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E27: by the time we got to WOODSTOCK
288 Plays1 month ago
Continuing our review of the 2000 "official bootlegs", Geoff Harkness, Bootleg Rich, Eric and Chris....
1) Review the "by the time we got to woodstock" CD
2) Talk about Woodstock 99, generally; and
3) Discuss the Crows performance at Woodstock 99
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Co-host Greetings
00:00:16
Speaker
Welcome to episode 27 of Sullivan Street. I am Eric Vogelsang. And today is going to be the Woodstock show, including by the time we got the Woodstock review, their performance at Woodstock 99 and all sorts of other Woodstock memories and notes. But first, let's say it say hi to my co-host, Chris Makes. Chris, good afternoon. Hey, good afternoon, Eric.
00:00:37
Speaker
And you have kind of an exciting update, which we'll get to in a second. You went to the Underwater Sunshine Fest. I do also want to mention though, on today's episode, two popular prior guest hosts.
Guest Hosts and Woodstock Memories
00:00:49
Speaker
At first, we'll say hi to ah Bootleg Rich, who also featured prominently in our last official Bootleg episode, Face the Promised Land. ah Rich, good afternoon.
00:01:00
Speaker
Hello, hello. Just continue to keep your expectations low. And then anything above that is a good night. We're loving this. And if we have any other bootlegs from 1999, 2000, we'll definitely hang you on. Once you hit 2000, it's all downhill. And since this episode is going to include um a little bit of music, American music history, and not just ah about the kind of grows we needed our history expert, Jeff Harkness. Jeff, welcome back to the show.
00:01:26
Speaker
Thank you. Always fun to be here. Rich, at least you didn't have to pay them to be here like like I did. So consider yourself lucky. The kickback of royalties. No, this will be kind of a neat and I'll give Chris credit ah because part of this is that we're basically the 25th anniversary of Woodstock right this year and 25th of these bootlegs. But first, ah just quick news and notes um and that Chris just last ah weekend ah went to the Underwater Sunshine Fest. do You want to give us a Yeah, it was a good time.
Festival Experiences and Live Music Value
00:01:58
Speaker
It was a good time. I went on Friday night. um
00:02:01
Speaker
as every as It's back at the Bowery Electric now. There were a few years where it was at um Rockwood Music Hall. um But i I've always loved the Bowery Electric right on Bowery. It's a great energy, a really fun room to see bands in. A lot of bands that were new to me. um some Some years, there there have been times in the festival's history where they were ah the the bands were kind of like known to the at least that the sort of Counting Crows community, I guess you could call it. But this year, pretty much all ah fresh bands. So um got there right away. ah Saw a band called Kids That Fly that I thought were really, really fun. um Really enjoyed a band after James Campion, who I saw. Good to see you, James. ah Highly recommend the next band called Loose Buttons.
00:02:46
Speaker
um And they were great. i that They would probably be, if i'm if I'm picking one band, as like a ah recommendation out of these ah loose buttons, go check them out. um Very, very cool band called Mary Shelley, as in Mary Shelley, like Frankenstein. um They kind of looked like vampires. It was super cool. um They were a very, very fun band to to watch and listen to.
00:03:10
Speaker
um Band, I saw up this so two stages going on oh simultaneously. There's yeah the main downstairs stage and then there's a little thing in the the map room um at Bowery Electric upstairs. ah Saw a band upstairs called Gold Pine that I thought were really fun and really ah was a guy in a gal ah and she told wonderful stories and was very engaging and again recommend them as well.
00:03:37
Speaker
Um, also saw a band, an older, again a band that's been around for a while that I guess had passed me by. Cause they were talking about how they've been doing this since like the mid nineties and you're like, Oh shoot. Well, I guess I'm late to the party here, but red wanting blue was, um, very, very cool. Um, yeah, was it was a very fun, it's, ah it's interesting and like a a fun lineup. Um, I was, it's interesting this year cause I was going in cold because we didn't have, uh, come on James.
00:04:04
Speaker
um ah pod and adam ah podcast previewing the band so I was just kind of going in like I'm gonna go listen to some music tonight and it was a great lineup and a good almost full house but just a ah great time and again I highly recommend it if you're in New York around that time um It's always, there's always good bands. There's always good bands and it's a good opportunity to get exposed to new music, which is sometimes hard, right? Sometimes we get stuck in our ruts and there's just never, I've never gone to an underwater sunshine festival or Outlaw Roadshow and not come away with at least one band that I was like, so those guys are pretty good. I'm going to listen more.
00:04:44
Speaker
yeah no is Yeah, as you said, I guess they published a list of of bands on the website and they'll do it next year, but you would have done on your own research to to beforehand to do that. There was a list, but yeah you know i mean we got so many Counting Crow's bootlegs in the world to listen to. I know. If you don't tell me that I got to listen to this or that, it's it's hard. i yeah And you went to the first night. It was Friday. So if it's the same thing next year, it's a Friday night and a Saturday night. It looked like the hours were about six to midnight, both both nights. So and yeah, my eight to 10 band. So OK, yeah. And then they cut it off and then it becomes a disco.
Podcast Appearances and Counting Crows History
00:05:20
Speaker
So if you want to stay out late.
00:05:22
Speaker
and dance. oh thatrific kid I was wondering what they do after midnight, right? Okay. Oh, it's a club. There's actually this didn't happen to me. And I left a a little bit early was a little tired. um But I have been at shows there before, where show ended, I like went back to the back bar downstairs to have a drink. And as I was like talking to the person I was with,
00:05:43
Speaker
like and just kind of focused on them. Like I turned around and I was like in the middle of like a club and people were dancing and I was like, Oh, I guess that's why the band really needed to end at that specific time because it's a disco now and I need to get out of here.
00:06:01
Speaker
i'm good i have have fun everyone age my kids i'm out of here Yeah, I might try to go. Yeah, I don't want to talk too much about something here in advance, but I might try to go maybe we'll even make it underwater sunshine fest slash Sullivan Street fest or something like that. Hey, yeah we'll do ah we'll do a um ah live podcast.
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah. be Pre-party live podcast pre-party. That's actually not a terrible idea. Not a horrible idea. And the other two people here are from the East coast too. Although everybody has kids and they're old and you know, don't like staying up past nine or waking up past. that but that's why It's a pre-party cause it's like, yeah we can start at like four 30 in the afternoon. And then we give live recap on the first vans and how we went home after that.
00:06:40
Speaker
um Yeah, great. No, thank you. Thank you so much. ah Awesome. so Oh, and we did want to say we haven't all listened to it yet, so let's not talk about it too much, but that Adam Duritz is on a ah on a podcast a couple of weeks ago, The Wonder of It All. And it was actually the first episode of that podcast ah released September 30th, 2024. And as Jeff said, the man hosting the podcast was from what? 90s band?
00:07:06
Speaker
Harvey Danger, hary yeah right who had the the hit flagpole sit-up. Great song. Good band too. i know i'm No, I'm thinking of Lit. I'm sure Garvey Danger was fine too. I just really liked that Lit album and I think I get Lit and Harvey Danger confused because Lit lit had my own worst enemy, which is kind of similar to flagpole sit-up. But I liked both of those songs and I apparently can't This is very exciting guys. But yes, Harvey danger. So yes, I know it looked like it was pretty good host. um I guess it sounds like it was a good host. It was a three hour podcast. Yeah. So i that's why I was going to bring it up that the cruise fans, I know you've listened to some podcasts where Adam's on for 25 at the most 60 minutes. So this is three hours. So I'm going to block off some time and listen to it. Yeah. I thought it was one of the best interviews I've heard with him in years. Very insightful, very interesting. And it felt like a more of a conversation just because he was
00:08:02
Speaker
talking to someone who was a fellow musician and at least who had some sense of what it was like to, you know, be in a band that was touring and around during the same time. So um I thought it was a unique and special interview. And I definitely recommend the the hardcore fans. And if you're listening to so this podcast, probably the r one if you haven't heard it already, it's definitely worth listening. I got i got so sucked into it, loved it.
00:08:30
Speaker
So Jeff, we need you to listen to all of these and then just make version two of the book. And then we'll get the update. ah right knowledge Yeah, I know. I know. it's a yeah That's what you can do, just a podcast book. So let's get to let's let's take our own trip to Woodstock. And we're going to talk about Woodstock in three minutes.
00:08:49
Speaker
and But the fact of me saying we're going to do Woodstock in three parts, and this is why we didn't do the by the time we got to Woodstock first, because if we were going to cover both bootlegs, official bootlegs, which we are now, um this one was released before Face the Promised Land. I think we said what six months before. I do know, though, that that um this ah this by the time I got the Woodstock was released January 13th, 2000, another and first release from that famous potato dog records that we that we joked about. ah So as yet again, I have the hard copy because I'm lucky and my friend sent it to me because again, I did not order it at the time. And when I was deciding on these and I hadn't listened to them as much because I didn't own them for most of my fandom days.
00:09:38
Speaker
Chris had a kind of remind me, oh, by the way, um by the time we got to Woodstock is not the Woodstock, which some people might think, but it's from, you know, is it a week or two before, it's the lead up up to the shows. And I even looked, i sorry, I made the stats and it's basically evenly split up, which is that it's from five different shows from July 12th to July 20th.
00:10:07
Speaker
And they performed in Woodstock July 24th. So it really was um the week before or I guess the earliest one was 12 days before to four days before. And just ah since we're doing the official stuff, I might as well list it that the right that the that the shows were in to two in Canada, two in Ontario, ah one in Michigan, one in New Jersey and one in Rhode Island. And from both from all of those,
00:10:32
Speaker
um they yeah So from those shows, two you know for for two of the shows, they took two songs, and for the other three shows, they took three songs. So it's evenly distributed. Do you have any other background? An interesting sort of, so the contextually, right? So this is July of 1999.
00:10:49
Speaker
um This Desert Life is gonna come out later in this year, but it's not out and there's no singles from it at this point. This is the first time that the band has played live regularly in about a year and a half. They had played some one-off shows, I think it's a couple of Viper Room shows in 1998. It's not like they hadn't played, but they you know basically the Recovering the Satellites tour ends in December of 1997 in Europe. And this is them kind of like coming back.
Counting Crows Live Performance Analysis
00:11:17
Speaker
um These were also the first,
00:11:19
Speaker
you know like regular shows with Emmy as a band member. Emmy is now playing. ok And I feel like you can kind of hear, I think these are, ah the shows are, it's a great run because the band is in a really energetic and invigorated spot. um And because you don't have the This Desert Life material yet, obviously the material lands much more on August and and and recovering the satellites.
00:11:47
Speaker
And I think it's a lot of really good versions of those songs. It's really interesting to hear kind of a different version of the band now with IMI sort of full time taking on that batch of songs, kind of for the last, not the last time, but you know what I mean? The last time that before this desert life comes out and it really, you start to see a real expansion of the band's catalog and you know, they kind of keep going.
