this is random, but i wanted to say it... 'cause i think everyone who likes music and poetry and art should give counting crows a listen. i know everyone knows mr. jones and it doesn't mean much anymore, and accidentally in love is great fun, but it was a song written for a cartoon.. and big yellow taxi is a nice tribute to joni, but it's a cover... it was never meant to be more than a hidden track.
but seriously... i'm catching up on interviews with adam duritz right now.. and the man is incredible. a little egotistical, but very self critical and an artist through and through.
I read somewhere, you said that you don't have to tell somebody you're depressed, you can just tell them what the room you're sitting in looks like. That the way you look at the room communicates your mood. When did you figure that out?You learn that the first time you read [William] Faulkner describing the turtle crossing the road. The devil is in the details. It's always about that to me. It's not saying you can't tell someone how you feel, but when you say "I love you," what does that mean? It's been over-said. Not that it doesn't have meaning, but if you want to say "I love you," you'd better really be able to communicate that at that moment so that it feels true. It doesn't impart a lot of meaning in and of itself. There are so many phrases that have become idiomatic because they are so used--they go in one ear and out the other.
But if you tell someone something in a smaller way, in between the lines is where all that feeling is. In "A Long December:" "All at once you look across a crowded room / and see the way that light attaches to a girl." You know how that guy feels about that girl at that moment. You don't have to say, "She takes my breath away," or all these things that you've heard. Rather than say that she takes my breath away I'd rather explain that I can't breathe. "She takes my breath away" doesn't mean anything. The first time somebody wrote it, it meant a lot, but now we say it and it's just a phrase. So I want to find a way of saying that, that communicates the meaning, but in a different way. But I think all of that pre-dates songwriting for me. It's in Faulkner. It's in Hemingway.
(
www.livedaily.com/news/5866.html )
like god... all at once you look across a crowded room and see the way that light attaches to a girl...
or
I was wasted in the afternoon
waiting on a train
I woke up in pieces and Elisabeth had disappeared again
(goodnight elisabeth)
or
I'm falling from the ceiling
You're falling from the sky now and then
(recovering the satellites)
or
You go to sleep dreamin' how you would
be a different kind if you thought you could
But you come awake the way you are instead
(all my friends)
or
The devil's in the dreamin'
You see yourself descending
from the building to the ground
And you watch the sky receding
and you spin to see the traffic
rising up and it's so quiet
and you're surprised and then you wake
(wish i was a girl)
All the razor perceptions that cut just a little too deep
Hey, I can bleed as well as anyone but I need someone to help me sleep
(mrs. potter)
or
Carrie's down in her basement all toe shoes and twinned
With the girl in the mirror who spins when she spins,
From where you think you will end up to the state that you’re in
Your reflection approaches and then recedes again.
(St. Robinson and his caddilac dream)
or
Step out the front door like a ghost
into the fog where no one notices
the contrast of white on white.
(round here)
or
love is a ghost train howling on the radio
"Remember everything" She said "When only memories remain"
(ghost train)
or
It's 4:30 A.M. on a Tuesday
It doesn't get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle
of these lives which are completely meaningless
Help me stay awake, I'm falling...
(raining in baltimore)
or
And every time she sneezes I believe it's love
and oh lord.... I'm not ready for this sort of thing
She's talking in her sleep-it's keeping me awake
And Anna begins to toss and turn
And every word is nonsense but I understand and
oh lord. I'm not ready for this sort of thing
(anna begins)
any song from recovering the sattelites or august and everything or this desert life... they just kill me. what's the point of something mild and medeocre when you can have that? you really have to listen to it to get it properly though. but listen to one of those albums and on about the third listen you'll be hooked.
VH1: How has the Counting Crows made the world a better place?
AD: I think in the world today, you get your heart and emotion in small, edible doses. Everything’s in shorthand. You get these little doses of things that are supposed to stand for real feeling. For better or for worse, we give you real feeling. [We] try to give you a picture of what it’s like inside my head, really. That’s never a bad thing because if there’s a problem in the world, it’s that people don’t really “get” one another. Part of the reason they don’t get one another is that no one ever you gives you honestly what it’s like inside them. I’m not out to do anything that’s a good deed, and I’m not out to spread peace and love – I just don’t give a damn. I just do it, but I do think it’s a good thing; to give someone something real.
