Album of the Day — August 26
Counting Crows — August and Everything After
Counting Crows — August and Everything After
26.August.2020
Counting Crows
August and Everything After
1993
As we wind down the dog days of summer we take the day to celebrate dogs (it’s International Dog Day).
I suppose it’s also as good a time as any to ponder everything that comes after August …and Counting Crows debut album, August and Everything After.
Released in the autumn of 1993, this debut album took all of New York Minute to catch wind and for Counting Crows to establish themselves as a force in rock and roll.
No easy thing to do in 1993 since the world was experiencing peak grunge. Having a straight-up rock band grab an audience as the Crows did was no easy task. Especially for a group that had a more literary tilt, and could be a bit verbose, than their rock/grunge brethren.
And grab they did, to date, August and Everything After has sold 10 million copies worldwide.
The band’s demo tape had prompted a bidding war between nine different labels — there was a time when there were that many. A&R executive Gary Gersh at DGC Records won out. The deal was so large that the band was nicknamed “Accounting Crows.”
Thy hype was so considerable around the band that months before they released their debut, they filled in for Van Morrison at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, covering “Caravan.”
After its release, August and Everything After became the fastest-selling album since Nirvana’s Nevermind.
The band has gone through some personnel changes since 1993, but the group that recorded August and Everything After was:
Steve Bowman — drums, vocals
David Bryson — guitars, vocals
Adam Duritz — vocals, piano, harmonica
Charlie Gillingham — piano, Hammond B3, accordion, vocals
Matt Malley — bass, guitar, vocals
Producer T-Bone Burnett also contributed guitar work, and Gary Louris and Mark Olsen of The Jayhawks, and Maria McKee helped out with background vocals.
The first single, “Mr. Jones,” catapulted the band into the spotlight (can we please just forget the video?). While there has been a boatload of speculation as to the inspiration of the song, according to writer and singer Duritz, it’s really about him and his friend Marty Jones going to see Jones’s father play flamenco guitar at a place in San Francisco.
Duritz said of “Mr. Jones”:
“This is a song that has been misinterpreted greatly, to say the least. I have heard everything from it being about some ancient bluesman who taught me to play music, which is completely ridiculous, but like somebody’s movie fantasy. I’ve also heard it’s about my dick, which is even more ridiculous.”
And in case you’re still wondering, “Mr. Jones,” is in reference to his friend he was out with, Marty Jones.
[Fun Fact] — “Mr. Jones” was a source for the naming of “Generation Jones” — the generation between Boomer’s and X’ers, born between 1954 and 1965. Duritz was born in 1964.
There was a time in rock and roll when bands put weight and thought into their lyrics. They told stories. Counting Crows has a kinship with those bands — like The Band. They were a modern version of troubadours who embraced the same storytelling idea and were never shy about their inspirations. You can hear it in their music and lyrics, in Duritz’s case, on the t-shirts he wore.
Musically, aside from “Mr. Jones” and “Rain King,” songs like “Perfect Blue Buildings”, “Omaha”, and “Ghost Train”, et. al make August and Everything After is a somewhat somber affair. It matches the lyrics. But however subdued it may be, the one thing it forces you to do is pay attention.
I always found “Anna Begins” a bit beguiling, but a friend recently encouraged me to re-visit the song.
So I did.
What I heard this time was the confusion, pain, and ultimate denial about being in love. All too often, you meet someone, and you convince yourself you’re not going to involve your emotions. You’re gonna keep your emotional distance, keep it physical or casual in order to keep yourself safe? Comfortable? Your reasons may vary.
But, the more time you spend with someone, the more intimate you become. We’re human, after all. Accordingly, the potential exists to connect on a deeper emotional level, and if that happens then you’ve got to surgically navigate your extrication.
Unless you’re a sociopath, you can’t deny that shit.
You can dismiss it, shove it down, ignore it, we all have …and that’s what “Anna Begins” is about, the denial of love:
It does not bother me to say this isn’t love
Because if you don’t want to talk about it then it isn’t love
And I guess I’m going to have to live with that
But I’m sure there’s something in a shade of gray
Anna Begins
My friend assures me, “It’s all or nothing.”
I am not worried
I am not overly concerned
My friend implores me, “For one time only,
Make an exception.”
I am not worried
Wrap her up in a package of lies
Send her off to a coconut island
I am not worried
I am not overly concerned with the status of my emotions
“Oh, “she says, “you’re changing.”
But we’re always changing
It does not bother me to say this isn’t love
Because if you don’t want to talk about it then it isn’t love
And I guess I’m going to have to live with that
But I’m sure there’s something in a shade of gray
Or something in between
And I can always change my name
If that’s what you mean
My friend assures me, “It’s all or nothing.”
But I am not really worried
I am not overly concerned
You try to tell yourself the things you try to tell yourself
To make yourself forget
I am not worried
“If it’s love, “she said, “then we’re going to have to
think about the consequences.”
