ended up playing drums there as a session musician.

"In Nashville, I was running eight miles a day, hanging out with my friends, walking around eating chocolate-chip cookies and playing a lot of drums, which I enjoyed. Life was easy. I was never frustrated – even though I wasn't fulfilling my contract obligations. If you are failing in Nashville, at least your standard of living is nice. Nashville is a nice way to fail."

Folds tells audiences about a jury recital when he was a student at the University of Miami’s music school. A jury recital consists of playing a prepared repertoire (and sometimes unprepared pieces from prior years of training) before faculty members who apply a grade for the entire semester. Folds, a drummer, showed up with a broken hand from defending his room mate from bullies the night before, but was required to play anyway. He ended up losing his scholarship and in desperation threw his drumkit into the campus' Lake Osceola.

After leaving Miami, Folds moved to Montclair, New Jersey and began to act in theater troupes in New York City. He enjoyed it in 1993 to the point where he didn't want to keep pursuing a musical career. in Chapel Hill. As Folds put it, “Jeff Buckley was being signed at that time by Columbia and I was talking to Steve, his A&R; guy, and somehow we knew the same people or something."

Ben Folds Five

In 1995, Ben Folds Five released their self-titled debut album. The debut was followed by Whatever and Ever Amen in 1997, and the odds-and-ends compilation Naked Baby Photos was released in early 1998. Whatever and Ever Amen spawned many singles such as "Brick", "Song for the Dumped", and "Battle of Who Could Care Less". In 1999, the band released their final album, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, which included the hit, "Army".

Folds has described his former band as "punk rock for sissies", and his oddball lyrics often contain nuances of depression, melancholy, self conflict, and humorous sarcasm, often punctuated by profanity.

Despite its presence on multiple Billboard genre charts, no Ben Folds Five singles reached the US Hot 100, although they did show well on both adult contemporary and modern rock charts. However they gained a strong following in the United Kingdom and Australia early in their career, and like many other 'alternative' American acts this was largely thanks to consistent support from national broadcasters in those countries, the BBC in Britain and the ABC's Triple J youth radio network in Australia (and ABC-TV's music video show Rage).

The group's first chart breakthrough came in the UK, when "Underground" made the lower reaches of the Top 40, peaking at #37. Britain was the Five's strongest territory in terms of chart success, with five singles making the national Top 40 there – "Underground", "Battle of Who Could Care Less", "Kate", "Brick" and "Army" – although none managed to crack the UK Top 20.

In Australia "Underground" likewise broke the band locally and while it did not make the ARIA chart, it came in at #3 the 1998 Triple J Hottest 100 poll. The 1998 single "Brick" became the group's only major chart placing in Australia, reaching #13; it also came in at #53 in the ARIA Australian Top 100 for that year and earned a Gold Record award while its parent album Whatever and Ever Amen peaked at #9 and charted for 32 weeks. Folds and band mates had been going full force since 2001 while moving album after album and states:"“The songs have been getting a great reaction,it makes me look forward to having a new album out there because it’s been a while. This feels like a really free period in my life and I’m really enjoying it.” Ben Folds Five reunited to perform its first concert appearance in nearly 10 years on September 18, 2008 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Memorial Hall. The one-off gig was part of the MySpace "Front to Back" series, in which artists play an entire album live. The band played its final album, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. The concert aired during October and can be viewed at Nowwhat.com. All proceeds from ticket sales benefitted the charity Operation Smile, of which Ben's uncle, Jim Folds, is on the board of directors for the North Carolina Chapter.

Solo career

As of 2008, Folds had released six solo LPs, including an experimental side project called Fear of Pop, which was released while Ben Folds Five was still together.

Folds's first solo release after the breakup of the band was Rockin' the Suburbs in 2001. He played nearly all the instruments, notably guitar (an instrument seldom used during the Ben Folds Five days). The Luckiest was written for the Amy Heckerling movie Loser, but the scene it was meant for was deleted. Millard Powers, Britt "Snuzz" Uzzell, and Jim Bogios joined him on the promotional tour of the album. "Weird Al" Yankovic directed and appeared in Folds' video for "Rockin' the Suburbs". Folds' friend and fellow musician John McCrea, lead singer of the band Cake, contributed vocals to Folds' song "Fred Jones, Part 2".

A year later, he released Ben Folds Live, a collection of live solo recordings. In late 2003, two solo EPs, Speed Graphic and Sunny 16, were released. The last EP, Super D, was released in mid-2004.

Songs for Silverman was released in the United States on April 26, 2005. The album featured Jared Reynolds on bass and Lindsay Jamieson on drums, thus returning to the trio format. This album includes the track "Late", a tribute to the late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, and also features backup vocals from "Weird Al" Yankovic on "Time" (Folds had played piano for Yankovic's song "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?" on his Poodle Hat album).

Folds contributed to William Shatner's album, Has Been, as producer, arranger, musician, and backup vocalist. Shatner was also involved in Folds' Fear of Pop project, and contributed vocals to a number of songs on the album.

