History Music / CountingCrows

The band is unusual in that it actively encourages the recording of its concerts and the distribution of the resulting bootleg recordings. The band hosts a [[http://www.countingcrowsdb.com/ trading network on its website]] to enable fans to swap concert recordings. Fans can also visit an unofficial torrent site, [[http://www.crowstown.com/ Crowstown]], which offers video and audio bootlegs for free.

The band is also noticable for being the first artist to ever be added to the Rate Your Music database, and their first album, ''August and Everything After'', the first album to be added.

Counting Crows is an alternative rock band from Berkeley, California. They gained popularity in the mid-nineties for their debut album, ''August and Everything After.'' The band takes its name from the divination rhyme about crows, which also appears in the song "A Murder of One," quoted above. The group is fronted by and essentially [[IAmTheBand is]] singer-songwriter Adam Duritz, a "Russian-Jew-American impersonating African-Jamaican" whose lyrics are largely inspired by his personal relationships, life, and chronic dissociative disorder.

* PrecisionFStrike: They don't use profanity that much, but there are a few songs where it pops up ("I'm Not Sleeping", "Recovering the Satellites", etc.).

* TheShutIn: The ''Across a Wire'' version of "Mr. Jones" heavily implies that the narrator has become this by the end.

Their first album, ''August and Everything After'', is also notable for being first album to ever be added to the Rate Your Music database.

** "Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman)" is similarly upbeat and cheerful-sounding, but it's about UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein's guilt of being involved in the design of nuclear weapons.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: "Palisades Park" opens with a minute-long trumpet solo coupled with a jazz-influenced piano piece. Then the main piano riff kicks in with the first verse, backed by very jazzy, swingy drums, vibrato-infused, bluesy guitar licks and a new, almost talk-ish singing style that differs from Adam Duritz' usual style. Despite all of this, the rest of ''Somewhere Under Wonderland'' is pretty much standard Counting Crows.
** "Chelsea" from the much earlier ''Across a Wire'' is a similar case, with a bunch of jazz wind instruments accompanying Duritz' piano and voice. By the standards of the album, it's also an example: it's the only studio piece; it's the only song they hadn't recorded before on one of their firsttwo albums; it's an extreme cases of LyricalDissonance even by Counting Crows standards.

* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: They mostly stay in 1-5 territory, but most of the ''Saturday Nights'' half of ''Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings'' is probably in 6-7 range. A few other songs, mostly from ''Recovering the Satellites'', may also reach this high.

* DistaffCounterpart: Maria. The most widely-accepted and often-quoted explanation, [[Main/WordOfGod from Duritz himself]]:

* IAmTheBand[=/=]FaceOfTheBand: Most people only know Adam Duritz by name. This is because he writes almost all the songs, is literally the voice/sound of the band, and is extremely charismatic. The band simply wouldn't exist without him.

* SanitySlippageSong: Up to half of their songs, really. This is somewhat a case of WriteWhatYouKnow, as Adam Duritz has revealed that he has suffered from [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization_disorder depersonalisation-derealisation disorder]], a dissociative mental disorder that results in severe difficulty perceiving one's place in reality (it can be compared to having an existential crisis of epic proportions, as experiencing events as if they are occurring to someone else rather than to oneself, or as sensing oneself as a character in a fictional story rather than as a participant in reality).

Music by Counting Crows has been featured on the soundtracks of ''Clueless'', ''Mr. Deeds '', ''Cruel Intentions'', ''Two Weeks Notice'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}} 2''. "Accidentally in Love" from ''Shrek 2'' was nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar in 2005 and played at the Oscar ceremony.

* CaptainObvious / ShapedLikeItself: From "Le Ballet d'or"
--> "I would be lying if I didn't tell you the truth"

** Multiple songs refer to artist Creator/MichelangeloBuonarroti, including "Angels of the Silences" and "[[CaptainObvious When I Dream of Michelangelo]]".