6. Cowboys - (Counting Crows)

"This is a list of what I shoulda' been / but I'm not... "

Last week, an old friend of mine commented on the contents of this blog (hooray! Someone is actually reading this darned thing!). His exact quote?

"dude, you might not have heard, but a few new albums have been released since we were in college. What's with all the nostalgia?"

Fair enough, and point taken. And since you asked so nicely... I'll tell you what I'm gonna' do: JUST FOR YOU! -- we're flashing forward right up through 2008, and we'll be spending the next two (count 'em, TWO!) entries tackling an outstanding pair of tracks from Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, the latest studio effort by the staggeringly talented tribe of troubadours known as the Counting Crows.

Here's the scoop on the SN&SM album:

Whereas so many of their mid-nineties alt-rock contemporaries have faded into obscurity (remember Seven Mary Three? Didn't think so), Adam Duritz and the gang have kept pumping out quality new material even now, well over a decade and a half after the release of their breakthrough August and Everything After first arrived in 1993. Their latest release is a mix of hard-driving rock songs and a country-infused array of introspection. It's fast, it's slow -- it's new, and yet it's familiar all at the same time. In short? It's the same old Counting Crows.

But they've certainly come a long way since "Mr. Jones."
Adam Duritz: For the last time, NO -- that song is *not* about my penis.
Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is a clever little double album (of sorts). Even though there's only enough material on the disk to fill a scant 80 minutes, the tracks are divided thematically between six edgier, "Saturday Night" rock & roll songs and the eight slower, more contemplative "Sunday Morning" ballads that close out the set. Effectively, this is the artist's way of telling fans:

"Saturday nights are for rockin' -- Sunday mornings are for reflection."

Say... I kinda' like that. After all, you can't have one without the other, right?

So over the next two blog posts, we'll be tackling the two tracks that best exemplify each of these same phases, respectively. And fittingly (since the tracks are, in fact, no more than divided halves of the same, larger, and themeatically unified piece) -- we'll likewise be sizing them up against an equally complex, divided, and giant-sized poetic predecessor by none other than the late, great T.S. Eliot.

Today's track? The crescendo of the hard-driving "Saturday Nights" chapter. An awesome little song called "Cowboys:"
No, not you, Tony. You are the antithesis of awesome. PS: Die in a fire.
- Everyone

Now then -- to the Counting Crows' "Cowboys." And boy, does this one hit the ground running:

"Cowboys on the road tonight, cryin' in their sleep /
If I was a hungry man with a gun in my hand /
There's some promises to keep..."

Right off the bat, there's no denying it: Adam is *PISSED*. Dude is storming through the streets, contemplating "what's as easy as murder" and brandishing a firearm. The adrenaline is pumping. His mind is racing. And bidness is about to pick right on up in a hurry. Heck, before the night is through? It looks as if our ever-doleful vocalist might just be fixin' to put a bullet in somebody else's head.

(Or worse -- his own).

See this is why Cowboys is such a fantastic piece -- throughout the song, we've got these hard, driving guitar riffs and these desperately embittered vocals. So naturally, we're supposed to think that something wicked this way comes, and our boy Adam Duritz is just one verse away from shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, yes?

No.

Because when you look at the lyrics, there's a whole lotta' "if," "and," and "but" scattered at every turn -- which totally undermines the song's otherwise strident intentions. Sure, the singer's got some serious (and perhaps indeed violent) passions bubbling right there underneath the surface, but he never can quite seem to bring himself to act on these motives in spite of himself, which means we're left with lines like this:

"This is a list of what I shoulda' been, but I'm not.
This is a list of what I shoulda' seen, but I am not seein'
...
I'm just turning away from what I shouldn't see
Because I am not anything."

He wants to make a difference, but he can't. He's dying to make a change, but he won't. He's got the best (and worst!) of intentions, but zero capacity to act on them. In other words --

Adam isn't a cowboy... he's a coward. Kinda like...
T.S. Eliot: a.k.a. J. Alfred Prufrock

What's that? You haven't read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, " you say? Humbug. Thankfully, that's what the internet is for.
Go ahead, I'll wait.

(Alternately: here's a quick recap):

J. Alfred Prufrock: a man with the best of ideas, but zero ability to bring them to life. Has a massive crush on pretty much every woman who passes by his way, but he can't make a decision for the life of him, and so he's forced to sit back and watch as life unfolds around him, all while making ridiculous mountains out of even the tiniest of life's incidental molehills (e.g. -- "which way to part my hair?" "Trousers: rolled, or unrolled?" "Do I dare eat a peach!?" etc.).

Like our buddy Adam Duritz, Eliot's alter-ego is loaded with passion (it's kinda' heartbreaking, actually), but he remains absolutely crippled by the words that he can't quite ever bring himself to say. So instead of doing something about it, he chickens out and writes his thoughts down on the page, and we see just how sad and screwed up the poor guy really is. Riddled with indecision, Prufrock looks at his life as a waste:

"I should have been a ragged pair of claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas...

In short, he thinks his existence would have been better spent if he were a hermit crab. He's the type of dude who might make "a list of what I shoulda' been but I'm not."

And why?

"Because I am not anything."

Man, talk about your self-confidence issues.

Next time, we'll see how Adam Duritz and J. Alfred Prufrock's egos fare when stacked up against a certifiable giant of the Italian Renaissance.

(SPOILER: Might wanna' keep our emo balladeers away from sharp objects and firearms).