00:12:12
Speaker
lot they play a lot of this desert life the next year they're already playing hard candy songs before they're released these are kind of the last shows where it's really those first two records and i think what you get on this right on this album we'll talk deep dive but i think there's some really great versions of those songs in the first two records was emmy did emmy i know emmy was not an official member on desert life did um Did he always tour with them starting on this one? No. no left Starting with this one. no see Starting with this one, he's always in the band. That's what I meant. Starting on this one, was he always on tour with them? It's so interesting, like you said, because this was recorded in, what do we say, July, um and then the Face the Promised Land was recorded when, Rich? That was in the fall, right? December 2nd.
00:12:58
Speaker
December 2nd. Yeah, so that was just six months later. And that one has had all this. Yeah. So they weren't like, like you said, Chris, they weren't previewing Desert Life songs like they were when Hard Candy before Hard Candy was released. um yeah So six months and and this was released six months before Face of Promised Land, as I said. Yeah. I'm playing a couple. If you look at the set list, you will see hanging around. I assume they knew that was going to be a single and a couple of the other ones pop up, but it's not. It's maybe two or three songs in a set of like 18 or 19 songs.
00:13:28
Speaker
as opposed to like when they played Hard Candy and they were already doing seven or eight of the new ones. Yeah, they were doing, though, about um two or three songs from Desert Life in every show during those lead ups. So it's interesting that none of them make the bootleg because they were playing hanging around. They're playing St. Robinson. They're playing Mrs. Potters. They played Speedway. They played Four Days. All of these in in those July shows somewhere, not necessarily these ones that were bootleg. So They were featuring and trying out some of those songs for the first time. But interestingly, they didn't choose to select any of them on the bootleg. And of course, at Woodstock, they just played hanging around from Desert Life, previewed that. But um otherwise, you don't hear much of Desert Life in, and I guess, what we'll probably talk about today. But they were ah testing out those songs and, you know, kind of re-read read
00:14:23
Speaker
Um, you know, finding themselves, I think is a, a live group again, cause they really, they had only played one show in 1998. And, um, in 1999, the first show they played, I believe was July 1st. So this was really the start of a a long period of, um, inactivity for them as a live band and having Emmy in the group, you know, Adam really talked about in interviews at the time, how much he loved having Emmy in the group.
00:14:49
Speaker
how much that had invigorated them and and just, you you really hear it in the bootlegs and these shows that we'll talk about, even in the bootleg from December, you know how much Emmy was contributing to the band and and sort of expanding their palette and changing their sound. And and yeah, it's ah it's an interesting and and cool kind of period for them in the lead up to the release of Desert Life where suddenly that becomes a big feature of the live shows.
00:15:19
Speaker
Jeff, thanks for doing that. The only thing I didn't do for my homework was actually look at the other songs played during those five shows. And you did that. So because I was kind of curious. Yeah. If Desert Life songs were played enough. Before we get into the set list, Richard, you have any um I guess, like, when did you listen to this? I forget. I don't think yeah you had the official. so When did you? Yeah.
00:15:40
Speaker
got I had Face the Promised Land. I didn't get the Woodstock and I think it wasn't for lack of trying. I think they were very limited through the fan club at the time and I just didn't get one. But someone posted it pretty shortly thereafter and was able to download it. um I don't think Face the Promised Land is almost in my DNA, maybe because I was there. I just kept listening to the show. This one i i was a real revisiting for me to go back and listen to this.
00:16:06
Speaker
And probably one of their only official album release where it feels like the live tracks were from all different shows kind of compiled together. Although Underwater Sunshine, I don't know. Underwater some a few different shows. Yeah, I think that's right. Over the course of like a year. It's a little, I mean, there's a couple of a little bit. But yeah, this is an interesting, it's interesting because it's like a best of of like a fairly compact tour, which is kind of interesting. It's kind of unique.
00:16:31
Speaker
I did stumble across a weird piece of trivia. I don't know if you all caught this, the connection with Joni Mitchell. um Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So she's got the very famous song, Woodstock, that she wrote right after the real Woodstock that has the lyric but by the time we got the Woodstock. And that song was officially on the B side of Big Yellow Taxi when that single was released. And so it was just really interesting. Counting Crow's tie in there 30 years prior.
00:17:00
Speaker
I knew we brought you in for a reason. That that is that is great trivia. I didn't know. And then I forgot that by the time I, yeah yeah, I actually didn't realize that that I figured there was a double meaning there and not just the buildup, but then I didn't realize it was the Johnny Mitchell connection. Yeah. I guess she didn't play because her manager talked her out of it, said, go play Dick Cavett or appear in Dick Cavett. And so she was dating Graham Nash at the time who was there and telling her how it was going. She watched it. So she wrote that song from this deep angst of wishing she was there.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah, and it was all released 1970. Also, interestingly, sort of the opposite, because I again, I feel like when when Adam and the guys have talked about Woodstock 99, they maybe wish they weren't there. But we'll get we'll get there in a second. But yeah it's interesting, just the, you know, the and a Woodstock maintains such an interesting, um like place in musical culture, that it's sort of you know, that that the relationship to it for anyone is very important. No, for sure. For sure. ah they Yeah, okay. So if nobody has any other comments, let we'll go right into the set list. um Kind of do song by song where I think it's um interesting or we can stop if there's one you really want to or although I might take it like by block by block like I kind of did last time or at least take a couple songs in a row. So
00:18:23
Speaker
For now, I'll just start with the first three songs. partly which is a mr So the first two are the same as the Face the Promised Land disc, which is Mr. Jones on the kind of starred acoustic and you know and then move right, the kind of mix mixed method song, which kind of the same. And then Angels of the Silences, which I thought was pretty similar to also Face the Promised Land, and then Recovering the Satellites. um which again, I'm still surprised at this day is such a a regular song for them because it's not poppy. It wasn't a single, but they love playing it. I love hearing it. ah The only comment I have on those three songs and you might have a lot more is that um
00:19:03
Speaker
When they started the Mr. Jones, like, and again, maybe this was, it could have been just, I don't know where in there in the set list of that, yeah, I forget what song it was from, that was from the Rhode Island show. um I don't know where in the set list it was there, if it was the first song, but I noticed that they were, that the crowd was going nuts even,
00:19:23
Speaker
with the acoustic beginning? And it made me think like, is it just because kind of crows went on the stage and the crowds going nuts and they were really popular then? Or was it that they actually knew the acoustic version from, um you know, from the from the from the 10th spot?
00:19:39
Speaker
and the and the uh and vh1 storytellers uh yeah in fact that even when like charlie got on the accordion but um like the place went nuts and you wouldn't really expect that for the nowadays it'd be like this is not the version i know from the video uh but chris let's let's go to you from the first a couple songs well it is so so it is the opener they opened with that so it's interesting looking i was looking they opened with that version of Mr. Jones into Angels of the Silence is a bunch on the store. And obviously they opened it with on Face the Promised Land, too. They must have really been enjoying that combo. It's great. I mean, it's a great combo. yeah like yeah i was i We heard it on Face the Promised Land, but then hearing it again, I was like, man, that is a really good one-two punch um to open a show. I think that's pretty great. You also think they're in these shows, they're generally playing rooms that
00:20:31
Speaker
by the standards of the band at the time were kind of underplays, right? That song is from Lupo's in Providence, Rhode Island, which is a relatively small room given where the they were playing last time was like, you know, sheds in big theaters. So they're kind of like doing, again, just kind of smaller theaters to like as kind of a on on this path of of getting back out there.
00:20:53
Speaker
um And I do think that's probably part of it. People are real excited and they're probably close to the band and the band sounds great. um I will say, I really, these first three songs, I really feel like you hear how good, like in what an interesting place Adam is in on these songs. He's singing the shit out of them. And he's having, he's like, I feel like Mr. Jones especially is one of those classic Adam performances where he's like playing with the melody and it's not, he's finding different ways to sing things. I really, I noted down like,
00:21:23
Speaker
the way he sings You Should Not Believe in Me is super cool in this version of the song. um He switches, ah I think he
Woodstock 99's Cultural Significance
00:21:31
Speaker
uses this in Woodstock too, we want to be big stars but then we get a record contract and get all fucked up about that, which I like. um And again, I love on like recovering the satellites, I love like how quiet he gets in the bridge and kind of comes back, like it's a lot of good Adam stuff. um One other note on recovering the satellites, ah which I know just watching the video later, Immy's playing Petal Steel. I don't think he does now even on that, but it's a very cool, ah I think, addition to that arrangement. Thank you. ah Rich, any other ah thoughts about the first three songs? You know, recovering is a song that I enjoy. It's not one that really sticks to me. The perversion on the bootleg is really beautiful. I think the quiet parts you mentioned, Chris, the
00:22:15
Speaker
the combination of I don't know if it's electric organ or and the steel pedal. It's it's the mix really you pick up on ah on this mix. And I really thought it was well done. Other than that, with angels, I just feel like they're putting their 100 150% effort into it. And it wasn't much long after that we don't see that version live ah much longer. And so it's just a just a great, great version. Yeah, Jeff.
00:22:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think um think starting with Mr. Jones, they did open the this these shows with Mr. Jones a lot. you know And again, you have to remember sort of where they are as a band. And that's a band that's coming off of an album that they thought was going to be you know the the biggest thing that they had done and and in some ways was rejected by the mainstream at least compared to the first album. They put out the the live album which we didn't talk about this as much but that live album really further alienated them from mainstream audiences. The mainstream public did not like the fact that this band that they wanted to go away now put out a very challenging double live album.
00:23:28
Speaker
ah That required some you know, really sit down and listen to sort of thing on the other hand the hardcore fans Embrace them more than ever because of that same album and so they had in some ways their audience had sort of bifurcated I I think and by opening with Mr. Jones, this was a song that they had rejected and refused to play at a lot of shows early on um in their first couple of years. Now they're opening with this song. They're reclaiming this song. They want it back. They want to say, wait a minute. That's our song. um And we're not going to reject it. We're not going to hide from it. In fact, we're going to open with it. And and it's almost like ah a declaration or like a statement of intent by by starting with that song.
