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Counting Crows

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Counting Crows

Counting Crows is an American rock band that became extremely popular in 1994 following the release of their debut album August and Everything After, which featured the hit song "Mr. Jones."

History

Singer Adam Duritz and guitarist Dave Bryson (both formerly band members of The Himalayans) formed Counting Crows in San Francisco in 1991. Duritz had experience as a member of The Himalayans and as a contributor to recordings by the San Francisco Bay Area group Sordid Humor (though never a member). Counting Crows originally performed as an acoustic duo, playing gigs in and around Berkeley and San Francisco.

Counting Crows, with their intimate and melancholy approach, quickly achieved a large fan base among Generation X alternative rock fans who were looking for something different from the raging guitars of the Seattle music scene. It was during this time that a full band was formed from local musicians, and the band was signed to Geffen Records.

The first album, August and Everything After was released in 1993, with the song "Mr. Jones", about the father of Adam's childhood friend and bassist in The Himalayans Marty Jones, becoming a huge hit.

In 1996, Recovering the Satellites, the band's second album, was released. This album took a more heavy, riff led approach than August and Everything After. However, it did contain some calmer, melancholy tracks, such as the title track "Recovering the Satellites" and the singles "A Long December" and "Miller's Angels." "Recovering the Satellites" is often considered Adam Duritz's response to his sudden and somewhat unbidden fame.

In 1999, Counting Crows released This Desert Life, sales of which were propelled by the success of "Hanginaround" and featuring the song "Colorblind" (also heard in the movie Cruel Intentions.) To support the album, the band toured extensively with the alternative rock band Live, on a co-headlining tour, where the two acts would alternate who performed first. Each night, during Live's song "The Dolphin's Cry," Adam Duritz would perform alongside Live's Ed Kowalczyk, in a duet version of the song. In return, Kowalczyk would sing a verse of "Hanginaround" with the Counting Crows during their set.

As part of their 2002 release of Hard Candy, Counting Crows covered the 1970 Joni Mitchell song, "Big Yellow Taxi." On the soundtrack to the romantic comedy film Two Weeks Notice, Vanessa Carlton sang the backing vocals on the single edit of the song, a major hit that brought new (and young) fans to the band. The band seems to be fond of classic rock, especially from the 1970s and have covered songs live by artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Pure Prairie League, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, U2 and Oasis.

In November 2003, Counting Crows released a "best of..." album, Films About Ghosts. ("If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts" is a lyric from the band's song "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby," which appeared on This Desert Life.) They also toured in 2003 with John Mayer, Maroon 5, and the Graham Colton Band.

In the summer of 2004, Counting Crows released the song "Accidentally in Love" for the soundtrack of the hugely popular computer-animated movie Shrek 2. The song was nominated for an Academy Award. Later versions of the Crows' 2003 greatest-hits disc include "Accidentally in Love."

In June of 2006, Counting Crows released New Amsterdam: Live at Heineken Music Hall, a live album comprised of performances from their 2003 tour supporting Hard Candy. Although it is composed mostly of live performances of already released material, it does contain the impromptu "Hazy" as well as various vendor-specific additional tracks such as "Blues Run the Game" and "Black and Blue".

Forthcoming new album

Band frontman Adam Duritz has hinted that their next studio record may be released as soon as early 2007. Both Duritz and guitarist Dan Vickrey indicated that the band recently had spent three weeks working in a Hell's Kitchen recording studio with Gil Norton, the producer behind 1996's Recovering the Satellites. Vickrey has added that the forthcoming album will sound closest to Recovering The Satellites among their other releases, with half of the songs "loud, raucous rockers" written in May in New York, and the other half (expected to be written and recorded after this summer's co-headlining tour with the Goo Goo Dolls) to be more acoustic and country-sounding.

Duritz has also speculated that the working title of their forthcoming fifth studio release is Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, explaining, "Saturday night is when you sin and Sunday is when you regret. Sinning is often done very loudly, angrily, bitterly, violently."

Current tentative song titles for the new record include "Come Around," "Hanging Tree" and "Suffocate" (the last of which pre-dates Recovering the Satellites).

