You're viewing all posts tagged with Counting Crows

The Friday Five: March 16, 2012

Extreme - “Smoke Signals” (Extreme, 1989)
Super-tight funky groove? Check. Great guitar tone and showy solo from Nuno? Yup. Vocal harmonies? Got ‘em. What did we leave out? Oh, what about lyrics? Let’s see …

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Don’t be playing ball in the street. What you sow is what you will reap.”

Horrible. Just horrible. I get the joke. It’s just not funny.

Dream Theater - “Far From Heaven” (A Dramatic Turn of Events, 2011)
I really haven’t given this disc the listen it deserves. I think I just got tired of the drama surrounding the departure of founder and former drummer Mike Portnoy and the ensuing he said, he said media storm. The only LaBrie-penned tune on the latest from Dream Theater, “Far From Heaven” is a soft, sweet ballad, and clocking in at only 3:56, it has to be the shortest Dream Theater song of all time.

Counting Crows - “Colorblind” (This Desert Life, 1999)
Another ballad, this time from Adam Duritz and company. And yes, it has the expected pretentiousness and self-deprecation, but for some reason it just works for these guys.

KISS - “I Want You” (Alive II, 1977)
I never got into Alive II the way I did with Alive!, even though it has some of my favorite KISS tunes on it. I didn’t notice it at the time—cut me a little slack, I was a bit too young and starstruck—but the overdubs and the fake crowd noise gets a little unbearable after awhile. And then Paul completely destroys the song with his antics at the end. Nice.

Accept - “Head Over Heels” (Balls to the Wall, 1984)
I love it when iTunes surprises me with a song I haven’t heard in awhile. I literally wore out this album and the its followup Metal Heart when I was in high school. Like the Scorions, Accept didn’t have a good grasp on the English language, and it really showed in most of their lyrics. But at this point in their career, they, like their fellow countrymen, had mastered the ability to craft a heavy song with good melody and a wide range of dynamics. And Udo Dirkshneider’s squeely, growly voice was just enough to remind you that this wasn’t “poser” metal.

The Friday Five: February 24, 2012

I just wanna wake up with IckMusic’s Friday Five.

Counting Crows - “Have You Seen Me Lately?” (Recovering the Satellites, 1996)
Counting Crows seems to get a bad rap, but I have always loved these guys. OK, Adam Duritz can be a bit much at times, what with the hair and his fondness for completely rearranging vocal melodies, or lyrics, or even entire songs live. While I really like the energy of the album version, I think I prefer the acoustic version found on Across a Wire.

Anthrax - “Gung Ho” (The Greater of Two Evils, 2004)
Anthrax released this “live performance” reinterpretation of its early-period material with then vocalist John Bush. As if this sacrilege wasn’t enough—at least in the eyes of diehard fans who refused to acknowledge Bush-era Anthrax in the first place—the band fell headlong into drama of soap opera proportions that found them with a revolving door in the vocalist position: Bush, Joey Belladonna, Dan Nelson, Bush again, and now currently Belladonna. All that to say that while I love Bush-era Anthrax as well as Bush as a vocalist (especially fronting Armored Saint), I’m not a big fan of the versions found on TGOTE.

Switchfoot - “Dare You to Move” (The Beautiful Letdown, 2003)
While a very strong album in its own right, this disc was a bit of a letdown for me (har har har!) compared with my favorite of their releases New Way To Be Human, seeing the band move in a more radio-friendly sound that helped them break big outside the CCM market. This song is actually a repeat—albeit with a much better mix here—from the band’s previous album, Learning to Breathe, where it was by far the strongest and most accessible track.

Beatallica - “A Garage Dayz Nite” (A Garage Dayz Nite, 2001)
A Beatles/Metallica mashup by a band with a singer that does a very good James Hetfield impression? What’s not to like about that?!

Mae - “Someone Else’s Arms” (The Everglow, 2005)
I’m sure a band named after an acronym of a college course on the study of sensation, perception, emotion, and meaning in art and music is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it should be. Mae is big on hooks and pop sensibilities, and while some might dismiss them as an emo act based on a few of their songs, anyone who actually takes the time to listen would not be so quick to pigeonhole them as such.

The Friday Five: January 13, 2012

Bringing it back for IckMusic’s Friday Five.

I just realized that it’s Friday the 13th. In light of that and Tony Iommi’s recent cancer announcement, maybe I should have made this an all Black Sabbath Friday Five. Oh well …

Kansas - “Bringing It Back” (Kansas, 1974)
Boogie-jam cover of a J.J. Cale tune from future AOR prog-rock darlings that relates a tale of bringing something back from Mexico. Wonder what that could have been?!