00:24:09
Speaker
I thought it was a, you know, like in this show, it's a a nice, cool, like faithful version. The Electric Angels, again, here's a band that still has something to prove. They're still fighting for a place in in the in the music scene. And I think the the version on that the bootleg in particular is really slamming, um like a really good rock and roll version of that song. And and like Rich said, you know, we we don't hear hear them do that anymore. And, and you know, this is this is ah a different band that we've got today. and And this is a great reminder of that. Great. Thanks so much. i will see there jeff It's interesting, though, it's like they're reclaiming, they're coming out and they're opening with Mr. Jones, but they're still
00:24:51
Speaker
opening, doing the sort of beginning and end stuff from the the storytellers. Adam's still not like singing it straight. It's like, it's such a, it's a very Counting Crows move, right? To be like, hey, we're going to start with Mr. Jones. You guys all like Mr. Jones, right? We're not going to do it the way you want to. So we're going to give you what you want, but we're going to give it to you the way that we want to give it to you. And like,
00:25:14
Speaker
yeah kind of in front like It's not it's not a we not totally withholding, but also we're not just going to go out here and like play the hits like we're a band in the 60s. They're reclaiming things on their own terms, I think is the way I would put it. it's like we're We're going to um embrace this song again, but we're going to do it on our own terms, not because yeah of some expectation or something like that. yeah yeah Great. So let's move to the next quarter of the set list, which is, have you seen me lately daylight fading and mercury? Of course I'll never now instead of mercury, instead of thinking of some toxic X, I always think of Chris Miggs who loves that song. So, so for, you know, it's so funny, but to have you see me lately, I had the note here.
00:26:02
Speaker
Um, and again, I only got a chance to listen to this once, but the note that I had was actually validated, which we'll talk about later by Adam. Because he plays the same version of the song at Woodstock because I said, I joked that the, have you lead seen me lately? I said, this is the daylight fading version of this song. And what I mean by that is it's like mid tempo, right? It's not the hard one and it's not the acoustic one. And I was like, I know I've heard this before, but I didn't.
00:26:29
Speaker
So I was like, oh, it kind of reminds me of Daylight Fading, which is like mid-tempo. Then they played Daylight Fading next, um which I actually think, correct me if I'm wrong, is the only version of Daylight Fading on one of the official live recordings. I could be wrong about that. um Again, they don't play that song that much given that it was a single, I always say.
00:26:48
Speaker
um And then Mercury, and wait, remind me, Jeff, is Mercury about Courtney Cox or not? I know monkey is. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. so I kind of thought that it was always a mix of Courtney and someone, but okay. So it was definitely- He gives the intro in this one, you know, about the- Well, yeah. And I've heard that intro before and then part of me was like, where is she now? But we know where Courtney Cox is now. She's probably back to recording screen seven or whatever. um Chris, I'll go to you next time.
00:27:18
Speaker
Well, no. So, yeah. So I'm with you. I love that. I actually I really like to have you see me lately. mid ten I like kind of all the versions of that song. It's one of those songs. It's almost like it's proof of how good that song is that they can just sort of play it slow, middle. but It all kind of works. Yeah, I like that arrangement. I thought daylight fading. Dan really rips that solo. That's kind of my was my takeaway because in Adam intro is like This song features Dan and then Dan like really crushes that solo in Daylight Fading. Mercury, again, you know me, i get I love Mercury. I love the speech. um My favorite line from it, everything she touched turned to shit and she touched me all the time. yeah i did That actually is pretty memorable. That's great. Yeah, I might have to write that one down. Yeah. Although, at my age now, I'm not as bitter about my exes as I was. But in like my early 30s, that would have been a great line about the... Yeah. Yeah, I do. You know, it got me... I know we already talked about Mercury, but it got me thinking about... Yeah, because I met... When when I went to New York recently, I met, like, my first serious girlfriend. And he and it's funny, and that was, like, let's just say... I think it was exactly 25 years since we broke... Something like that. but it would But, I don't know, it struck me, and it and it really hit hard that maybe the Eucharist was that...
00:28:35
Speaker
We hung out for like three or four hours at night. All of the super charming points were exactly the same. Like, oh, this is why I like this girl. And then all of the toxic and annoying things, like, people do not change that much, no matter what we like to think. Let's go. So, Chris, sorry to cut you off. Oh, yeah, but you're saying that you're saying that it wouldn't have been fun if she would have been the one. No, exactly, because I was like, oh, I would have had a heart attack already. Yeah, no.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah, if I get tolerance for it because it was the first serious girlfriend. Yeah, we all we all learn about ourselves over time. um Yeah, I just really I like the one thing I was thinking about the enduring this version of the song is just the band's arrangement really brings out like the sin like it's part part and parcel with Adam giving the speech and kind of breaking the song down for people but the the arrangement really brings out the sinister energy in the song that I think wasn't really there on the original version or even on the um Across a Wire version. like it like It really brings out, like they are playing the darkness of that song to the way he's presenting it. I think that's why it's only these versions that really started to get me into the song. It's like the the dark energy in the arrangements really works. My feeling. Great. Rich, any thoughts on these three?
00:29:55
Speaker
Well, just a few. On Have You See Me Lately, I thought that right around that two minute, 30 mark, there's this guitar, I don't know what you'd call it, lick bass strumming that was really good, but the guys were just, I don't know if it was Dan or Emmy, like they were just going to town in the middle of How You See Me Lately. In a way, I don't think it's on the albums versions. And- Is it possible it was Matt too, or maybe not? I don't know. I know he used to strum some stuff, but anyway. I'm not sure. Yeah. In Mercury,
00:30:24
Speaker
he starts off with that like kind of like you're the story of this relationship and how toxic it was. and and Like Chris said, it's the darkness with this song. But the way he ended it, with the way he was singing, She's All Right With Me, I felt like by the time he was performing at this point, like he was over it. He was okay. It's just like, yeah, this shitty thing happened in the past, but like I'm good now. It doesn't bother me as much. um That was my kind of interpretation of this performance of it.
00:30:54
Speaker
ah yeah Jeff, your thoughts on these three songs? Yeah, I like the um sort of daylight fading-esque version of Have You Seen Me Lately, too. i think I think in this particular version, Rich, this we may be talking about the same thing or maybe not, but what the thing that stood out to me in listening to this bootleg again was that early REM influence. There's like arpeggiated guitar work in the chorus, particularly you hear it.
00:31:22
Speaker
And it was very, like, here you really hear the REM influence shine through in this group in a way that um that's that's always in there. But here it's it's very direct and maybe deliberate. And I like that about it. I like what they did with this version a lot. I thought it was very cool. um Into daylight fading, of course, very makes perfect sense. ah Mercury, I thought this was a really just epic version. I loved it. I thought it was very cool.
00:31:50
Speaker
um I am a fan of the Courtney Cox suite, but he talks in the intro, he says the line, 50 miles of bad road. And if people caught the reference, that's a reference to the line, three miles of bad road, which is from the king of comedy, the REM song that came out of the monster. Oh, I didn't catch that. That song is about Courtney Love, a different Courtney. So there's another little hook for you. Super fans paying attention at home.
00:32:21
Speaker
um So yeah, he talks about 50 miles of bad road, you know whereas Courtney Cox was described as only three miles of bad road. So Courtney courtney Cox apparently has 47 more miles of bad road ah to to go in there. Well, that's impressive. it Yeah, right. so for I think we've had this question before, but the the Courtney Cox suite was the final set of songs that Adam wrote after breaking through his his writer's block on recovering the satellites He did write the song, Recovering the Satellites.
00:32:53
Speaker
prior to that, that was early on, and that references, you know, it says monkey, so it references her. That was the very ending of the third suite. If you want to know what the four suites are, if you just look at the back of the CD, even, it's divided into four parts. So the double album, there's four sides to it. Those are the four suites, as Adam intended it. There's two sides. The first side is about experiencing fame. The second side is about coming to grips with fame. But the fourth suite is the Courtney Cox suite.
00:33:23
Speaker
And um the Courtney Cox suite, it's um what is it? Monkey, Mercury, Long December, and Walkaways. And so here you have Mercury, which um that's one of my all-time favorite songs from Counting Crows. I love it. I think it's a very cool song. And to me, this version is particularly epic.
00:33:42
Speaker
This is a song I think they can still do today. It's it's really still in their wheelhouse. Musically, they can pull it up. I think Adam can still sing this song vocally, but maybe it's just too personal or something like that. You don't hear it as much. But what ah what a treat to hear here. I thought the version here was outstanding. I love it. one of One of the real highlights to me of this movie. Yeah, they haven't played it since 2016, last time. and That was once they played it 12 times in 2015. I guess that was the most recent year they played it even a little bit. But I mean, if you look back, if you look at the the page on settlers.fm, it's really once you get past 99 in 2000, the bars are pretty small. Yeah, pretty small. Yeah, I'm going to just remind that both of Jeff and Chris are mild hypocrites because I think of Chris, I think of you with Mercury, but you had it number seven on your which is right in the middle of recovering the satellites. And Jeff, you had it at number eight.
00:34:40
Speaker
Which just means the other liked other songs more, of course. I'm just teasing you. but no and What I would say part of it say is that i i I'm very partial to the 99, 2000 era live version. yeah Yeah. And I think you said that at the time, actually. um I did see them play at once in 2008. It was very awkward. because Again, Adam talks about it's not a song about love. It's a song about addiction. and It's a version at the Wellmont, right, where he takes this yeah ah but the line that he repeated a bunch was, stick a needle in your arm and it feels like love. And I was with a friend at the time and I was like i was very excited for the song and she's like, okay, I don't know the song that well. And she's like, what is he talking about? And I'm like, I don't know. It's still great though, right? But you know, it's funny, I guess i even though I knew from Jeff last time about the Courtney Cox suite, because I didn't really know that before, it does make it
00:35:33
Speaker
Yeah, it it adds a little, I don't know how to say, like, maybe we all know if we didn't date, we all know people who have dated or know women or whatever man, of course, who would have that mercury influence on us about thinking the addiction. But if you think about how it might be even more difficult to break up with someone who has the charm and all these good but the negative and they're also one of the most um popular and famous actresses at the time and know for her physical looks or whatever, then yeah, you can see where he would become, quote unquote, addicted to that for a little bit. So, yeah. Okay, great. Let's move to the third quarter or what I'm going to call so call the August quarter.
00:36:15
Speaker
because the Omaha Round Here ranking in Murder 1, so 4 August and Everything After Songs. um I don't have any comment about Omaha. I always like hearing it live. It was also in Face the Promised Land. Round Here, and as we know from what we did a whole episode on Round Here that I'm not always, especially at this time, I was not a die-hard fan of the long, all-ty Round Here versions. I thought this was fantastic.
00:36:40
Speaker
I thought there were tons of little, which Chris, I'm sure and Jeff and Rich will bring up, a lot of little musical extras, if you will, that um that I just thought added to it. I was glued to the the listening to it when I was and had even some extra na na na na's at the end, which I wish they would bring back actually. um I thought that was great. ah You could talk about that. Rain King, I think was this also a daylight fading version of Rain King? Jeff, I think it was also more of a mid tempo. Maybe I was wrong about that, but that's maybe in my mind, that's what it was. A little less,
00:37:14
Speaker
Powerful and definitely a little different than how they do it now like there's a set way they kind of do ranking now I thought it was a little different and murder of one we've talked about a number of times on this show how I totally miss hearing this live it was a it's such a I don't know yeah it was a fantastic way to either end regular set lists or um Or the main set of the show um So yeah, I'll just let you guys fill in the blanks there Chris on to you So yeah, this round here ah was, I just have in my notes, the word spectacular in all caps. yep um is It's really fucking great. um i like ah I like a lot of what they do here, particularly to just, so it starts with Adam kind of doing this vocalizing at the top over like Charlie on organ, which is really, really cool.
