Counting Crows

If this comes across as blatant hero worship of my favourite group, then i have failed in my intention. I honestly seek only to give a fair and objective representation of
my three favourite albums from what has over the last year become my favourite all time band and artist, suplanting such greats as U2 and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
For those who do not know the Counting Crows they are a seven man band of multitalented musicians responsible for some of the most soulful and i dare say poetic
alternative rock that has diffused through the 90's. WARNING! this is deep stuff: IF you're a fan of Avril Lavigne AND Blink 182 AND the boyband/girl solo artist pop
movement you may as well not even waste your time and mine.

THE BAND
Now Adam Duritz is NOT the band. But then again since I can't tell you the names of any of the other five members... Who is Adam Duritz you ask? Their lead singer and
the only white rasta that I've actually found convincing enough to want to listen to for more than five minutes. (no I don't listen to Rob Zombie, Nicholas!)
Its a tortured soul trapped inside that unkempt dreadlocked head, but a musical one. Not only does he does he do all the lead vocals and write all the lyrics but he can play the
piano (I'll forget all referenceto tambourines) AND the Wurlitzer! (How many of you know what a Wurlitzer is?) More importantly, in his music, rests the feeling of a conservation
of a certain humility and sincerity. This is not a machist, neither a prima donna, not any of the all so too common other stereotypes so resplendent in Hollywood and Radio City
(more or less the same these days).
A friend of mine once told me that when she thought of God, she envisaged Him with Duritz' voice, having that same emotional filled, empathising, imperfect lilt to it that emphasises
comfort on a background of shared pain. Its true he doesn't have the strongest vocal ability out there...he does crack on the highest notes. His vocal quality is not up to say a Steven
Tylers or a Bono. What he does have however is emotional investment. At the end of the note, vocalisation or general muttering , you believe that whatever you just heard didn't come from the
diaphragm, but from the heart.
Duritz is an alternative lyricist par excellence. He has perfected the somewhat dubious art (rather common in alternative music), by means of a varied and sometimes unorthodox rhyme and rhythm,
of stringing together the most profond verses; sometimes appear too profond to be meaningful. The difference is, he does it with panache. What he does is communicate human feelings, his own,
and what he understands and makes known is that human sentiments are not always neither logical nor meaningful. In fact sometimes you get the impression that all he tries to do is transmit etats
d'ame (soul states) more than anything else by using usually abstract situations rather than concrete ideas. At the end of the day...they connect. And that's the point.
Duritz himself is a walking long story. In his songs he maintains a running history of his affective and sentimental life...fans will remember the ever present Maria ("Mrs. Potter", "Mr. Jones"
"Round Here"), Amy (Amy hit the Atmosphere), the mysterious Mrs. Potter (Mrs. Potter), Elizabeth ("Goodnight Elizabeth", "I wish I was a Girl), the troubled Majorie "Another Horsedreamers blues"
and the innumerable anonymous references to vague or explicitly feminine beings. If there is one critique one can make, it would be on the almost unidemensional preoccupation of Duritz with affectivity,
emotions and love. His only other interest seems to be questions of identity. Somehow though, I never tire to hear him sing about it. In the same way that I can't imagine ever hearing Britney Spears
sing anything vaguely reminiscent of Sunday Bloody Sunday, I don't expect Counting Crows to do anything that might remind me of that other white rasta haired group Rage against the Machine.
This does not however in any way suggest a musical rut. Certainly they have their own style, but the Crows' music is highly unpredictable. The majority of their songs it must be said are either
poignant or reek of sad empathy. However, their best known, taken out of their lyrical context are pretty upbeat songs. For example, "Mr. Jones" as far as the majority of people in France who know it
is concerned, is a happy song. Even when happy, they guard their own inimitable style.
The Counting Crows may be possibly one of the most unknown famous bands, in the sense where their work (or a sample thereof) is known (and loved) without any knowledge whatsoever
of the identity of its authors. Thanks to what remains their most famous hit, "Mr. Jones" the group has managed to continue to build a discrete fan base without the necessary media
hype; They remain unfortunately one of these groups that exist publicly thanks to their first singles, after which they calmly fade into the studio for the next album, surviving thqnks to a faithful
fan base.
It doesn't change the excellence of their work by any means. With the music of counting crows comes a feeling of pure harmony: every member understands his place and carries out
his task to the best of his ability. Therefore, in this point of view, one can understand the relative obscurity of the other members of the group in relation to Duritz (as is often the case
in groups where there's a lead singer and the other members are musicians see: A. Keddis, F. Mercury, Paige, J. Davis, J. Rzeznick, S. Tyler ) with the exception of Charles Gillingham who
in addition to playing 5 instruments does back up lyrics and shares the tasks of musical arrangement. They fact that they've managed to maintain their internal cohesion for so long is convincing
testimony.

