http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZByH7y5FxGE
On Almost Any Sunday Morning by Counting Crows (Live in Paris)
So my internal clock must really be screwed up, I thought yesterday was the last day of summer and it is actually today. Well it isn't as nice as yesterday but it was a pretty good day. I guess my writing from yesterday wasn't authentic but at least it was in my mind; the last sunset of summer. Appropriately enough the Blue Jays were officially eliminated from the playoffs today and ended what was a disappointing season. Though there are few positives to take into next year, too bad we play in the toughest division in baseball. It is a long season and who knows next year it might be a little longer. I only went to one game, I plan on changing that next year, no matter how they are playing.
For music fans Kings of Leon, Morningwood and TV on the Radio will be on Letterman this week, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday respectively. For political junkies, Bill Clinton will be on Monday and John McCain on Wednesday. For comedy fans, Chris Rock will be on Monday. For Paris Hilton fans, she will be on Thursday. Also Olympic champion and the fastest man in the world Usain Bolt will be on Wednesday, with Lance Armstrong most likely talking about his comeback on Friday.
Below is the latest blog entry from Adam Duritz, where he talks about the show they cancelled earlier this month, his drinking and how unpleasant some of the fans can be. Surprisingly he doesn't mention the fact that David and Charlie are "leaving" the band for the rest of the tour to spend time with their families. The band is tremendously tight but I am sure whomever fills in will not be a factor on the rest of the dates. It is counting crows anyway, might as well put as many on stage as possible, some nights their performances remind me of the Last Waltz with a wide assortment of musicians accompanying The Band.
Dated Saturday September 20, 2008
Portland, Oregon
1AM
Let me get this out of the way first. I can't stress how important I think it is for you to vote in this election. It's time for our nation to reclaim it's place as a beacon in the world. We may never set the example we might have around the world again as a leader in foreign policy or diplomacy. It's possible we are just too tied to powerful lobbying interest groups to make those kinds of changes. But there's nothing that says we can't set the example of a country of free men and women banding together to decide our future as one nation.
We CAN remind the world how a democracy truly works, why it works, and why it matters that it works.
A democracy matters because, on it's most basic level, it says that every single person matters. It says that no one person is of lesser or greater importance than another. It disputes and it spits in the face of a way of thinking that had gone on for thousands and thousands of years, basically the entirety of human existence, until we came along two hundred and thirty-two years ago and said there was a better way.
I hear a lot of people talk about patriotism and flags and American values but the truth is there is only one truly American value: your right to vote. It is the definition of America. It is the way we decided to define ourselves that set us apart from all the other countries in the world at that time and it is the reason we fought that first war.
It took 72 years for the first group of women to organize a conference to seriously discuss getting themselves the right to vote and another 72 years of hard fought struggle before they got it. That's 144 years your great grandmother and their great grandmothers fought to secure those rights for their daughters and granddaughters and you. Can you seriously hold so little respect for them in your hearts that you would throw that right away?
For the first hundred years of our nation's existence, we actually had slaves, people considered by some to be less than human. Their children and their children's children hold their own fate in their hands in 2008 but their ancestors paid a heavy heavy price to carry them here over the chasm of that injustice.
We have come to this country from every point across the globe and we have made a pact with one another. We will live here together and we will decide our future together and then we will abide by that decision and live out that future, whatever it may be, together. The proof of the strength of a true democracy does not lie in your ability to elect the person you want; it lies in our ability as a people to lose an election and still abide and stand by the pact. Democracy is hard that way. Sometimes you lose. But we have kept the pact for over two hundred years, failing only once to abide and that one time was the worst disaster in American history.
Our country may not be perfect but the ideal is. And anyway, it's still our country. If you don't like the way something's being done, we have a system in place that allows for peaceful change. All you have to do is take part.
If you're over the age of 18 and you're an American citizen, get yourself registered and vote. Just go to the front page of CountingCrows.com and click on the flag. It'll register you anywhere in the United States for any party you like. Then come out on the first Tuesday in November and take part in the birth of a new nation, one that is reborn over and over and over again. Every time you step in to that booth, you breathe new life into the ideals that began this country two hundred and thirty two years ago.
It's your turn now. There is nothing more important you can ever do for this world than to wake up and be a part of it.
Now for part 2.
Some of you are very unpleasant people.
I will try to explain this as simply as possible so that all of you can understand it. Here's how touring works: The bands make a deal with the promoters and the central point of that deal is The Guarantee. The Guarantee is an amount of money that the promoter has to pay each band every gig whether 15 or 15,000 people show up that night. That $ amount is in the contractual agreement before the tour begins and nothing can change it. If we show up, we get paid. Period.
The only way we can possibly ever lose out on our guarantee is if we fail to play a show. There's no issue about saving money by not playing a show. First of all, we're doing better than 90% of the tours out there but that doesn't really matter. If only 8 people come out to see us play, the promoter is totally screwed but M5 and CC still get paid our guarantee and there's nothing the promoter can do about it. So this idea that we might be trying to save money by canceling a show is just not something a sane person would do. In fact, cancellations are financial disasters for the band because none of the day-to-day expenses go away at all. We don't save ANY money. Trucking companies still have to be paid as do their drivers. Same for the busses and their drivers. The sound and lighting equipment still costs the same amount per week and the salaries of the crews who run them don't disappear and neither do the salaries of our regular crews. Then there is still the costs of everyone's hotel rooms and per diems and on a 6 semi, 10 bus tour, that is a lot of people and a lot of salaries and a lot of hotel rooms and a lot of equipment rental costs.