00:38:01
Speaker
um And then they kind of go to this vocalize, like before they get to like an a proper alt, they go to this like lala vocalizing, but, and then the the rest of the guys sing that with Adam. So they're harmonizing it together on it. And then Adam goes into, first of all, there's a thing a bit about not wanting to be locked in your room, which I was thinking is something he's kind of returned to a bunch yeah with round here, like,
00:38:27
Speaker
that come outside alts and some of the more recent ones too but he then he goes into good night elizabeth and when he gets to the queen of california part the band goes back to singing that lala vocal harmonizing over the top it's so good it's so and it's one of those things where it's not You know, it's great when Adam is sort of driving things and the band is following him, but this is really, they're like arranging this whole thing together. And it's like, it's not just, oh, like Adam's got this cool idea. It's like a full arrangement that these guys are just sort of like, improving off the top of their heads. It's so good. and
00:39:05
Speaker
um And again, it's one of those ones that's not like, ah maybe there's one or two other versions a little bit like this, but this is not like a common one they did a bunch of times. yeah that's you know I hadn't thought about it in forever and I'm like, oh, how have I forgotten? This is so good. um Yeah, that was really, really amazing. Rain King, I think is also a ah pretty good version. um Adam swipes some lines from a Rolling Stones song called Have You Seen Your Mother? um And I like there's some other riffy improv stuff about like,
00:39:37
Speaker
ah If I could be silent, I'd close my eyes and wait until the last train passed by to say to you that when I think he like goes into that ah last bit with this really cool kind of like run on sentence thing that ah i like I don't know, I liked it. i it's It's a good version of it. um Although I tend to be more partial, I tend to be more partial to either the really upbeat or slower versions of Rain King, the middle still works for me. But that round here, if you listen to one thing from this record, go find that round here and listen to that is my highest recommendation.
00:40:11
Speaker
Great. Oh, and then anything on Murder 1, except that, probably not, except that you love it. I mean, I did like, the energy's really good in it, and to put that fit, and he's like, I've gone to wherever the fuck we are, and I am all alone. Yeah. I like that. um Apparently, wherever the fuck we are was Kitchener, Ontario. see is like Kitchener, Ontario, at Lulu's Roadhouse. No disrespect to the the fine people of Kitchener, Ontario, but also, yeah, where I don't know where the fuck that is, so I'm with that. Rich, we'll go to you. Yeah, Chris covered that really well. i'll I'll just stick with around here, I think, which I felt was deeply reflective version, very introspective. that ah I think it's very unique. I don't recall hearing it other places. I'm sure they might have, but it's not one I really knew. It was great rediscovering it again. it it had ah The way they sang this one,
00:41:02
Speaker
that kind of time period, they were really upbeat because they were back together and playing. But this one, you felt a little bit like that. Were they feeling a little bit of the malaise of the touring? I don't know. um But it was very, very good. And it's interesting that they they weaved in Goodnight Elizabeth.
00:41:20
Speaker
And then on the bootleg, they added boot Goodnight Elizabeth, which I don't think he would ever do if he was in one night's set list. I don't know if he would sing it kind of twice the same night, but it was kind of a little treat because I love Goodnight Elizabeth. You get to hear it twice kind of in one, one set up. And by the way, Kitchener really is, I can see, I mean, besides the fact of of a name that nobody knows, I just figured it was like an inner suburb of Toronto, but it's, it's an hour and a half out.
00:41:45
Speaker
Oh, wow. And they've got an hour and a half from an ag or fall. So I don't know how they chose that. I don't know. whether I wonder if it was like calling the manager and saying, just get me a bunch of shows before Woodstock. Like wherever we got to play, we got to get back out. I don't know. It might have been that. Yeah, that's that's pretty funny. Let's go to Jeff. Yeah, I think um Omaha really something that stood out to me is that the interplay between the mandolin and the accordion. You know, this is where, you know,
00:42:15
Speaker
Emmy really having, you know, Emmy on board, ah you really shines in the song like this and you really see like kind of who Counting Crows is going to become, you know, this is sort of who they are now with Emmy and integrating all of these different instruments and backing vocals in ways that they really, you know, weren't doing when they first came out and were kind of this raw, you know, raw band.
00:42:38
Speaker
um Round here, I really love that jazzy kind of scat singing that Adam does. It's almost like Horse Dreamers Blues a little bit. um But locked in my room, I mean, to me, it evoked in my room the great Beach Boys song and Brian Wilson talking about you know locking himself in his room and you know imagining all of this stuff about the the great good life and on the beaches of California.
00:43:07
Speaker
um and And so I thought in some ways it kind of brought up a little bit of that. I thought that was really cool. um You know, Adam's still like ah a singer-singer. i I wrote a note on here that that um the backing vocals are genuinely great for once, you know, really kind of what Chris was talking about. This was a group where the backing vocals hadn't really come together, I think, until later. And then later became a real central feature of of what they do, an important part of their sound. It became integral to their studio sound. um You hear that really, I think, particularly on Desert Life and into Hard Candy.
00:43:42
Speaker
um But here you hear that live for the first time and the intricacies sort of what Chris was talking about I thought were very cool Listen to how the band turns on a dime when they go back into the song with the girl on the car in the parking lot I mean just so tight such a great, you know live band and with all of that going on too and then I love the ah Have you seen your mother baby standing in the shadow all that from the great 1966 Rolling Stones album between the buttons and People love that that classic Stones period with, you know, Sticky Fingers and Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet and Accel on Main Street. Of course, these are the classic Stones albums, but boy, those early Stones albums are just killers and really worth diving into if you if you're a Stones fan at all, because there's some good stuff in there. and
00:44:35
Speaker
I thought it was cool that Adam ah sort of dug that little gem out of nowhere. and Murder a One just killed. It was a really rocking version. And it was the, at least it sounded like it was the last song they played on that that night. and Although it doesn't come last in the bootleg, but it was like, this is the last song of the night. It seemed like they were done and we'll see know see you next time or something like that. And I thought, boy, you know they don't even chose like this anymore. No.
00:45:03
Speaker
it really is a I mean, I know that Ring King nowadays is their like crowd pleaser, but Murder 1 is, I don't know, a showstopper, right? that's that's what you That's what that description is for, and yeah it makes you a little nostalgic for that time. i It sure does. yeah and it's an instrument Part of it, it's an instrumental showstopper. I mean, those guys are ready to rip on the guitar. i don't i mean Bring it back, guys. Bring it back. Send some shows to Murder 1 again. And there's nothing that's more kind of crows than the mix of optimism and pessimism in their lyrics. And this one's just the lyrics mixed with him jumping around happy, but then kind of angry, bittersweet lyrics and stuff. I love it. I love it. OK, so for the last quarter of the disc, I love saying disc. We can't do that anymore.
00:45:56
Speaker
Goodnight Elizabeth, which I won't say much. I know that Chris will have his thoughts long December. Now, I can't remember. I had some notes here that there was some extra cool Charlie at the beginning with the accordion. Is that true? That he did some little extra fla flushes or touches and that I had there. um Anyway, and then Anna begins, which I actually thought, I don't know if this is ever done at the end of their encore ever. or and I don't know. Maybe you saw it, Jeff. Kitchener, Kitchener, believe it or not.
00:46:24
Speaker
Oh, is that the same thing? I looked up the shows. Did they actually even ever close with Anna's and Kitchener? They did. He did. but i thought away I thought it was a great closer. Um, and I thought that this was, I thought this was a fantastic version. I thought Charlie, I don't, I just had that sometimes you wonder if it's the mix or whatever, but I put that there was a lot, lot more instrumentation. Of course, by the way, one of the things was that they were, they were doing the harder version of it, right? Not the album version.
00:46:50
Speaker
um I said I had never heard such a dense arrangement even now that I thought there was more going on with it, but it didn't seem too crowded for me i or to me. I love Charlie on it. and Then at the end, I'm guessing you noticed this too, but their backup vocals, which goes to Jeff's point about the round here, it almost sounded like choir-ish to me a little bit with the end it begins. I don't know if anybody caught that part with their their harmony at the end, but Chris, let's go to you.
00:47:17
Speaker
yeah No, and a great group to end it. I mean, this version of Good Night Elizabeth is kind of interesting. There's no alt per se, but there's kind of like an outro thing about not being able to get home, which I liked. It's a good version of the song. And yeah, Long December and Adam Begins both sounded great. I just have a note. I feel like Adam really killed on Adam Begins.
00:47:38
Speaker
um I thought he sounded fantastic. But again, part of that is going to be he's sounding great because he's got the support of all these other great singers and they're kind of figuring out to your point about like their harmony vocals as a group. The Emmy kind of, I don't know if it's Emmy pulling it together or the work they were doing in the studio on this desert life that pulls it together. But it's a good point that this,
00:48:01
Speaker
the singing is a really kind of on point all the way through this record. um And maybe in some ways it sticks out on this record because once you get to something like Face the Promised Land, you're hearing these this Desert Life songs that kind of already have it. yes right So it's interesting to hear these songs in in a row like this. Again, it's like this is the set list from a band from the old band in a in a lot of ways, but done,
00:48:30
Speaker
with all of the various ways, what the band is becoming in 992000. It's a really interesting time capsule to listen to this one. Great. Rich, your thoughts on the closing of the show? I fully agree with Chris on his notes about Good Night Elizabeth. I just love the whole lines around, find my way back home.
00:48:51
Speaker
um with With Long December, I like that he sang it flawlessly and he does that thing, which he so often does with this song. He kind of interrupts himself, he chuckled, he laughed, and then kind of went back into it. And I thought to myself, is that when he started doing that? Because I'm sure he didn't when he was originally touring the album during Recovering. um And near the end, you can hear the crowd screaming Anna. ah and then they And then they went into Anna Begins, even though there are two different shows that were part of the compilation. So I don't know, maybe that was happening in both shows. And Anna begins, the crowd's obviously very happy to hear it in the beginning.
00:49:31
Speaker
And, uh, I think Eric, you mentioned around the vocals, the background vocals, they really stand out. Maybe it was the mix. Um, but I thought it was beautiful. You can really hear that rain falls down coming from the background that I don't think I've ever heard it so clearly ever anywhere else. As I said, if you go back now, I think to me, it's almost sounds like a choir is singing it. Like it seems like there's 10, but, um, yeah, no, I think, yeah, I'd like to bring and Chris, by the way, I wish that I was this smart, uh, passionate or.