ALBUMS
August and everything after
Their first and so far most successful album which went on to become seven times platinum.
The title of this cd is apt..it is definitely a fall album. With few traces of the heady days of summer remaining, here's a melancholy yellow cd.
After prolonged listening nine of the twelve tracks dissolve into the general melancholy leaving nothing but a satisfying empathy for any of those who may ever feel the same. It is a very sober CD
not at all difficult to absorb, but made for calm weekend afternoons or those nights you lie awake with questions swirling in your head.
Of the four standout tracks, Round Here plays its way into the annals of what i call great "story songs" in the manner of "Mmmmm", "Stairway to heaven", "Stan". Superb poetry from the very first line mixed with a simple
but effectively poignant guitar riff relate Maria's story with nothing added, nothing taken away.
Mr. Jones, arguably not their best, but indisputably their most popular stops the album from getting burdened by its own melancholy. An extraordinarily lighthearted song in rhythm but heavily nuanced with
the search for love and oneself. A guaranteed delight await the rare ones who have never crossed this favourite of adult contemporary and pop rock radio stations.
Anna Begins is a tranquil percussion riddled drift through guilt and helplessness that will leave you with an indescribable taste in the backof your mouth.
Rain King continues where Mr. Jones left off a critical point in the CD (between time and time again and Sullivan Street), to again evacuate the dreariness brought on by Duritz' continued reflection on his personal future and the past.
Raining in Baltimore must be cited as the obligatory "piano song" essentially Duritz's minimum of musical arrogance, in playing what is effectively (his) piano solo to his own lyrics.

Recovering the Satellites
This is the most diversified, experimental album of the three. There are no two songs on this Cd that resemble. The tranquil frustration of "Catapults" is immediately broken by the phrenetic beach rock of "Angels of the Silences" which is in turn
contradicted by the relaxed countryesque melody of "Daylight Fading". "I'm not sleeping", "Goodnight Elizabeth" and "Children in Bloom" bring back some familiarity to the album, to relieve the shock ardent fans may have suffered at the
beginning of the CD and then they're prompty relapsed by the almost punkish "Have you seen me lately". Lower down we find, the Cajun flavoured "Mercury", the alternatingly annoyingly cliched or impossibly cute "Monkey" and the soft, short,
gentle acoustic finish that is "Walkaways"
Of the three CDS, this winter one contains the strongest standout tracks.
"Miller's Angels" takes up the gauntlet for sublime piano song. As transcendental as its subject, the song leaves a wistful wanting in the pit of your stomach once it finishes. This want is more than amply filled by another horsedreamer's blues.
Besides an original title, this song makes use of an original imagery and an original introductory Wurlitzer solo. What makes this song however are the vocalisations that Duritz adds to the verses. The Broadway-type beauty of this song counterbalances
the immense sadness of its subject.
Recovering the Satellites, their first title track, is a return to the basics of Coutning Crows. It recovers the doleful hope of the August album and somehow prevents itself from dissolving in the general mass, all in guarding a simple guitar melody.
An original take on a cliched image complete it and allow it to stand out.
"A Long December" is analog to "All My Friends" on the "Desert" CD. Once again hopeful despair takes the forefront riding on a piece of simplistically complex piano. However here, the guitar's role is much more defined, notably because of its use in the
solo interludes. The place of birth of one of my favourite images of all time evoked by a rock or alternative song, the lyrics in this song are worth the price of the CD itself. Released as a single, it is their second most popular song.

