Now that “Live Music Friday” has been instituted on this blog, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to take care of all those emails in one go… so today, I’ll be posting the entire set of Counting Crows, live on WXPN/World Cafe.

As much as I get elitist music snob feedback whenever I feature Counting Crows on this blog, I stand by my statement that, for many of us, Counting Crows pretty much played the soundtrack of our lives. Seriously. Recovering the Satellites, and August and Everything After contained songs that – I think, at that stage of my life, for the very first first time – seemed to me as though they were written specifically with you in mind.So when the news came out that the band were set to release their fifth-studio album, “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings“, earlier this year, I was desperately hoping for it to bring back those feelings of years gone past. However, as my two past posts indicated, I was hesitant to hold out too much hope for fear of disappointment.

(Side note: Once I finally received my full copy of the double-album, I was… ambivalent. Which is a terrible thing to say about a band like Counting Crows. But, really, it was an album that was good, but not great.)

This set, however, is the set that got me excited about the album. It’s a set that exemplifies why Counting Crows are one of the greatest live acts around – their ability to make each show a truly personal experience for each person in the audience.
In this set, Counting Crows walked the crowd through the album, with eight songs performed from “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings”. And, before each tune, Adam Duritz introduces the track with an in-depth commentary about the story behind the song. You really have to listen to the entire set to get that magic of hearing Adam explain the birth and life of each song… but here’s a sample taste of his introduction to “Washington Square”:

“And I moved “Washington Square” to this place right here, because following that would be this song “Le Ballet d’Or”, which is about looking back on your life and realising, “If I’d just done things a little differently, this could all have been a lot different”. As the song starts out, uh… “Wasted time running scared, when all the love needs is to be believed in“… which is an obvious thing to say, but not a simple thing to do.
Or the second verse is, “Wasted time running scared, all that I need is something like a summer, and I know you need somebody just like I do“.
And he goes through the seasons in that song, it’s kind of a companion song to “Omaha” in a way, that he’s looking at his life in these different ways and seeing all these places where… God, it didn’t have to go as wrong as it did, it’s just that… if I’d just been able to see it a little differently, I could have done things a little differently. And he kind of comes to the conclusion that, it’s time to stop being the way I’ve been, and to do something totally different.

And the song after that is called, “On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago”, which I wrote in Amsterdam the week after “Accidentally in Love”. At the time, written about, “What if this wonderful thing that’s going on in my life were to.. fall apart and drift away?”.
Uh, and years later, after it actually did… uh, it becomes this really… it was a sad song about the possibilities of something so beautiful, and how fragile it is to hold something that beautiful in your hand, but in the years later of course, it becomes a truly, truly sad thing to have lost something that meant that much to you. And it’s funny, a friend of mine commented to me the other night, she said, “You know, this album… the healthier you get, the sadder it gets”, and I was like, “Oh…”.

And I think that’s because madness is like numbness. And you retreat from the world. And the healthier you get, the better you are, the more you can feel… and feeling is just, you know… it can go either way. You can feel good, you can feel bad.”

And really… who doesn’t an intro like that speak to? Seriously. Listen. Love. Support.

Counting Crows, Live on WXPN/World Cafe Friday, 8 February 2008

1.) 1492
2.) Hanging Tree
3.) Insignificant
4.) Cowboys
5.) When I Dream of Michelangelo
6.) You Can’t Count On Me
7.) Washington Square
8.) Come Around

This has been a post from Burgo's Music Blog

Live Music Friday – Counting Crows Live on WXPN/World Cafe Friday

Possibly related posts:

1. Counting Crows live on WXPN – Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings
2. Counting Crows – Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

We’ve already previewed some of the new songs here before, so I won’t be posting the whole set (but if you’re really desperate, then drop a comment here and let me know; perhaps we can work something out). That said, this show exemplifies one of the reasons I feel Counting Crows is one of the greatest live acts around: Adam goes into great detail to give you the backstory of each song, and really makes you feel part of a greater experience; as if we’re all sharing the same journey, the same ride.

As mentioned in our previous post about the album, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is really a double album: The “Saturday Nights” half is ostensibly the more “rock” half, and the “Sunday Mornings” the more acoustic. On this World Cafe show (which was aired on February 8th), Counting Crows performed four songs from each side. I’ll be posting one song from each half for now; the first is “Cowboys” from the “Saturday Nights” section, and the second is “Washington Square“, from the “Sunday Mornings” section.

I could try and write up an analysis of each song. But really, who can do it better than Adam himself? So I’ll leave the smart words to him, in his introduction to each song. I will say this though; I’ve been hesitant to get excited about this album. This set might just have changed that.

Again, if you’d like me to post the whole set, then drop a comment and let me know.

Listen. Love. Support.

Listen: Counting Crows – Cowboys (live on WXPN/World Cafe)
Listen: Counting Crows – Washington Square (live on WXPN/World Cafe)

This has been a post from Burgo's Music Blog

Counting Crows live on WXPN – Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

Possibly related posts:

1. Counting Crows – Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

Yeah, yeah; I know the elitest snobs will have something to say about such a mainstream band appearing on this blog, but cmon… who here can honestly claim that Counting Crows didn’t soundtrack much of their life?

While Hard Candy was certainly a slight falter in the Counting Crows trajectory (apart from, of course, the Ryan Adams-co-written “Butterfly In Reverse”), the band has earned it’s place in any pantheon of greats.

And I’ve been desperately, desperately hoping for their fifth studio album, “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings” (due out March 29th), to show a return to the form of “August and Everything After”; or, failing that, at least to “This Desert Life”.

Given the two tracks I’ve just heard, I’m not certain that this will be of August-like awesomeness. But perhaps it shouldn’t have to be.

Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is a themed double-album; the first, “Saturday Night” half, is ostensibly the rock side of the album, with the second, “Sunday Morning” half showcasing the more soft-spoken, acoustic side.

Adam Duritz has said of the album that:

“[It's] about dissolution and disintegration. It’s about when Saturday night happens and you lose all sense of yourself. And it’s about when you wake up Sunday morning and look back at the wreck you’ve made of your life and you think, ‘How can I possibly fix this? How can I ever climb out of this hole?’ And then you start to try and climb.”

The below two singles were quietly dropped on the band’s official site a few days ago, with the “side a” song, 1492, obviously slated for the Saturday half of the forthcoming album, and the “b side” song, “I Dream of Michaelangelo” being for the Sunday morning after.

As a side note, if you don’t currently subscribe to Adam’s blog, I encourage you to do so. The guy’s style of writing was made for blogs.

Listen to the tracks below, and see what you think. I’m still holding out for greatness, but, based on these, I’ll reserve my judgement for now. Drop a line in the comments as to your thoughts.

Listen: Counting Crows – 1492
Listen: Counting Crows – When I Dream of Michaelangelo

This has been a post from Burgo's Music Blog

Counting Crows – Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings

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