00:50:01
Speaker
um Whatever, the incisive, I guess that's where I worried about anything in my real life, but I like that we i like that we were able to like piece together. I think you're exactly right that these extra harmonies and stuff, they were recording Desert Life in 98, right? A lot of it. So maybe you're right, like four days and some of those other songs already have absolutely fantastic harmony, and then they were maybe trying to add it retroactively to some of these. Let's go to Jeff.
00:50:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, the same thing. Goodnight, Elizabeth. I think it was really this show that made me come to appreciate how that what a great song that is. ah It's become one of my very favorite songs by them. um Long December, Anna Begins. Interesting that they conclude with rebalance. And this is, um as church Rich said earlier, like the ah curated show and a curated bootleg rather it's not from a single show as um the storytellers was as you know the though across the wire was from two different shows and and even the the Denver bootleg was from a single show so here we have their first sort of curated from some different shows and they selected intentionally to end with these three ballots I have always said that kind of crows is such a
00:51:23
Speaker
strong band when it comes to ballads. you know It's not always a rock band strong suit. and they It's one of their strongest suits is their ballads. and you know so Here you have three very different types of ballads. Of course, I think um ending with Anna begins um you know To me, it's i've I've said before, it's my favorite Counting Crow song. I think that this version, it goes for the high notes, which are always my favorite versions. and um I said this one was was a ah really good, you know maybe I give it ah an eight or nine, um maybe not transcendent, but a classic hit the high notes version. I really liked it a lot. We'll talk more about it. I thought the version he did at Woodstock was
00:52:07
Speaker
really really spectacular. So I think in general like it's interesting to see the band at this period putting out a bootleg or sort of official bootleg. I do think, as I recall, I heard you talking about this in the last show. I did, and Rich mentioned it earlier tonight, but I think this was from like the fan club somehow. Well, it was from the official, I don't think anybody remembers the fan club. The official website had it, but very limited pressing. You could get it. And I think that, you know, they were supportive of bootlegs. I remember them saying at the time, the reason they put out Across the Wire was there had been all these bootlegs that were inferior sounding and they didn't like
00:52:45
Speaker
you know, what was coming out or maybe didn't have the best performances. And so, um you know, here, you see it's kind of like now you hear all the, they just put out all of their shows, you know, and so, yeah you know, in some ways it's a precursor to that where they're trying to release, you know, more of their live shows, even through unofficial channels or whatever. You know, today, of course, everything comes out, but Yeah, I thought this was a particularly good bootleg. like ah and I think Rich said the same thing. I hadn't really spent a lot of time with this bootleg. I hadn't really sat down and really given it a ah listen listen to the nuances from the different shows. and And boy, I thought this one was really, really good. I ah loved it as a listen.
00:53:28
Speaker
Also i gotta i'm gonna just ask right here on the show who is barely out of tuesday and can we give them a shout out for all of the incredible music i wouldn't be able to hear this without barely out of tuesday who is i in my mind oh sure barely out of tuesday is this person i have no idea who it is you know male female oh you're coming on youtube yes they're also on reddit yeah you know i tried to Thank you whoever you are because yeah and they're pretty new right that that channel I think it's only like two or three years old if I remember correctly I could be wrong clearly this is somebody who knows who knows county girls really well because given the title I assume it's Courtney Cox
00:54:06
Speaker
and just all the mean things Adam said about her. She's just a really huge fan. All right, listen, y'all need to get in touch with Barely Out of Tuesday and have them on the show. Whoever it is, they need to be on the show. They clearly listen to the show, too, because sometimes we talk about something, but then they'll post like the the concert we're talking about. Seriously, you know. no well Thank you, Barely Out of Tuesday.
00:54:26
Speaker
But Yankee, yes. The Mercy can respond, but but I, um yes, only two years ago. that' the original post No, I actually reached, I have to check my notes, but I think I did reach out very early on and they declined. Oh, it's Adam. It's actually Adam. That's who it is. So, but i'll I'll have to go back to my notes on either YouTube or I forget where I got that. I know you're listening. Thank you. And come on and show some time and talk about all this amazing, you know, you have the incredible collections.
00:54:56
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for getting this stuff up there on YouTube. It's amazing. Yeoman's work. to it' It's so hard. I feel like we've talked about it, right? Rich talked about it earlier. Like in the modern world, you know, the way the music spreads around is so different. So getting it up on YouTube, I think is very important. It's it's very important work. so So the people can hear these things because it's, you know, so um these are classics. Yes. These are classics. Absolutely. Thanks, Jeff, for mentioning it's me for another time, but about the thing about the um First of all, I didn't realize the three ballads to end it and then um you're right that some bands of this era felt they had to do ballads and they're not that good. But then there's also the opposite. I particularly think of glam rock bands who maybe actually had some talent.
00:55:39
Speaker
And they were only known for their ballads, even though that was only two songs of their 12. And I guess other bands were like that, too. So I actually think, of course, we love Crows, that their ability to write good ballads and mid-tempo songs and hard rockers, like 1492 and NBC lately, separates them from other bands. I agree. Yeah, I agree. I'm going to offer a hot take. I think Anna Begins is better than Every Rose Has Its Thorn. Second. All in favor?
00:56:06
Speaker
Hot take. Yeah. My hot take is that Poison is the most overrated of the ClamBands and I felt that way since 1990. Oh, dude. Now you're not. It's my friend. I'm going to defend My wife would run in. Oh, that's funny that you defend right. because i First of all, you open the can of worms, so I gotta go. It's a rough voice. Poisons of Finn. Phenomenal live band. Phenomenal live band. A great live act and fun, good live band. Still? Just say that. Well, the last time I saw them was in 2000, I think. I did interview the drummer when I was a music journalist, and he was the nicest guy, nicest guy. Those are the nicest guys.
00:56:47
Speaker
and you know, say about them what you will, they do their thing, they know their lane very well, and they are one of the funnest, most entertaining, good-time live acts you'll ever see, probably still today. but I will say, Rock of Love, one of the great television shows of all time.
00:57:03
Speaker
but Oh, it's funny. No, no shade on glam rock, which I liked. I just remember fighting with like, you know, I'm at 90s and this came up with Vice President. They're working at like fast food in high school in the 90s. And I remember fighting about what were the best like hip-hop. So what were the best glam rock bands? And I remember like, yeah, yeah, I was in the poison. It's not as good as people think they are. But I could have been wrong. Well, i but I'm not going to say they're like musical geniuses or anything, but they're really fun live act and they know who they are. They're not trying to be. Yeah. yeah Okay. Wait till you see Brett. Go on YouTube, Eric. Find Brett Michaels serenading a stripper from Atlanta who's trying to win his love on a VH1 reality show, which every rose has its thorn. I'll check that out. Oh my god. That's a way to hear that song. You know, yeah. I think we're going to listen to a three hour podcast. That was very misunderstood, you know. I think it's just a big point.
00:57:53
Speaker
Oh, that's funny. So with that, speaking of 90s bands and that 90s, which we said a couple of times on this podcast, had a what which, you know, is speaking as old men, looking back, we thought we love that they had a wide, you know, people of our generation love the wide variety of music, right?
00:58:12
Speaker
We went out to the record store and bought metal, glam rock with hip-hop, with um just general top 40, etc., which I think is mostly true from our got college roommate CD collections and whatnot. But that might be very well encapsulated by the people that played at Woodstock in 94 and 99.
00:58:35
Speaker
And we're not going to do a, this is not a Netflix special. We won't do a huge recap, but just to put things in perspective that Woodstock, right? The original was 69 and then 25 years later, they had one in 1994.
00:58:48
Speaker
which I don't, I didn't look that up for this, but I do remember that my friends went and I stayed at home and my mom sold, my mom was having a yard sale and I promised to help her. Um, and then 99, so I guess it was, it's like you're good for talking but good it didn't help our relationship, but I did help her there. Uh, so, and then, um, five years, I guess it was success, I guess, cause five years later they had one and then that was the infamous one. And this would have been, like Chris said, if they were going to do another 25 years, this would have been the year to have a reunion of Woodstock and it did not happen. Well, they tried to do a 50 in 2019 and either it didn't sell or something. Oh, so they did. Okay. That happened.
00:59:28
Speaker
Okay, ah so ah yeah, so so Crows played at Woodstock 99, and I can talk about some stuff, but let's move on. I don't know if you wanted to just put anything in context before we talk about their actual um performance at Woodstock 99. Chris, I'll go to you. Well, I'll say this. it's So it's interesting to look at the lineup on the day they were playing. i I definitely did not go to Woodstock 99. I was 16, and I don't think my mother was going to let me go to that. I don't know if I would have even thought to do it. um i I do recall, I think some of this streamed on the radio. I have a vague recollection of listening to The Offspring for some reason. I don't know why The Offspring, but um they were fine. And um so here's here's the lineup for the Crows stage on Saturday, their main stage. Tragically Hip, Kid Rock,
01:00:21
Speaker
Wyclef Jean with the Refugee All-Stars, Counting Crow. So they're kind of in the middle of this clip here. Dave Matthews Band, Alanis Morissette, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, and Metallica. So just first off, interesting lineup, right? A lot of people who are still, it's interesting. I felt like I was, when I went to look at this lineup, I thought I was going to see bands that were irrelevant now. And kind of a lot of them are still relevant in one way or the other, which I was kind of surprised at.