This Desert Life
This CD is a return to the days of August. However, while the themes remain the same, the execution doesn't take the same route. This CD while resting as mellow as the other, avoids the possibly overbearing
sense of burden that it can envince in the hearts of those who do not identify with his sentiments. The CD itself is worth buying just for the surrealist images that come with CD jacket art.
The opening song "Hangingaround", which was the identifying single is particularly bizarre taking count of the fact that its Counting Crows that composed it. A somewhat uncharacteristic guitar lick accompanied by live
handclapping and a somewhat amateurish piano, while it may appeal to those who don't know the band...(the majority of listeners of their first single) is only indicative of what is to come in the sense that it completely erases
the memory of the August melancholy. Otherwise, it reads like an aberration on the cd, and I daresay its only blemish.
Mrs Potter's Lullaby will fall into the category of one of the few epic songs of the 1990's. By epic I mean necessarily long, However, unlike the majority of epic rock songs "November Rain",
"Bohemian Rhapsody", "Hotel California"it does not include any long instrumentals. Somehow Adam Duritz to maintain a steady string of poetic coherent ideas for 7 minutes and 46 seconds while rolling along at a fairly comfortable
clip. This is not to say that musically speaking, it matches up to any of these aforementioned greats. In fact, those who do not take the time to listen to the words might probably find it annoyingly repetitive thanks to the guitar lick that
intrudes on every other line. But there lies ts very beauty. Behind a simple melody, accompanied by occasional input from diverse background instruments, lies a complex whirlpool of images and metaphors that can only be considered
as a pleasure for the listener to surrender himself to. (ardent listeners will also recognise it as the final exorcism of Maria from Duritz mind)
"All my friends", the anthem of hopeful despair or despairing hope carries its message across with a simple double stroked, quadrachorded piano ably accompanied by a tearful violin and a defiant guitar.
There's no other way anyone can make anything so simple and yet so complex at the same time. This song cannot be criticised.
Colorblind - The only word to describethis piano song is...sublime. A simple but beautifully poignant piece of piano allows Duritz' vulnerability to manifest itself completely in his voice. It doesn't matter if you understand what he says...its only a
translation of the music. This song strangely made its way onto the soundtrack of a recent (last 5 years) teen flick and so may be also more widely known than the band.
With such a bizarre title "I wish I was a girl" deserves to be listened to just to understand what Duritz was thinking when he composed it. But the song is worthy in itself. An interesting, catchy guitar riff wails out his rising guilt across a tangled
story of devils in his dreams, Hollywood movies from his brain, and suicidal tendencies as he tries to regain "Elizabeth"'s trust.
"Mr. Robinson in his Cadillac Dream" is the almost perfect ending to the CD. A seemingly banal cliche is put into perspective with a rare (for Duritz) third person approach using a lighthearted piece of music, issued from goodness knows what instrument
(probably the famous Wurlitzer). I said almost though. For some unimaginable reason, Duritz decides to leave a ten minute gap between the end of the song and the end of the CD interupting the silencw with some confused text from the lunar landing
and another highly uncharacteristic experimental piece of music


Discography
*August and Everything After (Sept 1993) *7 times platinum*
Round Here, Omaha, Mr Jones, Perfect Blue Building, Anna begins, Time and Time Again, Rain King, Sullivan Street, Ghost Train, Raining in Baltimore, A Murder of One

*Recovering The Satellites (October 1996) EMI Blackwood Music Inc/Jones Falls Music *double platinum*
Catapults, Angels of the silences, Daylight fading, I'm not sleeping, Goodnight Elisabeth, Children in Bloom, Have you seen me lately?, Millers Angels,
Another Horsedreamers Blues, Recovering the Satellites, Monkey, Mercury, A long December, Walkaways

Counting Crows Across A Wire: Live in New York City (July 1998)

*This Desert Life (November 1999) *platinum*
Hangingaround, Mrs. Potter's Lullaby, Amy hit the Atmosphere, Four Days, All my Friends and Lovers, High Life, Colorblind,
I Wish I Was a Girl, Speedway, Mr. Robinson in his Cadillac Dream,

Hard Candy (July 2002) *gold to date*

Best of Lyrics - August and Everything After
Round Here
"Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog
when no one notices the contrast of white on white
And between the moon and you angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference between wrong and right

Mr Jones
I gonna paint my picture Paint my self in blue and red and black and grey
All of the beautiful colors are very very meaningful
(You know) Grey is my favorite color I felt so symbolic yesterday
If I knew Picasso I would buy myself a grey guitar and play

I want to be a lion; we all want to pass as cats
We all want to be big big stars; but we got different reasons for that

Perfect Blue Building
"I've got bones beneath my skin, Mister
There's a skeleton in every man's house
Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hang on everbody
Is a dead man trying to get out"

Anna Begins
her kindness falls like rain
It washes me away
And then I begin to change my mind
Everytime she sneezes I believe its love
And I'm not ready for this sort of thing

Time and Time Again
I wanted the ocean to cover over me
I wanna sink slowly without getting wet
Maybe someday, I won't be so lonely
And I'll walk on water every chance I get

Rain King
When I think of heaven
Deliver me in a black-winged bird
I think of flying down into a sea of pens and feathers
And all other instruments of faith and sex and God
In the belly of a black-winged bird.

