Adam's quotable lyrics are all too long to fit here

November 10, 2018 10:28 AM

Counting Crows made a big splash some 25 years ago with the release of their debut album August And Everything After. Their 1993 release has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and fostered several hits. Side A: Round Here, Omaha, Mr. Jones, Perfect Blue Buildings, Anna Begins, Time And Time Again

Side B: Rain King, Sullivan Street, Ghost Train, Raining In Baltimore, A Murder Of One

posted by hippybear (81 comments total)

I still love this album. I can't not sing Round Here whenever is comes on in the car. I had a partner with a progressing mental illness when this came out, & that song always reminds me of them in a wistful, sad way.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:32 AM on November 10, 2018 [16 favorites]

'perfect blue buildings' got me through alot when my dad was dying. I would listen to it in the car in Jacksonville.

And sing.
posted by clavdivs at 10:34 AM on November 10, 2018 [7 favorites]

I thought Rain King was fairly sublime.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 10:36 AM on November 10, 2018 [7 favorites]

I saw them in a small club just after "Mr. Jones" broke big on MTV. They were opening for Cracker - the tour had been booked before they reached fame. I actually did not care for that song so much, and it was all I had heard from them, but their set really blew me away. Lots of people in the band, really tight together, powerful songs.
posted by thelonius at 10:39 AM on November 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

This album holds up much better than the contemporary alternative rock that i was listening to in 1993, I’d rather listen to this again than nirvana or pearl jam. A really complete album too, I’m partial to Anna Begins but I’d believe you if you liked any song on it the best.
posted by Kwine at 10:43 AM on November 10, 2018 [10 favorites]

"You try to tell yourself the things you try to tell yourself to make yourself forget"

The delivery of this lyric in Anna Begins always makes me stop and take pause. I don't know why, but it's damn effective.
posted by hippybear at 10:43 AM on November 10, 2018 [12 favorites]

The delivery of this lyric in Anna Begins always makes me stop and take pause.

that was the set opener iirc
posted by thelonius at 10:45 AM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

man i fucking loved counting crows back in the day. i was like 6 when this album came out and made my brother play mr jones for me over and over for some reason

first live concert i went to was counting crows and live; must have been before this desert life came out. i saw they're touring together again.

fell off the train around hard candy, i think. i think my emotional responses changed over time and i stopped feeling like adam's lyrics really spoke to me, man. still remember basically everything off the first three albums, though.
posted by dismas at 10:49 AM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

(honestly, if you remember that set opener 25 years later, that speaks loads about how good that set was)
posted by hippybear at 10:50 AM on November 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

That first album of theirs was perfectly ridiculous. And I mean that as a compliment.
posted by chavenet at 10:53 AM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

oh yeah and the first CD i bought for myself with my own money was the double live album they did (which was I think just recordings of their VH1 Storytellers set minus the storytellers part, and their MTV Live at the 10 Spot concert? the double live album seemed like a good value for my money when I was 10 or 11)
posted by dismas at 10:54 AM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

first live concert i went to was counting crows and live

This was mine (not that exact show, that tour). Big time white octave.
posted by thelonius at 10:55 AM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

from Mr Jones:
She dances while his father plays guitar
She's suddenly beautiful
We all want something beautiful
Man, I wish I was beautiful

I've always loved that set of lyrics. It goes from seeing beauty to desiring to jealously so effortlessly. That album is full of great turns of phrase like that.

