Wired For Sound: Counting Crows, Glen Phillips, Lemonhead, Springsteen
At some point yesterday afternoon it occurred to me I hadn’t listened to Counting Crows in awhile. I guess it occurred to me because I love the new record Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings and I listened to it obsessively just prior to and immediately after my interview with Adam Duritz (no, I never get tired of talking about that). The more I got to thinking about not listening to Counting Crows, the more I had to listen to them. Naturally, I started with the new record- or, actually, I didn’t. I listened to “Rain King” about 12 times (from August and Everything After). I did eventually get to Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, though.
When I got home from work, I decided to — okay, this story is a long one and I’m going to try to abbreviate it — hook up the ‘old’ CD/DVD player to the surround system in the living room. The “old” DVD player got moved to the bedroom when we got the new TV and the Playstation 3 (the PS3 is a Blu-Ray DVD player, so we didn’t need to have two out front). It didn’t take long for me to remember how much I like listening to music while playing the occasional video game, something that was impossible with the setup we had. I convinced TheWifeToWhomI’mMarried to let me have the old DVD player — SACD/DVD/CD player and it’s a 5-disc carousel — back in the living room. I’m going to buy one for her to have back in the bedroom.
With the setup now set right, I loaded up the CD player with Glen Phillips’ Secrets Of The New Explorers because I wanted to hear the smartly produced album through my stereo. I also loaded up my remastered version of August & Everything After and Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings. I listened to most of August and all of SN&SM. I followed those discs up with The Lemonheads It’s A Shame About Ray and Bruce Springsteen’s Magic. You can also infer from this that I did a lot of gaming. That’s true, too.
It was really enjoyable to listen to these albums on CD through actual speakers rather than digitally on my laptop or iPod through earbuds. I don’t have anything approximating a real “audiophile” paradise, but my system is adequate and it was nice to hear the music in the open air. Now I need to trade the video games for a good book and I’ll really be set.
Oh, and I’ve started the morning with Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings.
Filed under: Tags: Bruce Springsteen, Counting Crows, Glen Phillips