01:00:50
Speaker
um And also though, just the weird, ah the weird energy of where rock music was going at that point where bands like, you know, where like Alanis Morris at Dave Matthews Counting Crows who kind of hit in the mid 90s in that time period where rock music was very, um had moved toward that certain away from grunge and into this sort of,
01:01:16
Speaker
americana-y sort of thing that was still i don't know i like i really like that mid-90s era even now i'm wearing an oasis t-shirt as we record this um weezer i like that and then you kind of got to that point where you things move towards limp biscuit And, you know, obviously Metallica was always popular. Metallica was a very big band at that point. And I mean, I recall liking those bands fine, but it almost was that thing where I think a lot of us like those bands because they were set against the teeny bopper bands. Right. You know, it's like, whoa, do you like Limp Bizkit or the Backstreet Boys? like Well, I mean, if I'm picking one, I'm going to go to Limp Bizkit, but I don't really feel strongly about Limp Bizkit. It's a weird era. And I feel like Woodstock 99 is this weird encapsulation of that era where
01:02:02
Speaker
It's um it's very corporate, right? It's like Woodstock on an air force base, which is strange. There's 220,000 people there and no one's got water. And obviously more hot takes. Lots of terrible shit happened there. Go again. As Eric said, well we won't get deep into it. Go watch the documentaries. There's two about how bad this stuff was. um It's like that in the fire festival, you know, but at least bands played at this one. So, you know,
01:02:30
Speaker
props to them for that um yeah it's this kind of it's weird to put the crows in that context even though of course theyre a very large band people seemed perfectly excited to see them we'll talk about their video ah in a minute it's an It's a very strange to kind of put back together what 1999 was like from musical perspective. I even, I mean, i yeah, I love looking at these, especially, I mean, I look at like emerging artists stage and like, did any of these actually become famous? And the answer for most of them is no, except for Moby was on the emerging artists, which I thought was pretty interesting. But when you said the East stage for the West stage at the same time, I guess this isn't the best when you talk about putting this together. Look at this, look at that, four of these. Bruce Hornsby,
01:03:14
Speaker
Everclear, followed by Everclear, followed by Ice Cube, followed by Los Lobos, and then a little bit of Chemical Brothers. I mean, that's the best. I love that. Wow. lot is very Very diverse, you know? Yes. Very diverse. It was more in the diverse, um yeah just the way it it was back then. By the way, ah this ah I don't know if you're going to bring this up, Jeff. A little fun fact that Gigolo Ants,
01:03:36
Speaker
who was signed to Adam's label, also did play. they were in the They were the second headliner right behind Fat Boy Slim at the rave tent on Saturday. Rich, any thoughts about Woodstock 99 in general? I actually was threatened for the 99 I was in Europe, so I couldn't, I don't know if I would have went anyway, but Rich. yeah 94 though real quick, I remember being in Myrtle Beach, my my friends and I, we rented to a minivan, and six of us went to Myrtle Beach for a week, and we were there going, should we go to the Woodstock instead? But we had a great time in Myrtle Beach. But 99, it's like, I don't remember 99 happening, and I was in the Air Force at the time. out in Wyoming. And we didn't talk about this before, but I was a ah nuclear launch officer. So I think I was underground for like three days, storing Woodstock and missed it. um But I think at that point, I was 24. And I think that's a point where I felt myself starting to separate from what was becoming the next phase of American popular music that Chris you talked about. Because I mean, I just love the stuff that coming out in the mid 90s, that Americana type rock you mentioned,
01:04:44
Speaker
And I won't name bands, but a lot of stuff that was coming very popular. And we're heavily featured in those documentaries for the the way they inspired their crowds. I just didn't want any part of it. um But some of these bands, I really loved. And ah after looking and preparing for this show, I didn't realize so much of it is out there. And then you can watch. So I kind of want to go want to go back now and see some of these bands that are still very still touring good, that that played that that time.
01:05:14
Speaker
ah Jeff, we before we go to you on on on another one to make you laugh, on the West Stage on Friday, so because crows were on Thursday, i think I know they were on Saturday, West Stage on Friday, the last three bands, so the major three headliners at a nine, were The Roots, followed by Insane Clown Fosse, followed by George Clinton. wow and nus ah so So stay there and listen up. so jeff My friends saw the Insane Clown Fosse this week, ah said it was a great show.
01:05:43
Speaker
Although the openers weren't great, and apparently there were like rockets of their weird soda coming off the stage. Oh my God. We'll defend our insane clown posse till the day... No, I'm kidding. We never would have seen that on Sullivan Street. Who would have guessed? Yeah, that's right. Jeff, jeff good to you. Yeah, so I mean, not not too much to add to what others have said. I think something that was interesting that occurred to me as I was you know thinking about this show and and thinking about you know, the lineup and everything else. And also the original Woodstock is that if you think about the not the original Woodstock, but it was sort of like the dream of the 60s was realized that Woodstock and Monterey Pop, those big festivals, but also the dream of the 60s kind of died at Altamont, the famous you know festival in San Francisco where
01:06:33
Speaker
The Hell's Angels were the security and the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead and others played. Shout out to Phil who passed away this week on a great basis for the Grateful Dead. um that was That was very sad news. um that That show was kind of like the, they said the end of the sixties with Altamont, this festival that turned very violent and with a lot of drugs, a lot of problems. you know Somebody died. And so here, you know are there parallels that we can draw, um you know not to be,
01:07:02
Speaker
you know too heavy-handed with it. But i you know what, it's something that you guys were kind of mentioning too. It's like, 1999 was not so much like you know whatever, the death of the 90s, but it was kind of like the death of 90s rock. you know This was the end of bands, rock bands being dominant and in popular culture. you know this All of those rock bands that dominated through the 90s, they were done by the 2000s. They were all done. A lot of these bands, you know I mean, yes, they're still around and they can play and they're popular, but they're not at the center of ah popular culture. you know The Red Hot Chili Peppers can still
01:07:36
Speaker
sell out an arena but they're not making records that people listen to or care about anymore other than obviously they're hardcore fans and I think that's true for a lot of these bands that are still around you know Metallica fans still love Metallica but nobody thinks they're putting out master of puppets you know in 2024. So I think in some ways this was kind of like this very violent festival um with all of these problems in some ways marked like the end of the 90s um the end of the the rock era, the end of rock bands being dominant. And then also, you know, I mean, we do get not too long into the 2000s, which is like, you know, it just come up, but everything from Columbine to 9-11, you know, we were sort of entering this new scary world. And and the dream, the death and dream of the 90s, you do sort of maybe see some parallels there in this in this festival too. So yeah, a weird time in music and a weird festival for the crows to be playing.
01:08:31
Speaker
Adams, I've seen some clips of Adam talking about it recently too, and his experience is there. So we can we could talk about that too. But yeah, a strange show. I do think that if you look at the footage of like Limp Bizkit, people picked on them in those documentaries as being like, oh, these guys were so terrible. It's like, man, their show looked awesome. You know, like if you just look at the show, it looked like that looks like a great show. These guys, you know, they don't none of these bands can see much of what's going on. They talk about that. right It's like they're out playing a show. I mean, there's been,
01:09:00
Speaker
So many tragedies, Pearl Jam, The Who, others where horrible tragedies have occurred at their concerts, not because they were, you know, ever wanted something like that to happen. So obviously that's just terrible. And you hear even Adam talking about that in the show, asking the crowd to move back and saying people are turning blue and stuff. So yeah.
01:09:19
Speaker
um Yeah, it's it's kind of the end of the monoculture in music, right? So what kind of happens, right? The idea that the idea that people who like Counting Crows and Dave Matthews would go to the same festivals, people who like Metallica and the same festival of like, like Mickey Hart, Planet Drum is playing on that also on that stage on that same day.
Music Festival Evolution and Cultural Shifts
01:09:39
Speaker
And Guster, who was like very, you know, the sweet, I loved Guster, but like very different energy, the idea that those would all come together, and that was a good idea, kind of dies almost right after that. You got the internet.
01:09:52
Speaker
but you've also just got this general yeah niche atomization of culture where like, what's the next big music festival? It starts to be stuff like Bonnaroo, right? Bonnaroo, which was ah had a little bit of overlap and stuff later on, but really started out as basically a jam band festival, right? You started to see more like, there's a rock festival and there's a jam band festival and there's a folk festival, as opposed to the idea that, oh yeah, all of these people, which,
01:10:18
Speaker
is kind of weird right it's kind of a bummer because I you know we're all talking about we liked a lot of these bands and a lot of very diverse bands on this list at the same time from a like are these the people you want to spend a weekend with kind of thing I think that's where the world has kind of split and one might say the world has atomized in other ways you know That's a different topic, but um it's also the beginning right before the internet, right? Like this is really right where Napster is starting to hit and start to really bring this sort of niche music culture that becomes the thing over the next 25 years. It's the last moment because those next rock bands, right? I mean, even though they're big, quote unquote, the strokes and the white stripes and the killers are not nearly Metallica and like,
01:11:06
Speaker
you know corn from a monoculture size perspective. yeah I think you're exactly right and I think that's why i up to not recently but even like up to 10 years ago they would make a big deal like if oh red hot chili peppers is playing somewhere like they were talking about it in the local news because there wasn't many New rock bands that were also mono culture. So they were that's why it's not like I think the 90s bands were that much greater But it's that it was when people if you and I think there's nothing I don't want to go too far off the deep end But I think there's nothing that shows this more than
01:11:41
Speaker
Who do you pick to be on the Super Bowl halftime show? And it used to be always rock bands Aerosmith and we have used things to in and the last two that we had which were I think the two last examples of monoculture rock and even those were kind of controversy which were ah Coldplay did what was that? It was like almost 10 years ago now because you can say they're kind of monoculture and then who's the other one? We're in five burn five. Exactly. Yeah, good they kind of had crossover appeal because now if you had to argue about monoculture now in the US you'd pick hip-hoppy Taylor Swift and hip-hoppy X and then look who's been in the last you know Usher and Rihanna and Dr. Dre and The Weeknd and I think that makes sense. Now I think this year's Super Bowl, let's see what happens. This year's kind of interesting or the next one because it's Kendrick Lamar who did not really have
01:12:32
Speaker
I wanna say, I don't wanna say mainstream, but you know what I mean? It wasn't like songs that multi-generations listened to and he didn't have a lot of poppy songs where, hey, Dr. Dre had California Love and some of these like kind of ubiquitous songs that are still played to this day and same with Rihanna and Usher. So I think it's gonna be interesting the reception that he gets, but anyway, don't wanna talk Yeah, but it's like who's left who could do it? I mean, like, yeah, I guess the killers like, I mean, if you've gone to a music festival in the last 10 years or so, you've probably seen the killers headline a music festival because there's, there's like six rock bands that can do it. So like, unless people back together, I guess Oasis could maybe, or like, if you got to get there, I don't know. Like, but there's not a lot at this point. you know Apparently Oasis can still sell a lot of tickets. I'm told.
01:13:19
Speaker
but Yeah, it's true. It's going to be great. It was a great intro. I did think it put things in perspective. And I think it's also why crows still, because of the kind of monoculture, why they still attract people of a certain age to attend their shows. I will add this. I feel like the crows, if you go back to the original Woodstock, they would have fit right in into that type of concert. I think they had that spirit just was weirdly placed in 1999.
01:13:47
Speaker
And Santana, I mean, how do we not mention Santana once in this whole show that the original Woodstock, of course, featuring one of the most incredible live performances you'll ever see from Santana. Go watch it if you haven't seen it, my God. I've heard that. And Neil Sean from a 16 year old kid named Neil Sean from the band Journey was on guitar. Wow.
01:14:12
Speaker
Yeah, St. Hendrix. I mean, that you yeah there is a great, by the way, if if people are looking, have have not really delved into the under old underwater sunshine podcast. um They did a one, two, three, four, five six episode deep dive into the original Woodstock wow called an Aquarian Exposition. It's worth checking out if that's, you you hear a lot of different stuff, but I also think it's part of just a transition to the crow set, right? Like clearly.