Gray is my favorite color.
posted by mcstayinskool at 10:56 AM on November 10, 2018 [11 favorites]

"Raining in Baltimore" was used brilliantly in Homicide: Life on the Streets, in the episode "Last of the Watermen."
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:03 AM on November 10, 2018 [6 favorites]

I've always really liked their later Mrs. Potter's Lullabye, but watching the video for the first time, hoo-boy, that's peak '90s.
posted by Guy Smiley at 11:24 AM on November 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

This was the perfect album to be depressed to my senior year of high school.
posted by salvia at 11:27 AM on November 10, 2018 [12 favorites]

I also saw them opening for Cracker, as Cracker would generally start their tours in Charlottesville at Trax (RIP). Adam Duritz's brother was the guitarist for Cracker at the time. Such an early 90s show...
posted by kuanes at 11:30 AM on November 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Oh my god, the burning hatred I had for Counting Crows. Their music was fine, if a little bland, but for a good solid decade there, there was just no avoiding “Round Here” and “Mr. Jones.”

I seriously kind of wonder if the explosion in hiphop’s popularity in the mid-nineties was at least partially the result of people turning to the only radio station that didn’t play Counting Crows four times an hour.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:40 AM on November 10, 2018 [30 favorites]

Honestly, the Counting Crows were one of the best of the blandsplosion that took over the airwaves in the late 90s. I still like "Mr. Jones." It's a little off-kilter, in a pleasing way. Although "grey is my favorite color/I felt so symbolic yesterday" is really only tolerable as a lyric if you assume that the narrator is supposed to be a bit of a dimwitted, pretentious doofus.
posted by praemunire at 11:44 AM on November 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

Adam's quotable lyrics are all too long to fit round here ;)
posted by Celsius1414 at 11:44 AM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Honestly, the Counting Crows were one of the best of the blandsplosion

Oh, certainly. But toxicity is a matter of dosage, and, well...
posted by Sys Rq at 11:48 AM on November 10, 2018

I love this album. "A Murder of One" might be my favorite song from it, but "Mr. Jones" is a close second, and really the whole thing is great.

I remember when I first started hearing "Mr. Jones" on the radio. In my mind, that was when popular music began to get better again. There was some good music being made in the mid-to-late 80's but it wasn't being played on the radio, at least not where I lived. I remember pop radio being such a load of annoying crap that I would actually be pleased when "Total Eclipse of the Heart" came on because it was better than most of the other songs. And then along came "Mr. Jones" and "Einstein on the Beach" and some other good songs from other bands and finally I could actually enjoy listening to the radio again.
posted by Redstart at 12:05 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I just heard Rain King on the radio for the first time in years and was reminded of just how good Counting Crows were.

And speaking of his lyrics, I always appreciated how the Gaslight Anthem song 'High Lonesome' quotes their "Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand" line. Gaslight Anthem alludes to other songs and drops references to other bands all the time. But that one has always stood out.
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:13 PM on November 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

Thesis: Counting Crows invented emo. Discuss among yourselves.
posted by msalt at 12:16 PM on November 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

I loved this album when it came out, but oh man did it get played to death.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:25 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love early Counting Crows; they were for a long time contender for my favorite band. I love everything up through Hard Candy, but for some reason I anti-connected to Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, and I've not had the stomach to check in since. But August and Everything After is a beautiful album.

Honestly, the Counting Crows were one of the best of the blandsplosion that took over the airwaves in the late 90s. I still like "Mr. Jones." It's a little off-kilter, in a pleasing way. Although "grey is my favorite color/I felt so symbolic yesterday" is really only tolerable as a lyric if you assume that the narrator is supposed to be a bit of a dimwitted, pretentious doofus.

Or maybe someone with a dissociative disorder (a fact about Adam I learned from my therapist when I brought up Counting Crows once). Or even not. I've always loved those lines, personally, and I don't have dissociative disorder. Probably.

I guess I'm kinda a doofus though. Like, there were a number of years of my life where "Raining in Baltimore" was in the running for my favorite song. If I take a step back and try and be as objective as possible, "There's things I remember, there's things I forget / I miss you, I guess that I should" aren't very good lyrics, but they've always been very powerful to me.