She can’t stop shaking
I can’t stop touching her and
This time when kindness falls like rain
It washes her away and Anna begins to change her mind
“These seconds when I’m shaking leave me shuddering
for days,” she says
And I’m not ready for this sort of thing
But I’m not going to break
And I’m not going to worry about it anymore
I’m not going to bend and I’m not going to break
And I’m not going to worry about it anymore
No no no no no,
It seems like I should say, “As long as this is love”
But it’s not all that easy so maybe I should
Snap her up in a butterfly net
Pin her down on a photograph album
I am not worried
I’ve done this sort of thing before
But then I start to think about the consequences
Because I don’t get no sleep in a quiet room and
The time when kindness falls like rain
It washes me away and Anna begins to change my mind
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
Her kindness bangs a gong
It’s moving me along and Anna begins to fade away
It’s chasing me away
She disappears and
Oh Lord, I’m not ready for this sort of thing
Duritz said of “Anna Begins”:
“It’s about when you’re in a relationship with someone and you keep denying it’s anything but a fling, then you wise up and realize that all along while you were denying it, you were growing closer together.”
My favorite song from this album and one of all time is “A Murder of One” — I just never tire of it. It rocks and is joyous and thoughtful, yet maintains some darkness. If you’ve ever fallen in love with someone who was unreachable, then you know.
Inspired by a Mother Goose rhyme that was derived from an old superstition — a superstition that tied your fortune to how many blackbirds (crows) you would see in your path.
The murder part of the title is in reference to a group of crows, called a “murder.”
It’s hard to imagine that this sort of witchery was eventually looked upon as silly and that it would end up as another saying in which doing something was as “As useless as counting crows” — like falling in love with a woman at the wrong time — a murder of one.
Adam Duritz said of “A Murder of One”:
“I can remember being eight years old and having infinite possibilities. But life ends up being so much less than we thought it would be when we were kids, with relationships that are so empty and stupid and brutal. If you don’t find a way to break the chain and change in some way, then you wind up, as the rhyme goes: a murder of one, for sorrow.”
August and Everything After was produced by T-Bone Burnett, who was beginning his ascension to the producers A-List. Throughout the 80s, in addition to his work, Burnett produced straight roots rock bands like BoDeans, Los Lobos, and artists like Marshall Crenshaw and Peter Case.
All of this work was highly regarded and sold modestly well, but if you look at Burnett’s CV, you can see that August and Everything After is his first multi-platinum record — it would not be his last.
To deny T-Bone Burnett’s contribution to the album would be like imagining a beach without water.
CRITICS:
Robert Christgau gave it a B- and name-checks both “Mr. Jones” and “Anna Begins,” and still labels it the “Dud of the Month”: “Adam Duritz sings like the dutiful son of permissive parents I hope don’t sit next to me at Woodstock. He went to good summer camps; he doesn’t eat junk food; he’s confused about all the right things. And he’s not going away anytime soon — so starved are his peers for a show of musical emotion more learned than Mariah Carey’s that some even compare him to Van Morrison as if all sodden self-pity were the same. It doesn’t end with Duritz, either — “Mr. Jones” and “Anna Begins” might live up to the songs in them if the band conceived the tracks as music first and songs second. Folk-rockers never do.”
In his original review in Rolling Stone magazine, Thom Jurke wrote: “In the 11 songs on August and Everything After, Counting Crows communicate complex (and often desperate) emotions honestly and intelligently without resorting to clichés or cheap sentimentality. That a young band achieves so much on its first album is an event well worth celebrating.”
David Browne at Entertainment Weekly was considerably less kind: “Counting Crows seem as if they’d risen out of a marketing meeting at Geffen Records. It’s bad enough that such blatant calculation has gone into the band’s look. Even worse is the album itself. Sluggish and meandering, with tastefully correct organs and mandolins, the songs are mostly the sort of plodding, earnest ‘rock music’ usually made by men twice their age.”
I think people get pissy when artists, especially musicians, get a lot of hype around them …and then when the artist is not only good but also successful, they get oddly pissier.
Any band would have been lucky to write one song that’s as good as any song on August and Everything After. It’s not only a great album, but it’s also one of the most consistent. Then, just as now, that’s a rarity.
Here we are winding down August of 2020, on International Dog Day, and I suspect we’re all scratching our heads about what comes after this. The way this year has gone, it’s a fool’s errand even to try and guess …and for fucks sake, don’t say: “it can’t get any worse” …because if we learn nothing from 2020, it’s that shit can always get worse.
Maybe the best thing to do when thinking about August and everything after is to snuggle up with your own “Anna” and play Counting Crows August and Everything After and hope she won’t disappear— if this year has taught us anything it’s that “you’re never ready for this sort of thing.”
International Dog Day 2020 — Rufus Thunderlove
