Counting Crows--C/D

I hated then when they arrived on the scene, and Durvitz sounds like he's singing while exercising on a treadmill. and nothing subsequent was much better.

(NB: I am totally lying my ass off in the above sentence.)

xpost: hahahaha!

Well, my way is by saying "Classic."

*throws middle fingers at everyone and runs off*

"Counting Crows fan in ashamed to reveal true identity shocker."

Agreed that's he is not a good-looking guy. He's also a non-good-looking guy who's been in four confirmed relationships with hot actresses. Then again, if he miserably botched all of them, and there is evidence to suggest that he did, then your point stands.

I think their talent for quality songwriting is overlooked; I also think this for the Gin Blossoms.

Theire most famous record still looks like it's by Cunting Crews.

"A Long December" is pretty.

They aren't the Wallflowers.

So neither classic nor dud.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

But they are forever burned into my head for Big Yellow Taxi and that song/video sums up everything wrong with them. INCLUDING having Vanessa Carlton in the video and credited on the song when all she did was go "mmmm-bop-bop-bop."

Like Hanson didn't already cover the whole Mmmbop thing. What the hell more does she think needs to be added?

I'll refrain from any jokes about Fatty Dread Man and his Gut of Goo.

Greatest hits => Classic

Not so much DUD as, say, STAB.

Listened a couple times.

God of the Ocean Tides (aka Dust in the Wind?) is really nice, as well as Possiblity Days. I think they do ballads as good as anyone. Palisades Park and John Appleseed's Lament are def standouts. The hook on Dislocation kinda grates but the rest is good, might grow on me. Kinda love the final third of this lp straight up. Even into the ragtime stomper 'cover up the sun'.

been spending a lot of time with the most recent one and it's better than I even gave it credit for at the time (I am weirdly, unnecessarily bet-hedging in this thread idk why)

been preaching to the already-converted for a while that hard candy is their best record if you delete the big yellow taxi cover from every layer of existence

I've always had a soft spot for their tune "Perfect Blue Buildings" as when I was in school I remember being dirty and dead tired washing dishes about 3am in the back of a restaurant/bar alone hearing it on this sad radio that was zip tied up above the 3 sink.

i associate those first albums really strongly with dirty teenage restaurant work, too. that stuff is probably too intertwined with certain memories for me to even really hear what it sounds like.

What I hate about them, much like Rob Thomas, is that Duritz's voice MAKES them MOR. He's like the anti-Fagen, whose voice IMO contrasts/complements nicely with all that Steely Dan sheen.

Duritz, instead, grounds everything in this horrible 'tastefulness' that is completely repellent IMO

I got basically no critical perspective, but whataya mean by tastefulness

I too am wondering

holiday in spain song is hitting me today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJatv7CUhys

its a real damn shame the album didnt end with this song

#1 hit in Holland:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkErDMj1TW8

its a real damn shame the album didnt end with this song

― big city slam (Spottie), Thursday, July 11, 2019 12:27 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

afaic big ol taxi is a bonus track from hell

At least the original bonus track didn't have Vanessa Carlton on it, which always seemed like an odd addition.

afaic big ol taxi is a bonus track from hell

― american bradass (BradNelson), Thursday, July 11, 2019 12:52 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

fair. song really set them back and killed what little reputation they had at that point.

#1 hit in Holland:

― ArchCarrier, Thursday, July 11, 2019 12:38 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

did not know!

At least the original bonus track didn't have Vanessa Carlton on it, which always seemed like an odd addition.

― MarkoP, Thursday, July 11, 2019 1:07 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oooo bop bop bop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eexQVcLZV3Q

attn spottie, new counting crows EP is really awesome imo

yeah! listened to it on Friday. really love that first song. Need to spend more time w it.

no discussion anywhere on ILX of "Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman)"? song rules IMHO, such a solid snappy college-rock riff, so much forward momentum, drumming rules, Duritz's wild vocal swings create hooks out of nearly nothing. "cracks his HEAD WIDE OPEN!!". apparently it was a big alt-rock radio hit, but either it has a short shelf life or my station just wasn't drinking the Crow-Aid cause i never heard it until idk a year or two ago. just did it at karaoke to try and get it unstuck from my head. dunno if it worked but it was fun to try.

It was the "Single" from DGC Rarities, a quickly forgotten V/A comp of demos/outtakes/odds'n'sods from Alt-Rockers in Geffen's stable (another selling point was the inclusion of Nirvana's demo of "Pay To Play"--aka "Stay Away" with inadvertently became the first new Nirvana product released after Cobain's suicide).

One of the CC guys wrote in the liners that "Einstein..." was a band favorite that the just couldn't get to fit into August..., and became a decent radio hit as the first new CC thing to stick after "Mr. Jones".

it's funny, the two big Recovering the Satellites singles were SO big on my station, and i had really just started tuning in in '95/'96... i feel like CC's earlier material has just been aggressively purged from the rotation.

I was a big fan of August... and have vivid memories of the first time I heard "Einstein on the Beach", walking in the campus bookstore.

seems like a good setting for it tbh!

"einstein" is one of their best!!!

the last two songs by CC I heard out in the wild were that, and Mr. Jones. It's been a long time since I have heard anything else randomly, I think.

I went on an inexplicable Counting Crows bender in 2022, the first two albums especially but there was something worth hearing on just about all their albums. Maybe it was hearing "Murder of One" or "Long December" in the grocery store or something. But after binging for like 14 months straight, I went to see them live and, wow, did that put an end to it. One of the most boring, lifeless displays I've paid for.