When I bought Hard Candy at the precious age of 18, fresh graduated or maybe about to graduate from high school, it came with a bonus digital live performance, in which Adam sings the entirety of "Thunder Road" in the middle of "Rain King". Which I was able to find on YouTube. You're all welcome.
posted by Caduceus at 12:39 PM on November 10, 2018 [7 favorites]

I was living in San Francisco at the time this album came out, like the band, and I think it perfectly captured the feeling of being young, rootless, ambitious and 2/3-drink buzzed in a Cole Valley bar circa 1993. Especially "Round Here."
posted by msalt at 12:46 PM on November 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

I can take or leave most of their stuff, but "Round Here" and "A Long December" are great slow burners that I really emotionally connected with when they were getting heavy airplay, and I believe those two still hold up. And "Angels of the Silences" rocks way harder than any Counting Crows song rightfully should. I think they were my go-to scapegoat of everything wrong with 90s alt-adult contemporary for a long time, but in retrospect, a lot of that stuff was surprisingly good, and way worse shit was to come in the 00s.
posted by naju at 1:06 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

I feel like this just came out a few years back and yet I also feel like I have heard it about a 5 million times over 2 and a half decades.
posted by srboisvert at 1:11 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I drove from Seattle to Portland the day Cobain died, in the rain, in a green Karmann Ghia. Randomly went to see a show and it was the Counting Crows opening for the Cranberries, or vice versa. I don’t exactly remember, but it may have been my most 90s day of many very 90s days. I never purposely went to a Counting Crows show, but somehow saw them 3 times. They were always good.
posted by chuke at 1:20 PM on November 10, 2018 [14 favorites]

Although that first album got a ton of attention, they have since become a very under-appreciated band. They have a really solid discography.
posted by davebush at 1:26 PM on November 10, 2018

The "Across A Wire - Live from New York" VH1 Storytellers disc of that two-disc set had re-arrangements of songs from August/Recovering that are so good, and such the result of years of playing live and being really lived-in. It's one of my top 5 all time albums.

I saw them open for the Cranberries a couple weeks before they blew up, in a club venue in Deep Ellum, so we had no idea who they were. They were so good, so technically good and the songs were great, they had the audience in a way you very rarely see an unheard-of band pull off.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:30 PM on November 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

And just because no one has yet, I think, Rain King is built on, or created from, the content of Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, which makes it even more beautiful, imho. The book... if you like the song, you might read the book. Or re-read it... Thanks for the reminder!
posted by emmet at 1:35 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

alt-adult contemporary

VH1 used to be really different
posted by thelonius at 1:48 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

for some reason I anti-connected to Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, and I've not had the stomach to check in since.

Huh. I totally love that album. I think it's one of their strongest, really.
posted by hippybear at 2:04 PM on November 10, 2018

Yeah, I don't know. I've struggled with why I don't like it, genuinely, because they really were one of my favorite bands for most of my youth. But there are only two or three songs on that one that I like, and none of them as much as my favorites from earlier albums.
posted by Caduceus at 2:10 PM on November 10, 2018

Music from a transitional time in my life, from unhappy to happy. All sorts of nostalgia around Counting Crows.
posted by 4ster at 2:27 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

man now making my way back through some of it and there's a lot of nah nah nahs going on in a lot of these songs huh

i ain't mad
posted by dismas at 2:33 PM on November 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

do want to tell adam duritz to stop calling women girls though
posted by dismas at 2:35 PM on November 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

I drove from Seattle to Portland the day Cobain died, in the rain, in a green Karmann Ghia. Randomly went to see a show and it was the Counting Crows opening for the Cranberries, or vice versa. I don’t exactly remember, but it may have been my most 90s day of many very 90s days.

Hmm. You might want to check your diary, ‘cause that date doesn’t add up at all.

On April 5, 1994, the day Kurt Cobain died, Counting Crows were preparing for their European tour, which kicked off in Hamburg on the 7th. They had last played Seattle on March 10 and Portland on the 11th.

The Cranberries did not start their 1994 tour of North America until August, and that was just the east coast. After a stint in Europe, they returned for a full North American tour in November, which included neither Seattle nor Portland.

