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Check Your Papers and the TV

Ben Folds in the press

Check your Papers and the TV began with the original Ben Folds Five website in 1995 and is named for a line in the song One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces. Once upon a time, people relied on sites like this to find out the latest about their favorite artists and to share what they found with fellow fans. Now, Google and other search engines do a far better job of indexing the world’s output on the Internet, so it’s beyond our capability to attempt to list every article or clip that’s posted. So, this page will instead be a listing of items we found of interest in the press and online news sources. We’ll post many to our Twitter feed and include them here. If you come across an item of interest, tag @magicalarmchair in a tweet or send us an e-mail.Also note that it’s inevitable that links will vanish from the web or be otherwise broken, so if you spot an orphaned page that’s gone all 404, we’d appreciate knowing about it.

Latest items

The Sing-Off, Season 3

Print and online articles:

Best Imitation of Myself album

Podcast Series:

TV:

Print and Online Articles:

Lonely Avenue album and tour

TV Show Appearances:

Radio:

  • Ben chats with Adam Carolla on his Internet radio show. Episode can be listened to online or downloaded to iTunes. (19 July 2011)
  • BBC World News America – Nick Hornby and Ben Folds make music together (with video), by Shanon Cook
  • Bob Edwards Weekend (Sirius XM and Public Radio International) – Interview, November 6, 2010
  • Sirius XM Book Radio – rebroadcast of Spin Liner Notes show, various days and times in November 2010
  • BBC review of Lonely Avenue – An affecting and intelligent record: the pair shouldn’t shy away from a sequel, by Andrew Mueller
  • WNYC Soundcheck, interview and performance with Nick Hornby, hosted by John Schafer (Oct. 13)
  • NPR’s Morning Edition, interview with Ari Shapiro
  • BBC Radio 4 Today, interview with Nicola Stanbridge

Print and online articles:

The Sing-Off, Season 2

TV, print and online articles:

  • New York Magazine – Best and worst of The Sing-Off, Season Two (Ben with “most musically on-point commentary”)
  • NBC-TV The Today Show – Ben says he’s “looking to be moved”  when judging contestants (Dec. 15, 2010)
  • NPR.org: Ben Folds is still fantastic, by Linda Holmes, Monkey See TV blogger)
  • MTV.com: “The Sing-Off” proves Ben Folds needs his own television show, by Kyle Anderson
  • Spinner.com: Ben Folds boarded the a cappella bandwagon before joining “The Sing-Off” reality show, by Steve McLean
  • The New York Times (free registration required): Summoning harmony on the fly, by Neil Genzlinger

Miscellaneous