Hello,
I am back on this warm Sunday afternoon. I previously mentioned my job, I count people on the Front Runner train in SLC. There is a lot of down time with this job. In this job that is actually good as I am able to listen to music, read in both novels and magazines and also prepare my upcoming blog entries. Also if my computer wasn't 150 years old, I would be able to surf the 'net as well. That would of course mean a blog every day. Anyway the reason I am telling you all this is that yesterday I started writing up a list of classic songs and CD's. I am doing that because I am thinking about coming up with a Top 500 CDs and Top 500 singles list. Now I realize this is an ambitious project, and not something that will happen quickly. I plan on working on this project for 6 months to a year. So if you have any suggestions, please pass them on.
For individual songs I really have no rules. My criteria will emphasize quality over popularity. (So not too much Britney Spears). On CDs I only have one rule. That is no greatest hits CD's unless they have a cohesive feeling to it. For instance, that is why Bob Marley's "Legend" will be on my Top 500 (actually more like Top 50), whereas Journey's Greatest Hits CD won't be. (Although there will be probably at least two or three Journey CD's on the list.) I am using this same criteria for live CD's as well.
I know one CD that won't be making my Top 500 list, that is the new Counting Crows CD. This CD, "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings" starts out strong but fades quickly. Someday hopefully I will be a lot better writer and I can write a cohesive CD review, like you find in magazines, but for now I am just going to review the songs in running order. So here goes:
1) The first song is "1492", this CD starts off with a blast of rock and roll. This is a very non-typical Counting Crows song, but it is still a great song. However the theme of this CD begins in this song. Adam Duritz, lead singer and the band's main songwriter, has some serious issues. Thus the title of this blog. There is a lot of anger in this song. In one of his lyrics he declares himself "King of everything, king of nothing". This sense of melancholy and frustration runs through the whole CD.
Duritz is depressed but this is still a great song. The second song is another great song. It is "Hanging Tree". There is a sound effect at the start of this song, I am not sure if it is suppose to be a cough. It may also be a motorcycle starting, as there is a motorcycle sound at the end of the song. A lyric in this song is, " She brings a friend so that we don't have to be alone". (Let the pity party begin.) The chorus is this "Dizzy life is hanging me up all the time". So two songs and both songs have an angry, melancholy feel to them. What is Adam Duritz so angry about? He is one of the most autobiographical songwriters we have in rock music and seemingly things have not been going well. He is still a great singer and his voice is a voice that sings with authority and experience.
For the third song on this CD, there is another excellent song. So far the Counting Crows are 3 for 3 for quality songs on this CD. The third song is "Los Angeles", this is a song about his own celebrity. He sings, "I'm just trying to make sense about me." The guitar is really featured, indeed all the musicians in this song are featured. He has mixed songs about LA in this song, but he is trying to talk someone to move there. Unfortuntely this song runs on for about 45 seconds too long. At the end he starts rambling and closes the song with this line, "It's really a good place to find a taco".
Then on the fourth song this CD hits its first speed bump. The song is "Sundays". A mellow song with Duritz's melancholy raises its head again. He sings, "You think that you can do without me?" He repeats that lament several times. Also he sings, "I don't believe in Sundays and I don't believe in anything at all." He repeats that several times. There is too much repeating on this CD. On the fifth song, this CD has one of its last highlights before heading straight downhill. The song is "Insignificant". This is yet another pessimistic, mid-tempo song. (Who is this the Counting Crows or David Archuleta?) I won't list any lyrics from this song, but I think you know by now they are depressing.
The sixth track is "Cowboys", one of the better songs on this CD. It is a good rock song, but he is back to the same boring theme when he sings, "I am not anything". (Seriously dude is life really that bad, you are whining as much as a teenage girl.) This is also the first of several songs that should have been edited. This CD has 14 songs and a running time of 59:51. So far a passable CD, but the next song has a high degree of suckiness. This song, "Washington Square" is so boring and pointless that it shouldn't have been on the CD. I am wondering if in this song he is making some reference to the Henry James novel. But this isn't the type of song I want to waste any more time of my life on, so I am not going to find out. So one boring, slow, depressing song in a row wasn't enough so here comes another one. In "On Almost Any Sunday" Duritz continues his woe is me outlook. Then it is the third straight boring song in a row, "When I Dream of Michaelangelo." (Adam it's cool you dream about famous artists, but please don't bore us with the details.) By this point I am hoping this CD finishes quickly or goes out strongly. Unfortunately neither one of my hopes is fulfilled. Then with the tenth song "Anyone But You", not only is this song boring but it runs on at least two minutes long. In the back-ground, the band is singing something like "Ba Ba" while repeater man sings "true" over and over again.
Then the CD makes a little bit of an uptick with the eleventh song, "You Can't Count On Me". (Um Adam we had that figured out a few songs ago.) By song number twelve, I am really missing "Mr. Jones" and "A Long December". Instead of greatness Duritz serves up the very pretentious "Le Ballet d'Or". In it he sings, "I'd be lying if I didn't tell you the truth". By this point I am thinking the record company gave them a certain length of time this CD had to be, so the Crows are putting all their songwriting ideas on this CD. A lot of these songs are much more ideas than actual songs. By this point I want this CD to finish as quickly as possible. For song thirteen we have almost 5 minutes of slow dreary music, where Mr. Duritz sings "Come back to me" at least 30 times. (Not only is this CD excessively dreary, but they repeat that dreariness on nearly every song.) This song, "On A Tuesday in Amsterdam" should have been left off the CD as well. The Crows had hit their quota of slow and boring songs and so they have a semi-strong finish to this CD. The fourteenth and finally last song on this CD is titled, "Come Around". This is a much happier song, not the best song on the CD though. This is about the 5th or 6th best song though. Then thankfully this CD is over.
Now here are some disclosures, I am a humongous Counting Crows fan. I have seen them in concert two or three times and they are a great live band. Their first two CD's are near classics. Also I own all their CD's in some form. So that being said, I still did not like this CD. This CD is at least 4 songs and 20 minutes too long. They should have taken the first, second, third, fifth, sixth and fourteenth song and released it as an EP. Also I know you now can't wait to buy this CD, it is available in MP3 format at amazon.com for $5 until next Thursday night. My opinion, unless you are a humonguos Counting Crows don't buy it. Actually you can get by with just buying the first three songs. This is why iTunes is so cool.
Upcoming CD reviews include Duffy's "Rockferry", this CD is getting a lot of hype right now, I am going to find out if it is worth it. Also I may be going and seeing Erakyu Badu in concert on Tuesday night. I am not real familiar with her music, do you have any suggestion of songs or CD's of hers I can check out. Thanks in advance, themusicaddict
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