There are certain concerts that are so great, or such milestones in your life, that every time the date of the concert rolls around, you take notice. 8/2 is when I saw Dylan at Newport. 8/27 was Tom Waits on the Mule Variations tour. And 8/4 and 8/5 - exactly ten years ago today - were the Counting Crows shows at the Chastain in Atlanta on the Recovering the Satellites tour.
Permit me, if you will, a self indulgent look back, seeing as how it's a 10 year anniversary (and seeing as how I'm still jacked up from Jolt Cola that I drank to make the drive home). Most people find an album or two in their teenage years where it seems like every song was written just for them. The first two CC records were like that for me. I practically lived on the listserv and the aol folder back then - before the trolls had quite taken over (the way they do with every message board).
In Summer of 97, the year of the 8/4 and 8/5 shows, I was working a crappy job, dating a rather... difficult...girl, going to high school in a district that's been in the news lately for efforts to ban Harry Potter there (and it was even more conservative back then). William S. Burroughs died the day of or the day before the first show. In short, it was a sort of depressing time.
But I was in the 2nd row the first night (the one that was broadcast on the radio, except for "Sullivan Street"), and the front row the next (I think the only recording is the lousy one I made), and they were two of the best shows I ever saw. Even the depressing songs were uplifting. I felt like I'd been lifted out of myself, like a big bright light had been shining down on me for a couple of hours. I still don't think I've had a more emotional experience at any other concert in my life.
But as great as the shows were, obviously some of the effect came from the place I was in mentally. So, when the chance came to see a show on the 10th anniversary of that night, I was somewhat apprehensive. For one thing, I've had a general sense that the band was in a rut for a couple of years, and, anyway, this tour looked like the birth of the band as a nostalgia act - I'm just not ready to think of them as anything other than relevant. Sure, most "90's music" is nostalgia for me now, but Counting Crows was something else. They may have sounded a bit different if they'd started in 1972 or 1986, but they would have been successful in any decade, and any decade that writes them off will be poorer for it...right?
And, anyway, I'm in much better shape now than I was back then. Never did become a rock star, but 5 or 6 mailing addresses, twenty-some jobs and a few dozen Bob Dylan shows later, I'm living in Chicago (liked it so much when I came for the Tom Waits concert that I decided to move here), running ghost tours by night and writing subversive children's books by day - yesterday I found out that my first one (which came out on the 10th anniversary of the first CC show I saw) is on the chicago public schools summer reading list. There was a chance I just wasn't depressed enough for to properly appreciate a Counting Crows gig. But I found someone else who wanted to go (and had a car in which to get there), bought a pair of tickets, and headed out for Indiana. It was, after all, the anniversary of that wonderful Chastain show. And the setlists have been very promising, lately. If they were in a rut, it was looking like they were climbing out of it.
Anyway, with a bottle of Jolt in the trunk (as you can see by the rambling, I'm sure), I rode to Indiana.
First off, a brief note on the opening acts:
I rather enjoyed Collective Soul, and found myself thinking that they really got a raw deal back in the day. At heart, their songs want to be fist-pumping sing-along anthems. However, back in the early 90s, that sort of thing was considered really, really unhip. There was a period there were you weren't even supposed to admit to being a Springsteen fan. Sometimes I look back on the 90s music scene and wonder what the hell we were thinking. Collective Soul put on a really fun show.
I'd seen Live before - on the 2000 tour with counting crows. There are bits I remember from that show - there was a harvest moon over the ampitheatre. Adam got heckled by people around me for saying he would be voting Democrat in the upcoming election. But the main things I remember about live were the duets - with Adam on "Dolphins Cry" and with Dennis Rodman, for some reason, on "I Alone." Tonight's set was powerful, at times, but I'm not sure how much I'll remember in 7 years. I do feel as though I've softened a bit on my position on "Lightning Crashes" - when it came out, it sounded to me like a blatant, clumsy attempt to say something profound about birth, death, and eyeballs. I still think it would work better as the last two minutes of an ER episode than it does as a song, but, mostly, now I'm just impressed that they got they managed to work the word "placenta" into a song. I enjoyed the way the guitarist stomped around like the Incredible Hulk, and "I Alone" was a heck of a lot better without Dennis Rodman.
And now (finally - thanks for indulging me), on to the show:
From the start, the show seemed like a casual affair. Rather than launching right into a song, the band strolled onstage, and Adam chatted and goofed off for a minute or so. Very friendly.
"Washington Square" sounded fantastic - a million times better than the tinny recording that floated around some time ago. Lush and full - sort of in the vein of AAEA, but not nearly so much so that it feels like a retread.
HYSML and "Catapult" were exciting - when Adam says they've been re-learning old songs, he means it. These weren't radical reinterpretations, but they were definitely new arrangements, which made both of them sound just as fresh as "Washington Square." Given how gripping those two songs were, the more sedate WS seemed like something of an odd choice as an opener, except for one thing: it told the audience right off the bat that this wasn't just a nostalgia set. Look at the first line - "sold my piano." Change. Things aren't what they were. The band isn't what it was last year or the year before that or the year before that - but they still sound like Counting Crows. It's all about moving into a new phase - and that phase isn't nostalgia.
Three songs into the set, and any fears I had that this tour marked the end of counting crows as a relevant act and the beginning of their career as a "90s band" were gone.
Not since those 97 shows have I seen Adam remotely as animated as he was tonight - even that show in 2002 where he did the whole show in a bunny suit didn't come close. It was very obvious throughout that he was in a good mood. That energy and emotion that I remembered from ten years ago was much more in evidence than at any of the shows I've seen since - and some of those were excellent shows, too. During Catapult, it began to rain, which, to me, made it even better. CC always was a rainy weather band.
Mecury, in a somewhat harder-edged arrangement of the 99 version, was a highlight, and followed by the fantastic twofer of "All My Friends" and "Recovering the Satellites," two songs that share a fairly similar theme that's making a lot more sense to me as I get older.
Ghost Train was another example of a song that isn't radically reworked from the earlier versions, but still certainly a newer arrangement, emphasizing the guitar parts that call to mind, well, the roar of a train. Still fresh after all these years.
Adam's good mood seemed to compliment Hard Candy, and an equally-fresh-sound Long December, nicely. Same with Hanging Around, though there wasn't much "new" about that one.
I wasn't familiar with "Meet on the Ledge," but I liked it a lot. Nice to see them playing covers (that aren't Big Yellow Taxi) again. I don't have ny Fairport Convention records, even though I know I should. This'll give me the kick in the ass I need, the same way hearing them due "Return of the Greivous Angel" pushed me towards Gram Parsons some years back.
This was probably the best Counting Crows show I've seen since 1997 - I only wished it were longer. So far from being the birth of the band as a nostalgia act, it felt more like a recommitment to me, a la Dylan in 74. It could be the beginning of great things to come. It didn't necessarily plumb those massive emotional depths, but it sure would have if I were still 17 - and, anyway, what does my personal emotional response have to do with the quality of the show? The show rocked. It hit hard. It showed that they still have it, and that they're not going gently into the great oldies station in the sky.
I'm left with one complaint, and it's just about my own luck: it really looked like I'd finally be seeing "Perfect Blue Buildings," the only AAEA song I haven't seen, tonight, but they picked tonight to drop it. Such is life. Here's hoping they come to Chicago supporting the new album very soon! Thanks for sticking with me, those of you who did! I'm off to bed
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