Band members

Current Members

Former Members

Discography

Studio albums

Compilations

Live albums

Singles

Year Song US Hot 100 US Modern Rock US Adult Top 40 US AC Chart Album
1993 "Mr. Jones" - #2 - #25 August And Everything After
1994 "Round Here" - #7 - - August And Everything After
1994 "Einstein on the Beach (For An Eggman)" - #1 - - DGC Rarities Volume 1
1995 "Rain King" - #3 - - August And Everything After
1995 "A Murder Of One" - - - - August And Everything After
1996 "Angels of the Silences" - #3 - - Recovering The Satellites
1997 "Daylight Fading" - #26 #20 - Recovering The Satellites
1997 "A Long December" - #5 #6 - Recovering The Satellites
1999 "Hanginaround" #28 #17 #5 - This Desert Life
2000 "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby" - - #40 - This Desert Life
2000 "All My Friends" - - - - This Desert Life
2002 "American Girls" - - #24 - Hard Candy
2002 "Miami" - - - - Hard Candy
2003 "Big Yellow Taxi" #42 - #5 #5 Hard Candy
2003 "If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel Is Dead)" - - - - Hard Candy
2004 "Holiday in Spain" (Together with Bløf) - - - Hard Candy
2004 "She Don't Want Nobody Near" - - #20 - Films About Ghosts (The Best Of...)
2004 "Accidentally In Love" #39 - #3 #23 Shrek 2 Soundtrack

Trivia

  • Adam Duritz is featured on Dashboard Confessional's latest album "Dusk and Summer". He performs a duet with Dashboard Confessional's principal songwriter Chris Carrabba. The song is called "So Long, So Long".
  • Adam Duritz has also contributed vocals to Live's album V, for the song "Flow", as well as providing background vocals for the song "6th Avenue Heartache" on The Wallflowers second album, Bringing Down the Horse.
  • The band's songs have been used in many motion pictures including Clueless (1995) ("The Ghost In You"), Rounders (1998) ("Baby, I'm A Big Star Now"), Cruel Intentions (1999) ("Colorblind"), Mr. Deeds (2002) ("Goin' Down to New York Town"), Two Weeks Notice (2002) ("Big Yellow Taxi") and Shrek 2 (2004) ("Accidentally in Love"). Duritz also contributed songs to the soundtrack to the movie Josie and the Pussycats, that were performed by the film's fictional title band.
  • The song "Raining in Baltimore" is featured on the soundtrack of "The Last of the Watermen," Season 3, episode 7 of the television series Homicide: Life on the Street.
  • The band members have been avid fans of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series of comic books. Some of their songs (Murder of One, Angels of the Silences) have heavy references to the books.
  • The artwork on 'This Desert Life' is by British artist Dave McKean, who also did the covers for Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman'.
  • Counting Crows used outside collaborators to good effect on their album Hard Candy. Among the most notable cameos are Ryan Adams contributing vocals and lyrics to the wistful waltz "Butterfly In Reverse," Jerry Hey delivering a rich flugelhorn solo to the melancholy "Carriage," and Sheryl Crow adding her distinctive voice to the groove-happy first single "American Girls."
  • In the song Rain King Duritz compares himself to Mr. Henderson, the main character in Saul Bellow's novel, Henderson the Rain King.
  • Lead singer Adam Duritz dated Friends actresses Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston during the early 90s.
  • Counting Crows were Oscar nominated for best song for "Accidentally In Love" from the animated movie Shrek 2. They performed the song live at the 2005 Academy Awards.
  • Lead singer Adam Duritz wrote the song "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby", found on their third studio album This Desert Life, about actress Monica Potter. He dated her during the mid 90s.
  • Band members Adam Duritz and David Immerglück have performed a radio show known as “The Devil and The Bunny Show” in various countries while touring with the Crows.
  • August and Everything After was certified 7 times platinum in October 1996.
  • At their June 21, 2006 concert in Portland, Oregon, Adam Duritz said the song "Goodnight Elisabeth" was "written about a girl from Lake Oswego who fuckin' ruined me."
  • Actress Courteney Cox Arquette (Friends) appeared in the music video for the song A Long December.
  • The band´s name comes from an old English nursery rhyme. This rhyme had to do with telling the future from the numbers of magpies seen. As people moved over to America, crows were used instead of magpies. One of the versions of the rhyme goes "one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy; five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told..." The lead singer of the band liked the rhyme and that´s how the name of the band came into existence. The rhyme was included in their song A Murder of One.
  • The song "Butterfly in reverse" was written by Ryan Adams, and he does back-up vocals on the track.
  • Counting Crows and The Grateful Dead are the favorite bands of political pundit Ann Coulter.
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