The soundtrack for the 2006 animated film Hoodwinked! featured "Red is Blue," performed by Ben Folds.

In May 2006, Folds contributed three original songs to the soundtrack of Over the Hedge, dubbed "Heist," "Family of Me," and "Still." Included with them was a cover of The Clash song "Lost in the Supermarket" and a remix of "Rockin' The Suburbs." "Rockin' the Suburbs" featured new lyrics written to complement the script of the film.

On October 24, 2006, Folds released Supersunnyspeedgraphic, the LP, a compilation of songs that were originally released on the EPs Sunny 16, Speed Graphic, and Super D. He announced on his MySpace blog that he planned to work on his next studio album in October 2006 (although recording did not actually start until 2007). On that same day, Folds became the first person to broadcast a live concert over MySpace. The concert was complete with pranks staged ahead of time by Folds, including a drunk man falling over the balcony during "Jesusland" and a suicide attempt at the end. The concert is also notable for featuring a "guitorchestra", a group of acoustic guitarists from Nashville who accompanied Folds on some songs, as well as a ringtone orchestra featuring members of the audience playing their cellphone ringtones in unison.

Folds produced The Dresden Dolls' Amanda Palmer's first solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer which was released September 16, 2008. He also performs on the album.

During a concert at the National in Richmond, Virginia on April 11, 2008, Folds announced that he had completed his newest album, and played four new tracks from this album. He played the first track, "Hiroshima", at the same show in Richmond on April 11. He also debuted new music at an impromptu gig at the Exit/In on December 19, 2007 and at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival on January 25, 2008. Other new songs include "Errant Dog", "Effington", "Bitch Went Nuts", "Free Coffee", and "Kylie From Connecticut". Folds played The 6th annual Langerado on March 8, 2008 and was a part of the lineup for the 2008 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.

On July 16, 2008, an anonymous user posted what they claimed was a "leak" of Ben's latest album on a fan site (eventually called Way to Normal (Fake)). The file contained nine tracks along with a PDF of supposed cover art, and was a mix of what appeared to be legitimate songs from Way to Normal, pastiches of dry humor and melodramatic pop interwoven with bright, energetic melodies. Folds explained on Triple J radio a few weeks later that in one overnight session in Dublin he and the band had recorded 'fake' versions of songs from the new album. His sources had then leaked them to the public as a light-hearted joke on his fans.

Way To Normal was released on September 30, 2008 in the United States and on September 29, 2008 in the United Kingdom. It became Folds' highest-charting album ever in the US, debuting at #11 on the Billboard 200.

Soon before Way to Normal was released, Folds announced that he planned to record an album with English author Nick Hornby, with Hornby writing the lyrics and Folds writing the music. The idea of the collaboration came out of the 'fake' leak of the album Way to Normal released in July 2008. "(We will) write and record it in about three days, just like we did in Dublin with the fake record," Folds said.

In August 2008, Folds played piano for friend and Japanese singer-songwriter Angela Aki's song "Black Glasses" on her new album Answer.

On April 28, 2009, Folds released Ben Folds Presents University A Cappella, an album consisting of college student's a cappella arrangements of his music performed by some of the country's best college a cappella groups.

Folds' song "Rockin' the Suburbs" has been featured as part of the music for ABC's sitcom Surviving Suburbia.

Folds was also an inaugural member of the Independent Music Awards' judging panel to support independent artists.

From December 14 through 21, 2009, Folds was featured as a judge on NBC's a cappella competition The Sing Off alongside Nicole Scherzinger and Shawn Stockman and offered insightful, constructive comments and criticisms to the contestants. On the final show, in a departure from his a cappella purism, showcased his talents and played the roaring, riffing piano background on "Why Can't We Be Friends?" sung by the two finalist groups, The Beelzebubs from Tufts University near Boston and Nota, from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

In March 2010, Folds became a YouTube phenomenon in a video titled "Ode To Merton". In the video, Folds improvises several songs about people that he sees on the popular social networking site Chatroulette, in the style of "Merton" another YouTube phenomenon who many thought was Folds himself.

Folds' newest album, a collaboration with English author Nick Hornby, is entitled Lonely Avenue and was released on September 28, 2010. On June 14, Folds released the official album art via his Twitter account. "From Above", the first single from the album, premiered on Richard Kingsmill's new music show 2010 on Triple J in Australia on July 18, 2010. "From Above" features Australian singer Kate Miller Heidke on backing vocals.

Folds has recently recorded a video song with Nick Hornby and Pomplamoose. As well, English YouTuber Charlie McDonnell was commissioned to create the music video for Folds' song "Saskia Hamilton", which was uploaded on October 1, 2010.

Tours

After Ben Folds Five split, Folds' first tour with a full band was to support the album Rockin' The Suburbs. He was accompanied by Britt "Snüzz" Uzzell on guitar and electronic keyboard, Millard Powers on bass and keys, and Jim Bogios on drums. Powers and Bogios later went on to join Counting Crows.

