My Afternoon With Adam Duritz, Part 2
I’m still slogging through yesterday’s interview, transcribing. I should be careful there. Transcription is a painful, painful process if you give 1/10th of a fuck about being accurate and honest about what was said and I do. I’d take this level of care (translation: be totally fucking anal) to be really careful to get each word right even if the guest wasn’t Adam Duritz or even if the guest hadn’t been so gracious and honest. The fact that he was is that much more motivating.
If you listen to the program from yesterday or when I get this finished and I write about what he said, you can’t help but come away from it really amazed at how willing he is to put himself out there and under the microscope and to do it in a sometimes unflattering way. I think I can see how he’s gotten some of the bad press he’s gotten. I don’t know that every writer knows what to do with that kind of honesty. Some writers are just dicks.
Either way, it’s easy for me to see how some of the things he says get taken completely wrong… to a point. My impression from yesterday is that he does speak from the heart and does it in a thoughtful way. Why should it be so hard to accurately represent honesty? Are we that unfamiliar with it? Have we gotten so beaten down by what passes for sincerity that we really can’t recognize the genuine article when we see it? I hope not. If we have, that’s on us- not him or others like him — famous or not — who live and speak from a place of honesty.
Now I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong.
You’re thinking I’m totally in the tank for him because I got to interview him. Wrong. I was a Counting Crows fan before I talked to him on the phone yesterday and I’d be a Counting Crows fan if that conversation never took place. I was already in the tank. That is not what the conversation yesterday did.
Maybe you’re thinking I’m totally in the tank because he pulled a fast one on me. You’re thinking, “Fuck off, dude. It was an act and you totally fuckin’ fell for it.” First, I like it when people call me dude. Well, some people. I don’t like when my dad calls me dude. That’s just weird. I can’t really answer the rest of that. I’m not a truth detector. I can’t claim that my level of insight into the human mind and spirit is superior to that of anyone else and I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’ve got nothing here to sell. I have no agenda. I’m telling you like it is, the way I heard it. I’m telling you how I felt, on my end of the conversation. You’re free to listen for yourself.
Filed under: Tags: Counting Crows