Before seeing them, on another thread, I did this POX and search/destroy.

POX:
Anna Begins
Sullivan Street
Raining in Baltimore
A Murder of One
Children in Bloom
Recovering the Satellites
Holiday in Spain
Hanging Around
St. Robinson In His Cadillac Dream
Miami

Search: "Shallow Days", "Hanging Tree", "Good Time"
Destroy: "Girl from the North Country", "Mean Jumper Blues","Butterfly in Reverse", "Another Horsedreamer's Blues", "Amy Hit the Atmosphere", Underwater Sunshine, the unplugged part of Across a Wire, esp "Round Here"...

Classic or Dud: Yes

"Good Time"

fucking AMAZING song, they should do more atmospheric pink floyd-ish stuff

i do really love "another horsedreamer's blues" it may be my favorite song on recovering

oh and

Miami

favorite cc song of all time, i think, if i'm having a nervous breakdown i'm usually listening to this song a lot

what more perfect rendezvous
the sundown paints the shadows through
the daylight, amy, on what we do

"i guess i think i feel all right" is an all-time opening line for me. adam duritz's memorable banalities

"Einstein" was definitely a radio hit AFTER "Round Here" and then, weirdly, "Einstein" became CC's only #1 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart around the same time "Rain King" got to #4 on Mainstream Rock. totally arbitrary divide, those songs are not aesthetically distinct from each other at all. and neither song had a video so i guess that freed stations up to decide which one they liked better instead of following MTV's lead.

I feel like Counting Crows are universally hated almost at a Nickelback meme-type level but I always had a soft spot for them…Recovering the Satellites was like my third CD and I was very into it at the time (I was a kid in the 90s), but I pulled it out again one of the last times that I got good and sloppy drunk (a few years back now) and listened to the entire thing and in that state at least it still held up very well. I even remember liking their third album (Desert Life?) decently at the time it came out.

I’m not pushing for a cultural reexamination by any means as this is more of a time and place thing for me (if I’d been in my teens by the time any of this came out I guarantee I wouldn’t feel the same way) but they really were a better band than they get credit for…there are certainly other 90s acts I’d put on the “deserve to be universally despised” list ahead of them.

It didn't help that Duritz was kind of a doofus, but I do think the hate leveled against them was pretty over the top. I still listen to them way more than most of the other bands from that time period.

I actually really liked their covers album from 2012.

"Einstein" was definitely a radio hit AFTER "Round Here" and then, weirdly, "Einstein" became CC's only #1 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart around the same time "Rain King" got to #4 on Mainstream Rock. totally arbitrary divide, those songs are not aesthetically distinct from each other at all. and neither song had a video so i guess that freed stations up to decide which one they liked better instead of following MTV's lead.

― some dude, Tuesday, 27 August 2024 15:04 (twenty-four minutes ago) link

kind of weird to me that DGC didn't shell out for a third video from August & Everything After

the band themselves are fine. I actually am friends with someone who was a founding member of the band that morphed into CC (and who originally wrote Round Here); Charlie Gillingham had a (very short) stint in American Music Club; David Immerglück was in Camper Van Beethoven; Jim Bogios is a great drummer who has played with a lot of people, including Sheryl Crow and Mark Eitzel. The cringe has always been around Duritz' white boy dreadlocks and his (perceived) Van Morrison rip off vocal stylings, and his dating Jennifer Aniston.

is dating jennifer aniston cringe? why?

i guess that makes Justin Theroux cringe

iirc, the cringe wasn't so much that he dated Aniston, but that he famously dated Aniston and Courtney Cox during the heights of Friends mania.

maybe he just wanted some Friends

xp doesn't that make it more cringe of Aniston and Cox to have dated him during that time period?

I mean, sure. If their dating lives mean that much to you?

famously, Steve Albini had refused to date Anston, Cox AND Nicole Kidman around that time

none of that dating stuff is frankly interesting and I don’t know why it’s all that relevant. Guy dated some celebrities during the peak of his fame. Big shocker.

maybe he just wanted some Friends

hahaha

famously, Steve Albini had refused to date Anston, Cox AND Nicole Kidman around that time

hmmm
oh
hahaha

I had never heard a Counting Crows album, just various singles, but my neighbor always plays music loud while working in his yard so today was the day. Adam Duritz’ constant straining a couple notes above his range to add “urgency” or whatever became more and more annoying to me over the course of an hour. Supremely annoying.

About three years ago I listened to ~a lot~ of Counting Crows. In the midst of the pandemic I guess I found Adam's urgency comforting. Dunno. Anyway, I even went to a concert and sprung for decent seats. It was one of the most boring, paint-by-numbers shows I've ever seen. Haven't sought them out much since, but at the end of that phase, I summarized them like this:

OPO:
Murder of One

POX:
Anna Begins
Sullivan Street
Raining in Baltimore
A Murder of One
Children in Bloom
Recovering the Satellites
Holiday in Spain
Hanging Around
St. Robinson In His Cadillac Dream
Miami

Search: "Shallow Days", "Hanging Tree", "Good Time"
Destroy: "Girl from the North Country", "Mean Jumper Blues","Butterfly in Reverse", "Another Horsedreamer's Blues", "Amy Hit the Atmosphere", Underwater Sunshine, the unplugged part of Across a Wire, esp "Round Here"...

Classic or Dud: Yes

omg don't destroy "another horsedreamer's blues"

"miami" in a POX is very very correct tho

we had this exact conversation nine month sago

oh gawd...sorry! should've scanned up

theres a few songs on the butter miracle album that im really loving