On a tour of Australia, Folds joined with solo artists Ben Kweller and Ben Lee to travel the country as The Bens, at the suggestion of a fan on Kweller's official website. The trio also went on to record a four-track EP together.

In the summer of 2004, Folds co-headlined an American tour with fellow singer-songwriters Rufus Wainwright and Guster. Folds again performed with Wainwright and Lee in the summer of 2005 as part of the "Odd Men Out" tour. In addition, Folds has performed with many other notable musical names, including Weezer and Tori Amos. After seeing The Fray perform with Weezer, Folds asked the band to join him for twelve performances in 2005.

Folds also performed with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO) in March 2005, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in November 2005, the North Carolina Symphony in March 2010, and the Utah Symphony Orchestra in July 2010. A DVD of Folds playing with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra was released in December 2005.

On May 9, 2007, Folds performed with the Boston Pops Orchestra. The orchestra's performance was marred when a fight broke out between two audience members in the balcony, though Folds had not yet taken the stage.

Folds performed with symphony orchestras again in August 2006 during a tour of Australia, which included performances with the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Western Australian Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and The Queensland Orchestra.

After his MySpace performance on October 24, 2006, Folds's tour performances began to feature a synthesizer, which he uses in many of the songs when played live. The synthesizer is a red Nord Lead II synthesizer. During his concerts, Folds performs two of his concert traditions: palm-smashing and throwing his stool at the piano.

Folds toured with John Mayer as an opening act (though his set typically lasted an hour) in the summer of 2007. During this tour, Mayer sometimes joined Folds on the song "Narcolepsy", playing synth. At various concerts throughout the tour, parents of young children going to see Mayer would file complaints about Folds' lyrics. Folds responded by posting on his website, "We have kids too, but we don't take them out to rock shows that last until 11pm."

On March 29, 2008, Folds played the Cage Center Arena at Berry College in Mt. Berry, GA. During contract negotiations, he was asked by the administration to not play one of his songs due to its explicit lyrics. Folds refused, citing artistic freedom.

On May 9, 2008, Folds played his first completely solo show in years at Western Connecticut State University due to the fact that his bassist Jared Reynolds was with his wife who had just given birth to their first son.

Folds made a brief solo tour of Australia during August 2009; at one of his sold out Sydney Opera House concerts he was joined onstage for several songs by Aimee Mann, who was also touring Australia at the time. At the Palais theatre in Melbourne Missy Higgins joined him for You Don't Know Me.

In 2010, Folds went on a brief tour of North America called "Ben Folds and a Piano" where he played solo other than with Zach Williams or Kate Miller-Heidke and her husband Keir Nuttall as supporting musicians. A small number of copies that were pre-ordered also included signed manuscripts by Ben Folds and Nick Hornby.

In April of 2011 Folds collaborated with Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman and Damian Kulash as 8in8 to write, record and produce eight songs in eight hours which were then available online within 24 hours, as well as being performed once on it's world tour, as part of the ReThink Music conference.

Personal life

Folds' personal life has inspired some of his songs; the hit single "Brick", co-written with Darren Jesse, was based on the experience of Folds and his girlfriend having an abortion while they were in high school.

Folds met Anna Goodman in first grade at Moore Elementary School, Winston Salem and was married to her from 1987–1992. She co-wrote several Ben Folds Five songs; "Alice Childress", "The Last Polka", "Smoke", "Kate" and "Lullaby." Folds was then briefly married to Kate Rosen in 1996. He met Australian Frally Hynes in January 1998 and they were married in Adelaide, South Australia in May 1999. the former inspiring his song "Still Fighting It" and the latter inspiring his song "Gracie." Folds filed for divorce in November 2006. Folds stated in an online chat on the fan forum thesuburbs.org.uk that he and Hynes share joint custody of their twins. Julia Rose is Ben's stepdaughter.

Discography

Ben Folds Five (1995), Passenger/Caroline

Whatever and Ever Amen (1997), 550 #42 US

Naked Baby Photos (1998), Caroline

(1998), 550

The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999), 550 #35 US

Rockin' the Suburbs (2001), Sony #42 US

Ben Folds Live (2002), Sony #60 US

Songs for Silverman (2005), Epic (Bonus DVD) #13 US

Supersunnyspeedgraphic, the LP (2006), Epic

Way to Normal (2008), Epic #11 US

Lonely Avenue (2010), Nonesuch

Nighty Night (2011), in collaboration with Amanda Palmer, Damian Kulash, and Neil Gaiman

References

External links

Official sites: US/UK Australia Germany Japan

People's Front of Judea - The Official Fan Club of Ben Folds

Video of author Nick Hornby performing with Ben Folds and the duo Pomplamoose on "Things You Think"

Ben Folds Talks The Sing-Off to SportsTownChicago.com

Category:1966 births Category:American male singers Category:American multi-instrumentalists Category:American pop pianists Category:American pop singers Category:American rock pianists Category:American rock singers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Keytarists Category:Living people Category:Melodica players Category:Musicians from North Carolina Category:People from Winston-Salem, North Carolina Category:University of Miami alumni