Counting Crows

COUNTING CROWS

Formed: 1989, San Francisco, California

Members: Adam Duritz, vocals, keyboard (born Baltimore, Maryland, 1 August 1964); David Bryson, guitar (born San Francisco, California, 5 November 1961); Charlie Gillingham, keyboard, accordion (born Torrance, California, 12 January 1960); Matt Malley, bass, guitar (born 4 July 1963); Steve Bowman, drums (born 14 January 1967); Ben Mize, drums (born 2 February 1971).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: August and Everything After (1993)

Hit songs since 1990: "Mr. Jones," "Round Here," "A Long December"

Combining the sometimes clashing elements of classic and alternative rock, Counting Crows made a sensational debut in 1993 with their multiplatinum album August and Everything After. The hit singles "Mr. Jones" and "Round Here" established the authority of the poetic lyrics and highly emotional vocalism of the lead singer, Adam Duritz. At the height of the grunge movement, with Nirvana and Pearl Jam the bands of the moment, Counting Crows brought to the musical scene a traditional rock sound. At the same time, Duritz's lyrics captured the zeitgeist associated with Generation X but without the nihilism and despair that pervaded Cobain's work. Counting Crows' music was the kind of music that could make it big on both alternative radio and The Late Show with David Letterman.

Counting Crows were formed by Duritz and guitarist David Bryson in 1989, when they began performing acoustic arrangements in the coffeehouse circuit of San Francisco. With a name derived from a nursery rhyme, the Crows soon became a larger group, with the addition of bassist Matt Malley, keyboard player Charles Gillingham, and drummer Steve Bowman. After developing a considerable following in the San Francisco area, the group ultimately recorded a demo that caught the attention of DGC Records, which signed them in 1992. August and Everything After, issued the following year, with lyrics and music credited to Duritz, shot to number four on the charts and sold more than 6 million copies.

On this album Duritz's lyrics reach a consistently high level, with the density and power of poetry and the authentic note of yearning. Despite their tendency toward grunge-like pessimism, lamenting wasted lives and diminished spirits, these songs end on a note of hope: "All your life is such a shame / All your love is just a dream," the narrator warns in "A Murder of One," the album's final track, but soon adds, "You don't want to waste your life."

The group's second album, Recovering the Satellites (1996), was long delayed by what Duritz later described as a block caused by his new-found celebrity, but it was well received upon its release. It carries on many of the same themes as the first album, but the music is often harder-edged. In "Angels of the Silences," the narrator yearns to come back to his lover but knows it won't happen: "All my sins—/ I said that I would pay for them if I could come back to you."

Spot Light: August and Everything After

Certain bands seem to encapsulate the sound of classic rock, even when their songs are in a completely different category. Counting Crows' sensationally successful debut album, August and Everything After (1993), is a case in point. At the height of the grunge movement, with Nirvana and Pearl Jam the bands of the moment, lyricist/composer Adam Duritz and his group produced music that echoed the rock of the 1960s and 1970s. This ability to fuse a contemporary sensibility with a traditional sound is one of the reasons Counting Crows became such a popular group. "Round Here," the lead track on the album and a hit single, sets the tone. Its narrator tells of a deeply troubled young woman named Maria, who comes to him seeking a release he can't provide. He lives "In the air between the rain," whereas she seems as if "she's walking on a wire in the circus." In "Mr. Jones," the other hit single, the narrator encounters a Mr. Jones, who, like him, wants to be a rock and roll star: "We all want to be big stars, but we don't know why and we don't know how." With some echoes of the Byrds's "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star" and a reference to Bob Dylan, the song expresses the frustrations of someone on the outside looking in. As a lyrical voice for the outcast and lonely, Duritz's songs on August and Everything After provided an eloquent counterpoint to the heavy, occasionally maudlin lamentations of the grunge-rock movement.

The title song asks similar questions, asserting that "we only stay in orbit / For a moment of time / And then you're everybody's satellite." "A Long December"—along with "Angels" a hit single from the album—contains laments of much the same kind: "I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself / To hold on to these moments as they pass." These are songs of loss—lost loves, lost innocence, lost direction. And they are also songs of Los Angeles. More than in their first album, Duritz makes use of the locale in setting the mood of his lyrics.

Two more albums followed in the nineties. First, the live Across a Wire: Live in New York City (1998), which featured acoustic and electric sets recorded in two different venues. This double album reprises songs from the previous albums, giving some of them a new spin. Finally, the following year saw This Desert Life, the band's third studio album, and increasing criticism (voiced previously) that Duritz's music was too highly derivative—classic rock in alternative disguise—and too repetitive. Nonetheless, the group remained very popular, received lots of airplay, and retained a considerable following. Beginning in the nineties, they created an enlarged ensemble with a now-familiar sound and a singer/composer whose hopes and yearnings had become staples of the musical scene.

Hard Candy (2002), their most recent album, confirmed their success and made up for the less than enthusiastic reception afforded its predecessor. If the themes of August and Everything After and their other earlier albums were yearning and frustration, their later work has stressed memory. Mellower than many tracks from their earlier work, it shows its singer/composer and the group around him in a new and optimistic light.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

August and Everything After (Geffen, 1993); Recovering the Satellites (Geffen, 1996); Across a Wire: Live in New York (Geffen, 1998); This Desert Life (Interscope, 1999).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

M. Scharfglass, Counting Crows: This Desert Life (Milwaukee, 2000).

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