I suspect, if you saw the two bands together, it was on September 10, 1993 at La Luna in Portland. Cranberries opened for Counting Crows. It’s a shame you didn’t see them on the leg of the tour when they were both opening for Suede!

Nirvana’s In Utero would be released on the 21st of that month, and “Heart-Shaped Box” would have been in heavy rotation at the time, so it’s easy to see how you’d associate Kurt Cobain with the whole thing. Memory is a trickster!
posted by Sys Rq at 2:57 PM on November 10, 2018 [7 favorites]

So how many songs feature Mr. Jones? Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" of course, Beatles' "Yer Blues", Talking Heads "Mr. Jones" and Counting Crows. Has he shown up in other songs?
posted by octothorpe at 3:44 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Man. I associate a certain spring in undergrad with "Anna Begins" so intensely, even though I found the album was about a decade after it was released. I was trying to growing up to figure out myself and relationships and girlfriends' families and mental illness and being waaay too naive for a lot of crazy shit, and running away from a lot of pain and hoping that was the right choice. It doesn't really line up with anything, in terms of events, but, thematically, "And oh, lord, I'm not ready for this sort of thing..."

And then about five years later I lived in a shitty apartment in Tempe, AZ when they played an outdoor show associated with the 2008 Superbowl. I was reeling from grad school being an awful life choice and another stupid self-destructive romantic misadventure, so I sat on the porch of my shitty apartment by myself and drank cheap beer and got to hear that song live, because we were close enough to the park to hear everything over the speakers.

Yeah, that song really reminds me of a feeling. The "Across A Wire" cut is just.. gut punch. Every time. But mostly in a good way.
posted by Alterscape at 3:50 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

So how many songs feature Mr. Jones?

You mean Jose "Crackity" Jones?
posted by Guy Smiley at 4:10 PM on November 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

I love this album, still. One of my friends had a subscription to the (terrible) Christian youth magazine Brio which took extreme exception to the opening of "Rain King" (When I think of heaven / Deliver me in a black-winged bird) and how it was Satan Satan Satan and that made me love the song all the more.

Fuck you, Brio.

I haven't ever done karaoke but a Counting Crows song would be a solid pick for me.
posted by minsies at 4:13 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I remember that in the mid-90s they were referred to on radio in the Phoenix area as ' The Cancelling Crows" for how they cancelled and rescheduled then cancelled.
posted by Catblack at 4:20 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I spent most of 2004 and 2005 listening to “Anna Begins” the first thing in the morning when I got to work. Looking back, I’m a little annoyed at myself for not realizing how profoundly unhappy I was.
posted by Etrigan at 4:23 PM on November 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Their music got me through a really rough time in my life. I don't listen to them much any more, but I do remember it fondly.

I had amassed a pretty decent collection of their rarer stuff, most of which of course seems to be readily available online now. I especially liked Good Luck and A Mona Lisa, which never made it onto any albums, I don't think. And if you can track down a recording of their shows at the Shim Sham Club (where they only played covers), those were really fun, too.
posted by Sibrax at 4:28 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've always really liked their later Mrs. Potter's Lullabye

That’s a really wonderful song about yearning & regret, which are emotions I’m all too familiar with, so it resonates. The imagery is so strong. I’m a sucker for a train beat on the drums, too. Great groove.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:37 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I can take or leave most of their stuff, but "Round Here" and "A Long December" are great slow burners that I really emotionally connected with when they were getting heavy airplay, and I believe those two still hold up.