King’s X - “Lies in the Sand (the ballad of…)” (Ear Candy, 1996)
Yes! This is more like it. Slow, arpeggiated tune from the trio’s underrated and under-appreciated one-and-only attempt at a hit album (or album of hits) after receiving pressure from Atlantic Records. Ear Candy was a bit of a shock to the KX faithful after the grungy Dogman, but it has remained one of my favorite albums by King’s X. For my money, you would be hard-pressed to find a guitarist as emotive and expressive (while remaining relatively unknown in most circles) as Ty Tabor.

Caedmon’s Call - “Valleys Fill First” (Long Line of Leavers, 2000)
Another departure from the norm of sorts, this time from the folky-turned-poppy CCM group Caedmon’s Call. The band experimented with a wide range of styles on this disc, including adding a brass ensemble on the opening (and possibly best) track. Solid pop tune from a very accomplished group of musicians.

Counting Crows - “If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel Is Dead)” (Hard Candy, 2002)
Hard Candy is quite possibly my favorite album from Counting Crows. A mixture of poppy, upbeat, and accessible tunes and Duritz’ typical brooding, moody, self-deprecating lyrics makes for one of their most cohesive releases. And there is some excellent guitar work throughout.

Queensrÿche - “My Empty Room” (Operation: Mindcrime, 1988)
Filler segue track from this Seattle prog-metal band’s magnum opus. Queensrÿche has tried over the years to top this wildly successful concept album, but in my opinion has only come close a couple of times, first with Mindcrime’s follow-up Empire, the album responsible for making the band a household name due to the success of the single “Silent Lucidity,” and then again with Tribe, the 2003 release that saw the return of founding member and guitarist Chris DeGarmo, who collaborated on a handful of tracks. Fans hoped for a full-fledged reunion of the original lineup, but unfortunately it was not meant to be.

I Will Make You Look At Me

Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz, 2/8/2008 at WXPN World Cafe
Photo ©, WXPN, Luke Auld-Thomas

Several posts back I said that I like what I like, and I listen to what I like, no worries, no regrets. Well, almost.

Sometimes I run across a band that I develop a love/hate (or in some cases, a hate-to-admit-I-love) infatuation with, an almost-guilty pleasure that I’m almost embarrassed to confess that I indulge in from time to time. Almost.

Counting Crows is one such band.

I guess one of the reasons I hesitate to let on that I like them is songs like “Mr. Jones” or the Joni Mitchell cover “Big Yellow Taxi”—songs that the public immediately latches onto and manages to grind into my last nerve by repeated overexposure. My first reaction is to shun the things that the popular culture gravitates to. Call it elitism, call it snobbery, call it whatever you want. The point is, more often than not, I find the popular to be off-putting.

But Counting Crows is somehow different.

For one, the members are all excellent musicians, a trait that I truly admire in a band. You would be hard-pressed to find a group of more skilled craftsmen in a “pop” band these days (at least in a band that is really a band and not some ensemble of studio session guys or guns-for-hire). And Duritz is one of those songwriters VH1 Storytellers was made for. He revels in unraveling the tales that he weaves into his songs, but often his explanations are as obtuse as the lyrics themselves, and you’re left as confused as before. His lyrics are often loaded with self-loathing, desperation, and regret, although he peppers them with the lyrical devices of feathers, wings, and birds— symbols of hope, ascension, and the soul. And as he often explains live, his most upbeat and catchy tunes contain some of his darkest lyrics.

But it’s not all puppies and cupcakes (remember the “hate” part of the infatuation?!). One of the most annoying things about Duritz is his compulsion during live performances to completely change and rearrange a song—sometimes even including complete sections of other songs—almost to the point that the song is unrecognizable. Sometimes the result is pure genius; but more often I’m left wondering what just happened.

Whew! That seems like a long way to go to introduce today’s post, but I thought you deserved an explanation before I just sprang this on you.

On February 8, 2008, Counting Crows played a show promoting their then soon-to-be-released fifth album Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings on the WXPN World Cafe stage in Philadelphia. NPR broadcasts these shows under the Live Fridays From XPN moniker.

I first ran across this show on the I Am Fuel, You Are Friends blog. I downloaded the tracks (they are no longer available unfortunately), loaded them onto my aging iPod mini, and was blown away by what I heard. The show is an abbreviated set of tunes, hand-picked to present the essence of the concept behind the album. Duritz opens each song with an explanation of the story behind it and how it fits into the album’s big picture, as well as how it is tied to other songs in the Counting Crows canon. I have since seen a couple of shows on cable of them performing these Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings tracks (along with some of the others), and while I don’t own the album, I have heard most of it, and they are largely true to the originals.

I almost wish I could be introduced to every new album this way. Almost.