Raining in Baltimore
These train conversations are passing me by
And I don't have nothing to say

A Murder Of one
I said I will walk along these hillsides
In the summer beneath the sunshine
I am tethered by the moonlight looking down on me


This Desert Life
Mrs Potters Lullaby
All the blue light reflections that color my mind when I sleep
And the lovesick rejections that accompany the company I keep
All the razor perceptions that cut just a little too deep
Hey I can bleed as well as anyone, but I need someone to help me
sleep

Amy hit the atmosphere
We waited so long
for someone to take us back home
it just takes so long
Meanwhile the days are drifting away
And some of us sink like a stone
Waiting for mother to come

All my Friends and Lovers
Caught some grief from a falling leaf
As she tumbled down to the dirty ground
Said I should have put her back there if I could
But everyone needs a better day
And I'm trying to find me a better way
To get from the things I do to the things I should

Another Day or Two

All my friends got flowers in their eyes
but I got none this season
All of last year's blooms gone and died
But time doesn't give a reason

Waiting for the trains that just never come
beginning to believe in
The disappearing nature of the people we have been
we haven't begun to change.

Colorblind
I am colourblind,
coffee black and egg white
pull me out from inside
I am ready, I am fine

I Wish I was a girl
The devil's in a dream
and you see yourself descending from the building to the ground
and you watch the sky receding
and you spin to see the traffic rising up and its so quiet
and you're surprised in any way

Mr. Robinson in his Cadillac Dream
I keep thinking that tomorrow is coming today
So I am endlessly waiting

The comet is coming between me and the girl
Who could make it clean
Out there in the shadow of the mortal and machine
walk St. Robinson and his Cadillac dream

Recovering the satellites
Catapult
I wanna be the light that burns out your eyes
cause i know there's little things about me
that would sing in the silence of so much rejection
in every connection I make

Angels of the silences
Every night these silohuettes appear above my head
Little angels of the silences that climb into my bed and whisper

Daylight fading
Come and waste another year
All the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear
Moonlight creeping around the corners of our lawn
When we see the early signs of daylight fading
we leave just before its gone

Goodnight Elizabeth
We couldn't all be cowboys
So some of us are clowns
Some of us are dancers on the midway
Roam from town to town

Well I hope that everybody
Can find a little flame
I say my prayers and I set myself one fire
And I walk out on the wire, once again

Miller's Angels
Millers angels are hovering in between
the earth and the sun
in the shadow of god's unwavering love
I am a fortunate son

Another Horsedreamers Blues
Margery's wingspan's all feathers and coke cans, and
TV dinners and letters she won't send, and
Every race night is shot through with sunlight
Trying to hit the big one one last time tonight for...

Drunken fathers and stupid mothers and
Boys who can't tell one girl from another

So she takes her pills
Careful and round
One of these days she's gonna
throw the whole bottle down

Recovering the Satellites
She sees shooting stars and comet tails
She's got heaven in her eyes
She says
I don't need to be an angel
But I'm nothing if I'm not this high

A Long December
The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

Mercury
Keep some sorrow in your
hearts and minds
for the things that die before their time
For the restlessly abandoned homes
The tired and weary rambler's bones
And stay besides me where I lie


Counting Crows was and is:
Matt Malley - Electric Bass Guitar, Double Bass, Vocals
Steve Bowman (until 1994)- Drums
Ben Mize (after 1994) - Drums, Tambourine, Light bulbs, Zippo Lighter, Vocals
David Bryson - Guitars, Tambourine and vocals
Adam Duritz - Piano, Wurlitzer, Tambourine, Lead Vocals
Dan Vickrey (after the recording of the "August Album) - Guitars and Vocals
Charles Gillinghahm - Hammond B-3, Piano, Mellotron, Wurlitzer, Accordion, Harmonica and Vocals
David Immergluck

More information can be found at
info@counting crows.com
http://countingcrows.com
c/o Counting Crows fan club
P.O. Box 5008, Berkely, CA 94705