Basically, it's shitload of money and you still have to pay every single penny of it. The only difference is that you don't get any money coming in that night to offset it. In other words, you just lose an enormous amount of money and it's basically the touring equivalent of the apocalypse.
On top of that, no matter what your reasons, it pisses people off and they decide you're doing it just to fuck with them. I guess I get that a little bit. We play 60 concerts over the course of the summer but there's usually only one in YOUR town so it probably feels like you got singled out to be screwed. I don't know why you'd think anyone would do that but it's that kind of world these days and people just think that way.
I was just thinking I would tell you the exact nature of the illness that caused us to miss the San Diego show but, after thinking about it, I still feel now, as I did then, that it is really none of your business. All I will say is that playing the concert would have been irresponsible and dangerous to even attempt, considering the circumstances, and in our minds was something we just decided was impossible. I have played shows with a snapped ACL, torn meniscus, broken heels, sprained ankles, and i lost about a pint of blood onstage at Sundance a couple years ago...but we were not going to attempt to play on Saturday because we couldn't do it.
I hope the above at least clears the air a little. Whether you know the exact reasons or not, it should be clear that no band in their right mind would cancel a show without a very very good reason.
By the way, nursing a hangover from partying for 2 days before attending the Cal-Maryland game does not constitute a good reason. In the first place, the damn game was on the other side of the country at 9am Pacific time so I doubt I could even have gotten there and in the second place...that's just fucking stupid. I am a 44 year old adult running a corporation responsible for the livelihoods of a great many people. I do not attend football games at their expense.
But let's go back to the hangover theory. What is this insane obsession you all have with me taking painkillers and playing wasted this summer? I know I get lost onstage (I think that's part of what makes us a good band) but why would you think I'd be taking painkillers? I badly injured my heel and my ankle at the beginning of the summer. The last thing I'd ever do would be to take a painkiller when I was injured. It hurts like hell to jump around and off of things with those kinds of injuries but at least you know what you're doing when you're straight. You could seriously fuck yourself up playing a gig injured while doped up on painkillers. The pain is the only thing that keeps you aware of how far you can go.
As far as the drinking is concerned, I can only say that I love drinking. Liquor is an amazing invention and I'm all for it. That said, I haven't touched a drop at a show since the club gigs in NY back in the spring. It just wears my voice down. I can't do it anymore on a long tour. You can believe that or not. THAT I don't really care about. I personally love playing drunk. It's a blast and I've played some of my best shows while out of my tree. I'm sure I'll do it again but I can't do it when I'm playing 44 shows in 60 odd days. So believe whatever you want but that's the truth. Like I said, I think drinking's great and I highly recommend it as the best possible way to get drunk. Few other ways work quite as well. But you're watching me drink either tea or water these days. If you didn't like the show you saw, it's probably just because you thought we sucked that night. We may have. But it wasn't because I was drunk. On second thought, we probably didn't suck. We don't suck much. We may not play the show YOU want but whatever show we play, we pretty much play the hell out of it these days. If you thought we sucked, you were probably drunk or on painkillers or something. Or maybe you just suck.
I read the message boards every day. I know all I see all. You can't hide from me.
Honestly, I'm having a great summer. It hasn't been easy but we've been playing our asses off and my life's never been better. I am, for lack of a better word, happy. Things are changing for all of us. People got married, others settled down, and now we're about to see some brand new children enter our little family. It's a good time. Even Dan and Immy bought themselves pets at the beginning of the summer. They had the cutest little gerbils named Lolita and Einsturzende Neubaten that would run all around the busses making cute little gerbil faces and leaving cute little gerbil shits everywhere. And you should have seen how Immy and Dan doted on those gerbils. They were all so happy.
Actually, come to think of it, I haven't seen either gerbil in weeks. Oh well, everyone still seems really happy and that's what truly matters, isn't it?
ad
"Now both of us have known love before, to come on up promising, like the spring, just to walk on out the door. Our hearts are kind and are hearts are strong. Well, let me tell you what exactly is on my mind."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iTX3-cbWnM
You Are My Best Thing by Ray LaMontagne
Switching musical gears, above is the lead single from Ray LaMontagne's next album Gossip In The Grain. I am looking forward to this collection of music, and I like the instrumental accompaniment of the first single. Hopefully this is a sign of what is to come.
I am still reading novels. I am about 60% through Small Island by Andrea Levy, a story about an Jamaican R.A.F. volunteer in World War II, the British woman he meets and the wife he enters into an agreement with. Sending them both permanently from Jamaica to England, after the war is over. The other book, because I can never just read one, is The Piano Man's Daughter by Timothy Findley. I think it is the third Findley book I have tackled this year and I am only a few pages into it. Having just bought it yesterday during another trip to the used bookstore.
I suppose that is all, I need to rest for work tonight. The weekend begins and ends early when you work midnights.
Buses or busses, I would spell it buses but I am sure Adam knows what he is doing more than me.
john.
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