A Long December is a straight-up great song.
posted by misskaz at 4:47 PM on November 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

One of the first custom CDs I ever burned (we're going back a LONG time here, back when burning CDs wasn't a casual thing) was a hybrid CD of August and Recovering tracks. The tracklist is one I continue to be proud of for its flow: Have You Seen Me Lately?, Mr. Jones, Perfect Blue Buildings, Catapult, Angels Of The Silences, Round Here, I'm Not Sleeping, Anna Begins, Time And Time Again, Children In Bloom, Sullivan Street, A Long December, Raining In Baltimore, Recovering The Satellites, Walkaways
posted by hippybear at 4:56 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

On December 8, 1994 my dad went into surgery to have his tongue removed because fuck cancer. The surgery was going to take all day and my mom, my grandmother and I settled in for a long day in the waiting room. After about two hours the surgeon came out to the waiting room and invited us into a small undecorated room with just an empty desk and a couple chairs. He sat on the edge of the desk which was just a little too close to our chairs for comfort. I remember almost word for word what he said - we opened him up and the cancer has spread too far for us to help him. It's grown around his jugular vein and he has three months to live.

Every time I hear "Long December" and especially the line "the smell of hospitals in winter," the movie of that moment runs through my mind. The loss of rtha is weighing on me today and I'm mourning all my losses, especially the one three months - to the day - after that moment. December is right around the corner and I hate it.

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'
Now the days go by so fast
posted by bendy at 4:59 PM on November 10, 2018 [15 favorites]

A long December and the rest of Recovering the Satellites helped me through my divorce in a big way but that makes it hard to listen to now.
posted by octothorpe at 5:09 PM on November 10, 2018 [6 favorites]

And I belong in the service of the queen
And I belong anywhere but in between
She's been lying and I've been sinking
And I am Ann Reinking


Sorry. Both this album and the Chicago soundtrack featured heavily in my life at around the same time.
posted by pykrete jungle at 5:26 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Not my jam even a little. However, WAS my husband's jam back when we were first seeing each other so I hang a lot of precious memories on sense memories of loathing these songs in the moment. As such they're now sentimental to hear, in an "aww man I still hate this stupid song, those were the days" kind of way. Funny how that happens.
posted by potrzebie at 5:28 PM on November 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

maybe someone with a dissociative disorder (a fact about Adam I learned from my therapist when I brought up Counting Crows once). Or even not. I've always loved those lines, personally, and I don't have dissociative disorder. Probably.

The point is not the sequence, the point is that no one over the age of about 16 can be forgiven for the unqualified statement "I feel so symbolic." That is ill-informed teen pretension at its height ("deep, maaaaaaaaan"), it'd be embarrassing even for a college freshman. I'm pretty sure that narrator is meant to be kind of a loser (and young), I'm just not sure he's meant to be that absurd. (But if he is, then hey! Job done.)

Of course, it's not fair to treat strip pop song lyrics of the music and treat them as poetry, as they're not generally meant to stand alone. It's just that I do like the song, but hearing those two lines in particular always make me wince, and there was a time when you couldn't escape hearing them a lot.

Anyway, the late nineties were not a great era for pop or rock, but these guys weren't so bad. I wouldn't hit "skip" on most of their hits.

So how many songs feature Mr. Jones? Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" of course, Beatles' "Yer Blues", Talking Heads "Mr. Jones" and Counting Crows. Has he shown up in other songs?

Don't forget Mrs. Jones!
posted by praemunire at 5:30 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

So how many songs feature Mr. Jones? Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" of course, Beatles' "Yer Blues", Talking Heads "Mr. Jones" and Counting Crows. Has he shown up in other songs?

as long as we're sticking with music that i listened to way too much as an adolescent, there is ben folds's fred jones
posted by dismas at 5:48 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

I wish I could have seen them back in the day. I saw them recently, and the guy has problems and airs them on-stage. Felt more like therapy than a concert.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:08 PM on November 10, 2018

Ann Reinking

I remember her - used to date Yukon Sid.
posted by thelonius at 7:11 PM on November 10, 2018

"Round Here" features what was, in the 90s, was definitely the most famous use of the middle voice in English ("we sacrifice like lambs").
posted by kenko at 7:18 PM on November 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Counting Crows played my company party in 2004.