01:14:42
Speaker
Woodstock is a very meaningful thing for Adam, right? He's coming into this kind of like, fuck, we're gonna do Woodstock. yeah were yeah This is awesome. And you can almost see as the show is rolling along, him kind of going like, man, I thought this was gonna be different. I don't know exactly what I thought this was gonna be, not not this.
01:15:03
Speaker
um Didn't think this was what we were gonna see out here, because it's a weird it's a weird video to watch. Thank you. yeah Yeah, please. I was just going to say, if you look at also like the Wikipedia page or something for the original Woodstock, the 94 Woodstock, and then the 99, it's like the lineups for the original, it's very small. There's not that many acts. I mean, relatively. Go look, it's not that many. You get a few more in 94. But boy, in 99, it just blows up into this much more like corporate Lollapalooza, more contemporary model. And um you see also, I think the 94 show,
01:15:38
Speaker
The thing I remember about that show, it was like nine inch nails getting out and jumping in the mud. It was like the iconic thing from that show. And it got like some, you know, people were like, yeah, Woodstock 94 was cool. By 99, it was like, you could see all the bands just went, okay, we're going to sign onto this thing because it's the cool thing to do, you know? um But 99 must be double the size. Yeah. So you could tell that they just went, let's just blow this up into the biggest, you know, t-shirts and $6 water and all that stuff.
01:16:07
Speaker
Oh, fantastic. Yeah, so let's segue right into their set list. um So I, but I'll let you guys come and I'm not, I do have some other observations um where I try, I try to watch it and listen to it at the same time on YouTube. And I have some side notes I'll i'll write the RSA at the end.
01:16:23
Speaker
But um I'll just go over the set list. So it's almost similar to yeah um to the Bobby time we got to Woodstock at length. um What is it, 12 songs I have or 11? 11, yeah. um so So Mr. Jones, Angels of the Silences, we just said that. Then Rain King, ah Anna Begins, which we just covered. Omaha, recovering satellites, which which we discovered around here. Hanging Around, which was not on the bootleg. um Featuring the Gigolo Ants, I guess they they did come out for that even though they were on a different stage.
01:16:52
Speaker
Long December, have you seen me lately, which they confirmed was the mid tempo ending with murder of one. And yeah, was it between hanging around in Long December that the crowd was yelling water, water, if you listen to, I couldn't sense it out of first, but there was like, and I was like, are they saying, and then someone that confirmed that on the,
01:17:11
Speaker
on the, on the, um, cause it was weird. Like why then? I don't, I guess cause it just, it was some break in the action, but somebody started all wanted water. It's very hot apparently. yeah No, the whole vibe. I mean, you watch, but so there's a lot of, if you watch any of the Woodstock 99 stuff, there's a lot of crowd shots and like the juxtaposition.
01:17:29
Speaker
Like they get to the quiet part in recovering the satellites and on the screen is a topless lady who's getting kicked by someone who's crowdserving. Like that's, it's the it's the energy doesn't really match in the crowd and on stage, at least what we can see. It's a weird show. It's a weird show. Yeah. and I have other comments, but crit Rich, do you want to say anything either about their performance or during their set list kind of thing? A couple of things.
01:18:00
Speaker
When they, the third song round King, it was funny cause they introduced it. Like here's a song from the first album. It's called ranking. I'm like, you got to introduce ranking. Like everyone knows ranking 99. Um, but it it kind of dawned on me that they were probably being honest that they didn't assume that they're all fans and knew the whole catalog and we're going to try to.
01:18:23
Speaker
win some new audience over, still early in their set list. So, yep, that stuck out to me. I don't know, come back to me. Let's go through some of the songs I'll pipe in, general thoughts on some. Yeah, Jeff, any thoughts on that? I said they might not be that much different than the ones we just covered, which were recorded a week before with better acoustics, probably, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, right, different vibe. Well, I mean, I think one thing about that,
01:18:51
Speaker
It was a note I had about these shows, but I think you see it more with Woodstock because like ah probably the rest of you, I watched this on YouTube because you can see the the whole show. um And so when you, so I think one thing about this period and this whole, you know, desert life sort of turn that that was coming, you know, was that Adam was really also figuring out who he was going to be as a live performer. And I think you see a marked change in this era from who he was as a live performer. You know, the original Adam Duritz was, you know, sensitive. He was frail.
01:19:29
Speaker
He was you know a poet. he was ah you know You could throw him off of his game if you know said something at the show or whatever. um But in this era, he he changed. He really opened up as a performer. He was much less introverted, much less sensitive and frail, much more extroverted, um and decided to, I think, embrace his role as a frontman. I mean, you completely see it in Woodstock. He's standing up on the monitors. This is standing on the monitors, Adam.
01:19:59
Speaker
And I mean, maybe that was always a ah hallmark of what they did. But to me, um he changed a lot as a performer here. And so you saw that in the ideology of the band. the You know, we're going to we're going to play Mr. Jones first. and They did it here, too. You know, this is a declaration of intent. We're reclaiming this song. We're reclaiming who we are as a live band. We're not embarrassed about this song anymore. We're not embarrassed about having a hit anymore. We're going to play this song first and and reclaim it.
01:20:25
Speaker
But also he was really opening up as a live performer and I think embracing, I think you see who he is now, which is a guy who reaches out to the audience and who who realizes that his, you know, like as he talked about it on this new podcast that his, you know, job as he sees it is deliver an incredible performance every single night, you know. And so that
Challenges and Dynamics at Woodstock 99
01:20:46
Speaker
means that it's not, as he said he he talks about it now you should all go listen to the podcast but he says it's really not about what the happens with the audience at all he says your job is to deliver it because you don't know what's going on 10 rows back or 25 rows back your job is to create on that stage with those musicians the most incredible performance and and performance of that the people will talk about for 20 years they'll talk about this one show he says my job is to do that every night and so he's like he talked about how i don't really
01:21:15
Speaker
care if the audience is good or bad um because our job is the same no matter what. And you don't know what's going on with that whole audience. So I really um ah here, I really think that he embraced um being a front man and a live performer and decided that they talked about Springsteen having the same revelation early on that he decided, you know, went from being this introverted guy at the piano to, you know, Bruce Springsteen, the you know, the most charismatic front man you'll ever see.
01:21:44
Speaker
So I think Adam really took that on in this period. And and as a result, the band um was able to and find itself at a whole new point in its career and to further itself in ways that a lot of bands faltered at this point. you know A lot of those bands faltered at this point. A lot of those big bands, the Weezers and the Gusters of the big 90s bands, this is where they went down. But they really, Counting Crow's pivoted and I think had a strong turn and they had hits.
01:22:11
Speaker
and they became a really great live band. And you start to really see that here. Not a band that you know the super fans like, but a band that anybody can go see and go, wow, they're incredible. yeah Yeah, I've heard Adam talk about the idea that early on, he felt like if he was having a bad day, he needed to like,
01:22:31
Speaker
bring that out on stage. yeah Whereas and there's a certain, we hit the flip side where he says, no, no, like if I'm having a bad day, it's a joyous thing to go sing. And I can be like, right you can use that energy but very differently. where Because if especially, like it improves, like you can see the difference if you go tour to tour, right? 94, he's very much just like curled up basically and like very introverted. 97, it's less so, but it's still not,
01:23:02
Speaker
To your point, yeah Jeff, it's still not like a full, hey, I'm going to go out here and I'm going to put on this show with my with my band. And like, yeah, we're going to do whatever. And here, yeah I'm with you. like Clearly, stuff is getting real weird out there. He can see it. They talk about it points, right? These people are turning blue in the front row. just Back up, everyone. Please stop pushing forward.
01:23:24
Speaker
um In the middle of the songs, you wouldn't know that. They're having a great time. He's performing out and he's delivering the songs as best he can and they're fighting through it and fighting through the sound. I kind of noticed this time since um at the past the very beginning, Matt is clearly struggling with his bass.
01:23:44
Speaker
like you'll hear these random pops of bass and it's like he's clearly trying to get sound to come out like the beginning of mr jones he's like i don't know like and you can finally hear it like click in somewhere in the middle but like it's not this is bad the sound is not good you know yeah um they're figuring it out as they go but there's something you wouldn't know that from watching clearly no yeah Yeah, and someone and I don't think that was his messing up, right? Like someone wrote in the comments like, Oh, he doesn't know what he's song he's playing or something. I think it was a sound issue. Yeah, yeah, there is. You can almost see it in the video. He's kind of clearly going like, like, yeah, something's going on. And he's trying to get the sound right to play it properly by the bass. Yeah, ah Jeff and Chris, thanks for bringing that up. Not that
01:24:26
Speaker
I knew it was going to come up in this episode. I didn't, but I had thought, I think I mentioned it one other time that, and again, I actually hadn't seen them live until after this, the first time I saw them was basically when they released desert life. So I never caught it, but from my thoughts or recollection, but you can also hear, I think in the story storytellers and, and, and the, and the, and the, and the tent spot, I know like they do murder one and some hard songs and he does speak up about voting or whatever, but he, um,
01:24:57
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, even when he starts storytelling, it's like, hey, how you doing? Like, very, like you said, this kind of, right. Yeah. high Like, don't talk to me. He has his head down. Like, almost the hair is covering him a little bit. Right. Yeah. And and I absolutely agree that and I know some of that's maturity and just getting older and and and it's kind of the Gen X. I know he's not Gen X. Right. He's the band he's the generation with no label. Right. He said. yeah But ah um yeah, I do think that that's not talked about as much. And at one point he embraced it because he always did want to be a lead.
01:25:25
Speaker
person i think it was more about him finding his persona and voice and getting older and all that so jeff i i agree thanks for uh bringing that up because i i joke because even when i think it was at face the promise land i even heard a little or anyway with these bootlegs i heard a little bit it was like you said the transition where i could hear a little bit of both the introvert and the extrovert uh there's i thought it was pretty brave of them to play some of these songs at woodstock like yeah to play and yeah right It's a pretty quiet song. yeah And I think they did a pretty good job of doing it and bringing the crowd with them along for some of those quieter moments. I agree. Yeah, I agree. yeah You see people like crowd surfing during some of the slow-sizing and thinking, this is this is a weird juxtaposition. But I thought that the set list was like, okay, we're going to hit you with every crowd pleaser.
01:26:13
Speaker
ah that we have from the first two albums, really, it was like, which is, of course, what you want to do at a festival and what you want to do at Woodstock and you want to play your your your best songs there and represent yourself. But, you know, to me, it's like coming out with Mr. Jones first.
