The Counting Crows Changed My Life

Adam Duritz and the Counting Crows changed my life back in 1993.

It's a sad revelation, I know, but I'm not ashamed to come clean on this 13 years later. Listening to "August and Everything After" was the first time I ever was blown away by an album and it changed my entire perspective on music as a medium.

For all the crap that gets thrown frontman Adam Duritz's way nowadays (he's gotten a little fat in the middle, to put it nicely, while still sporting the dreadlocks-- making him almost a caricature), he certainly has a knack for songwriting and meoldy. Listening to the disc earlier this week, while it's raining outside and I've got a couple candles going, I still am struck by how powerful this disc is.

And it led to my musical awakening and exposure to -- at a later age than most -- the Clash, the Police, Jimi Hendrix, Velvet Underground, the Kinks and some other bands I still am enraptured by today.

So, for that I say: Thank you, Counting Crows and Adam Duritz.