I liked their music when it was airing, but basically stopped listening after having hit my lifetime maximum for hearing “Round Here”.
posted by Autumnheart at 7:54 PM on November 10, 2018

Redstart: "And then along came "Mr. Jones" and "Einstein on the Beach" "

Note that "Einstein on the Beach" is not on the album August and Everything After.

This album is very Proustian for me.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:02 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I fell in love with this album sitting next to a dear friend in the passenger seat of her BMW one sunny fall afternoon when neither one of us wanted to go into our respective apartments. She's no longer with us, but hearing “Round Here” [Live, Pinkpop 2008; 9:52] will transport me back to that day even now.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:18 PM on November 10, 2018 [7 favorites]

This album is very Proustian for me.

Exactly same. I was in eighth grade when it was new so if I hear it I can see the drama classroom at my middle school and half a dozen different sleepover parties.

I was just at karaoke on election night this week, and was way into my cups when some guy did an extremely solid Rain King, so of course first I made a wretched face and then I laughed uncontrollably and then I sang along, because my various Counting Crows feelings all fight with each other and sloppy sentimentality often wins.
posted by clavicle at 8:39 PM on November 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

A long December and the rest of Recovering the Satellites helped me through my divorce in a big way but that makes it hard to listen to now.

Surprisingly I like hearing it and occasionally play it a few times in a row, not sure why.
posted by bendy at 8:49 PM on November 10, 2018

Note that "Einstein on the Beach" is not on the album August and Everything After.

No, but they were playing it on the radio around the same time as "Mr. Jones" and it's one of my favorite Counting Crows songs.
posted by Redstart at 8:51 PM on November 10, 2018

Mr brothers and I are steeped in much Counting Crows. Somewhere upthread someone suggested that counting crows invented emo, and I can at least attest that I made sweeping comparisons to Lifted-era Bright Eyes while trying to convince my brothers to get past Conor Oberst's voice. Some good Americana.

Here's a face-melting Anna Begins
I always appreciated how all over the place Duritz was live. Part sing, part recite, part monologue. He added such a wonderful improvisational aspect to his performance. That's what set them so far above other 'blandsplosion' acts. You could make fun of Cracker, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Bare Naked Ladies, and Hootie ATBF for all being safe boring white music in an age of grunge and hip hop. But Counting Crows had a real jazzy poetic edge to their live set that proved they had soul.
posted by es_de_bah at 9:06 PM on November 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

Mr. Jones was spring break of 1994.
Einstein on the Beach is so so so end of summer of 1994.

That summer was a huge growth year for me and sitting around listening to the radio was what got me through.
posted by k8t at 10:32 PM on November 10, 2018

There was an awful guy who spent a few months at my field site and would play Mr. Jones and Mrs. Potter's Lullaby (and the last one out of the circus has to lock up everything Or the elephants will get out and forget to remember what you said) over and over, punctuated occasionally by The Bloodhound Gang's "Bad Touch." For most of my life I have had no feelings about Counting Crows, I even kind of like Colorblind, but now those two songs fill me with such visceral loathing for that terrible guy, I cannot do it. It's not Counting Crows' fault, I suppose.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:30 AM on November 11, 2018

"Mr. Jones" is a million times better if you imagine it's about James Earl Jones.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:01 AM on November 11, 2018 [4 favorites]

I saw half of a Counting Crows set in September. Adam had to stop in the middle of a song to announce that the music festival grounds were being evacuated ahead of a lightning storm. Somebody booed, and he said, "Why are you booing at me, man? It's not my lightning."

I always forget how much I enjoy Counting Crows until I hear them again by accident somehow. I even enjoy the cloyingly heartfelt stories that Adam tells onstage. It's like the music gives me permission to like things in an uncomplicated and unironic way for a little while.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:07 AM on November 11, 2018 [6 favorites]

It took a long time for me to really get Recovering the Satellites. When August came out, it was full of sadnesses I could relate to. It took me many more years before I could relate to the sadnesses of Recovering.