01:26:28
Speaker
you know, Rain King's third, Anna Begins, which is a, it's a slow song, but it's a song that everybody loves so much from the first album. And I think even the, you know, people know that song, Omaha, another beloved song, you know, it's like, they're really coming out with, them you know, all the classics. Of course you get round here. um So they were just, I thought that they were bringing out their A-list materials and the songs that I would go over with a crowd that big. But it was interesting to see him pull out Long December, Anna Begins, you know,
01:26:58
Speaker
try to try to pull in a crowd that size to round here, you know, wild. Yeah. Well, they do do the alt. and I mean, they they do. This is one they had done a bit where Adam tells sort of the short version. He's told longer versions of it of like living at a warehouse in Berkeley with Emmy. And he does the, did you think that you were dreaming? He also doesn't think he's like, how many people here a million? And that actually, but that's when I went and looked it up and I was like, oh, it's 220,000.
01:27:23
Speaker
Yeah. um Because it a million would be the biggest crowd. 220,000 is still a lot. The largest- How is that ranked with them? Yeah. Well, I think it's certainly the biggest they've played in front of. 220, I think, is still one of the biggest in like modern American music. I think still the largest is Watkins Glen, is the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers, which was estimated at 500,000 or 600,000 in 73.
01:27:49
Speaker
um But the two to 20 is still a huge number. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. i be Sure. A lot of people. So I just I guess let's I guess go around to just any other final comments about well anything. But I just had a couple of notes about their performance in general. Not not necessarily tie to any song. One for a so it's so weird because like, you know, this is during their glory days or this is when ah Studio album wise this was the band right with Matt and Ben But when the first one they've been I almost went to a double take and I was like Oh Jim like did he didn't look that much different than Jim to me partly because he was younger back then he was wearing with some short where
01:28:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's short hair. and always like hair means But this this time you had a kind of buzz. Yeah, very like haircut. Yeah, I was like Jim dyed his hair a little or something. And I said, wait a minute. That's not Jim. That is Ben. And he played pretty I thought he played pretty well here. um Anyway, I know that a lot of his these songs. Well, I shouldn't say that the recovering songs are are his. Yeah, um I always laughed seeing Vickery with no hat. That was in his no hat era. um Now, this was interesting, because Matt, when we interviewed Matt, he kind of, you know, he said he didn't like being in the front. And I thought he said that like when Immy joined, then he started moving back, right? He didn't have to be in the front. But this one, he was in the front. So there was four people in the front, right? That he was up there with. um If anything, Bryson was kind of further back, of course, than, um than, than Mallie. And again, Matt kind of plays Hampson up a little bit.
01:29:23
Speaker
Um, I think it's kind of later. Maybe it's late. Cause I, I feel like by the time I started seeing them like 2003, Matt's definitely sort of like standing in the back. Yeah, we did eventually. Yeah. yeah So yeah but but as we go through some of these years, we'll have to kind of keep an eye on that. Yeah. galley watch And valley watch exactly you know what caught me the other thing that caught me so and again, I was half watching it because I was doing stuff at work. um But what and you know me a big Charlie fan Charlie stalker or whatever. And there was a couple times that Charlie is just standing yeah singing. I noticed that too. I loved it. And um it was an angels and I think long December and it was a long December there was something in the end. My banana begins.
01:30:05
Speaker
Maybe it was Anna Begins. It might have been Angels and Anna Begins, but he is just doing his backup vocals. I don't know. I thought it was interesting and great. And I'm glad you had that. The only other thing, and this is for all you this is for Chris and um Rich, the bootleg people, is that it got me thinking with Rain King. I love when they end it instead of his little, hey, I love like, why don't you come out out and out from the rain?
01:30:29
Speaker
And I was always wondering, when did it that did that actually start? He actually, obviously, still does it to this day. Did this start around then, or did he do it earlier? I'm not sure. I think it was right around then, because I think Face Promised Line was one of the first times I heard it. OK. So anyway, those are my observations. Yeah. and mean and I don't know if anybody has anything else to add to their performance or most of the YouTube things. Yeah, please. So in around here,
01:30:56
Speaker
ah I liked how he tried quieting the crowd. He's like trying to like just bring him down. And then Charlie, cause I love Charlie too. He goes into some beautiful piano yeah in the middle of around here. And then later on flips back to electronic organ, I believe. But the piano in the middle around here, that was really special.
01:31:15
Speaker
And then in hanging around, they did it with the gigolo ants and he talks about how it's coming. And I felt it was just finally after all these years and haven't really seen that performance. It's like closure because of Face of Promised Land. They left because it was snowing, gigolo ants. They left to go to the next gig. And so they they performed without him. And so I'm like, finally, we got to see gigolo ants with the crows, sitting, hanging around together. He's good.
01:31:40
Speaker
Your personal bootleg redemption right there. Yeah. Finally, I could die a happy man. If any other kind of closing comments? if um The twin guitar attack, ah from the twin guitar leads from Emmy and Dan on Angels of the Silences. i Go watch it again, it's wild. Those two are trading leads back and forth and they're also playing simultaneously twin lead guitar, a la Iron Maiden you know who did it first.
01:32:09
Speaker
I love it. It's very cool. And I noticed it on Woodstock didn't really stand out to me on the bootleg. I didn't go back to here. Did they do this on the bootleg this way? But clearly they were ah working together and also back and going back and forth, playing leads back and forth. It was very cool and something worth revisiting, something you don't see a lot from those two guys. And I like that a lot, like a nice little moment there. But my notes from that song just say Dan and Emmy shredding. Yes, totally. Yeah. Really good. I also thought, you know, something I noticed, of course, you're like, oh, yeah, Ben Meinz is on drums. So that's interesting. I don't think I've said this on here before, but it's something I've just ah thought that I've had is that it's interesting how changing the drummer in Counting Crows has never really mattered at all to how that impacted their sound at all.
01:33:00
Speaker
And I say that because sometimes you change the drummer, it changes everything about the band. It's like, oh, the magic's gone. but Guns N' Roses comes to mind. um You know, it's like they change drummers. They've got a competent drummer, a professional and all that kind of stuff. But like whatever it was, that magic pixie dust was gone and it was the drummer. Think of what Dave Grohl added to Nirvana. You know, how much he just completely changed that band sound. Sometimes the drummer is the key. I think Ringo is also one of the um keys to the Beatles sound.
01:33:29
Speaker
but um yeah You know, here it's like you put in Ben Mize, you know, Jim, any of these drummers, not to say that they're interchangeable, but just to say that the key to the Counting Crows, to Counting Crows sound is not in the drummer. It's in App, you know, and you really see that here.
01:33:44
Speaker
I'll push back a little bit only in that. um I do think live, and I used to put it to the fact that he was 10 years younger, um but he there are certain parts that he emphasizes more or puts more energy in than Ben did, even if they're playing the same notes at certain times. Jim does, you're saying? Yeah.
01:34:06
Speaker
I think it was that enthusiasm, and I can't think of any examples right now, but I certainly have- That bed folds on the radio right now. The bed folds on the radio, which I said. even like high level there's there There are a number of songs that he, I want to say he rocks it more in concert, even though I'm not sure on the recordings that things would have been that different. That's just my- I do like Jim's energy and a lot, you know for sure. I think that he brings a lot to the group and a lot of positive energy. but It's kind of credit's interesting how the key to the band sound to me is not in the drummer because as they change across the albums, I don't even sometimes you have to go look them up. like Who's playing drums on this? I don't know. you know yeah yeah i yeah listen i There's parts of Saturday Night and Sunday mornings right where where Ben is drumming is right because they're using old songs and yeah it's not dramatically noticeable. I do think one of the things that's happened is that
01:34:58
Speaker
Millard and Jim together. There's some things that they've figured out over time, but i part of that's, I think, purely almost like a time thing. You think about it's like, they've been playing these songs together now um for 19 years, yeah um which is by longer than anyone else was in the band. They've been together in this band. So it's kind of, I think, there's a little bit, i part of, I think, what you're hearing, Eric, right is the fact that they've develop some different things over time. In relative
Copyright and Live Performance Recordings
01:35:30
Speaker
terms, Ben's great, but in a lot of ways right now, the the sound of the band from that
01:35:37
Speaker
you know, bass and drum perspective is those two guys. They've been doing it literally more than half the existence of the band is just those two guys. It was interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll do it wrong. I'll think back about this a little more, Jeff. I don't know if this can be done because it could be a mixing thing, but my instinct is that Jim, does this make sense? Changes the volume of the drums a little more in the songs where Ben was a little more monotone, I want to say, even if they're playing the same notes. But again, I'll listen a little more.
01:36:05
Speaker
But no, great comments. that Anybody else? I was just laughing. that you and this the it's on yeah The whole performance is on YouTube. I'll link it to the thing. it's on I saw Woodstock, Poland, and maybe other people posted it. All the comments are either commenting on on the thing itself or bashing the crows, of course. this is not a ah ah yeah think stuff like I've tried to listen to them so many times, I just don't get why they're popular.
01:36:31
Speaker
and great band, man like it's all stopped. I can't even say Adam. well It's interesting that interesting that it's up, though, because I definitely tried to put this up at one point and got a copyright thing. So whoever owns the rights to that now is chiller about it than they were however many years ago when I tried to put it up there. So thank thankfully, um people can go watch it now. Get what you can, people, because you never know. It might be gone tomorrow.
01:36:59
Speaker
It is interesting how it comes and goes to the 10 spot show is back up now. some was I had it up there for a long time and then it got taken down rights thing and now someone else put it up there. It's been up there for a few months. It comes up in my recommendations. I didn't want to tell you guys this, but my last name is Kolesa, my Polish cousin. care of it You are barely out of Tuesday.
01:37:22
Speaker
i I've looked in the mirror, found my enemies right there. But what ah what a what a fun show. It was cool to recap 90s and need it to talk about, and and really this two two-episode set, I guess, of their official bootlegs. The last show was really fun, too, to listen to, you guys. I thought that was really, everybody's comments were super interesting. and was fun Thank you. yeah And and we'll we'll talk about the, I guess, one of the more mainstream official bootlegs in future episodes, right? Like the Heineken Hall and those kind of shows that had more than a press, ah sorry, a press of 200 copies or whatever these were. You could actually get those and they stream and yeah, yeah you can listen to those. yeah They should put these up.
01:38:07
Speaker
but Let's make that pitch to guys counting crows put these up for streaming people want to hear them yeah make it easier there is a live release is no one can find them. People have traded them jeff way that people trade them for a long time because they were out of print it's the sort of principle of like if it's if the band's not selling it.
01:38:25
Speaker
may as well share it. But yeah, I think they should throw these up on Spotify and get some streams and people should be able to hear them. That's true. It's probably something that nobody even thought of, that they're just not thinking about. Another great point. The fine people of potato dog records need to listen out. Rich, we know that's you. No, I'm kidding. That's my other cut. Well, thanks, everybody. So thanks for the great episode, and we'll see the listeners back here soon, down here on Sullivan Street. Thanks so much.