I saw the Counting Crows in the summer of 2002 where, for reasons beyond understanding, they were opening for The Who. They played about four songs and Adam gave a talk along the lines of “We know who you’re really here to see. It’s cool. We have front row seats to every show, and it never gets old. Even though John Entwistle was one of the all-time greats, Pino Palladino is an amazing bassist. So I hope you enjoy the show as much as we will!”

They played one more song, and headed into the audience with the rest of us.
posted by Banknote of the year at 10:35 AM on November 11, 2018 [3 favorites]

Just dug out my much played copy of August. The CD case is at least half scotch tape.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 10:52 AM on November 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Counting Crows did a collab with Blof.

'Nuff said.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:33 PM on November 11, 2018

The last time I listened to this album was December 2001. I was going to college in Michigan, and a friend from our church was going to a different college in Michigan, and I gave her a ride home for Christmas break. She had a Walkman CD with a tapedeck adapter. This CD was in her walkman when I dropped her off. She promised to return it. Never did. I never re-bought it: I would not have known the word "blandcore" at the time but that gets at my then self's assessment of the album.

I just listened to it all the way through.

There is some weird way that music and memory connect. You can put your emotions into a song and then find them again decades later. My mom died a little more than a year ago. Some time this winter I heard the hymn "The Old Rugged Cross" and started crying uncontrollably with no idea why until my wife told me that we had sung it at mom's funeral.

There is a whole me hidden in this album. A sad and depressed me, but also sensitive and ambitious and too smart for his life. I have not been that boy in a long time and it was strange to have him back.

I don't know whether this is good music. It is not even music to me anymore: it is sitting in my bedroom, staring at the sunset and imagining not feeling that way anymore. It is wandering the halls of the youth group retreat desperately crushing on someone who was in retrospect probably scared of me. It is never, ever knowing what to say to my peers and having no hope of ever being understood by anyone. It is alienation so exquisite and crushing and bleak.
posted by gauche at 2:11 PM on November 11, 2018 [12 favorites]

So how many songs feature Mr. Jones?

One.

The Psychedelic Furs - Mr. Jones
posted by bongo_x at 4:15 PM on November 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

I seriously kind of wonder if the explosion in hiphop’s popularity in the mid-nineties was at least partially the result of people turning to the only radio station that didn’t play Counting Crows four times an hour.

From Wikipedia:

Upon hearing it ["Einstein on the Beach"], the label saw the song as a hit, so it was serviced to radio stations and gained popularity, reaching number one on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart for the week of August 13, 1994. This success caused Duritz dismay, as he was afraid the listeners of their songs would turn on them due to overexposure (citing fellow rock band Hootie & the Blowfish as an example), so the band scaled down their promotion and refused to make a music video for their single "Rain King".
posted by gimonca at 6:19 PM on November 11, 2018

From "Perfect Blue Buildings"

Down on Virginia and La Loma [been there]
Where I got friends who'll care for me
posted by kirkaracha at 10:50 AM on November 12, 2018

"Hard Candy" and "American Girls" is an awesome 1-2 album opener. I haven't listened to the rest of the album because I always just repeat those two songs.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:57 AM on November 12, 2018

This is a sentiment generic enough that basically anyone can say it, but Counting Crows is intertwined with so many personally resonant formative emotional moments from high school that are only even remembered by me and maybe three other people. I loved this album and still do.
posted by Wretch729 at 11:43 AM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

Counting Crows had a real jazzy poetic edge to their live set that proved they had soul.

Yes! Along with Tom Waits, early Rickie Lee Jones, Springsteen's "Spirit in the Night." Others?
posted by msalt at 4:40 PM on November 12, 2018

gimonca: "This success caused Duritz dismay, as he was afraid the listeners of their songs would turn on them due to overexposure (citing fellow rock band Hootie & the Blowfish as an example)"

He wasn't wrong.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:53 PM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]