60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “A Long December”—Counting Crows

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

Rob explores what happens when you make music your everything. Through the lens of Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz, Rob breaks down the band’s ballad “A Long December” before The Ringer��s Bill Simmons joins to contemplate Adam’s struggle to prioritize happiness. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Bill Simmons  Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Lani Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Watch is the latest and the greatest in pop culture from best friends Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald. Join them as they discuss TV, movies, music, and much more. Check out The Watch on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. On alternative rock radio throughout the mid-90s, one could hear several times a day. A grown man make this noise. What do you suppose counting crows frontman Adam Duritz meant to convey exactly? with this yelp, this whoop of virile gregariousness that punctuates his band's 1993 hit Rain King.

That song title is a Saul Bello reference. Have you read Saul Bello? You up on Saul Bellow? There's acclaimed 1959 novel Henderson, the Rain King. You got that reference, right? Of course you did. Rain King by the Counting Crows is about being a struggling writer or artist or whatever and getting pissed off that not enough people like your stuff yet.

and complaining to your mother about it. Relatable. That's my interpretation anyway. I'm into it. We can agree that when I think of heaven, deliver me in a black-winged bird is an excellent opening line for an alternative rock song. Other great alt-rock opening lines from 1993 include all I can say is that my life is pretty plain and in a town of chimpanzees I was a monkey.

We can agree that the image of a black-winged bird flying down. down into a sea of pens and feathers is a lovely description of the creative process. We can agree that if you're literally going to sing the words, I deserve a little more in the pre-chorus to your alt-rock song. You'd better make sure that pre-chorus is a good one. And this, my friends, is a good one. That line, that moment, the other voices bolstering his right there on I deserve a little more. It sounds like Adam Durrit's mouth.

mounting and flying a black-winged bird off a rooftop. Does it not? But why is Adam Durrett so alone? What's his mother supposed to do about it? What does Adam Durit think he deserves? What does he really want? Right, so fame, fortune, adulation, and perhaps a few dates, separately, one assumes, with two of the three actresses starring in one of the biggest sitcoms of the 90s.

Got it. When I look at the television, I want to see me staring right. right back at me. That's another great line from another great alt rock song. Yes, but hold on. We're not even off topic and we're off topic. Can I tell you what I want? What I want for Christmas? All I want for Christmas this year is an Adam Durrett's soundboard. You remember a while back when someone put up the isolated audio of David Lee Ross singing Van Halen's running with the devil and then somebody else made an internet soundboard of all David Lee Roth's adlibs is yeah. and woos and so forth. You could futz around with when you didn't feel like writing or reading Saul Bellow. I return to this thing every couple months. I find it spiritually regenerative. I find this, too, to be an instrument of faith and sex and God in the belly of a black-winged bird. You know who deserves a little more me? I am the rain king. I am the Picasso of the David Lee Roth soundboard. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and rejoice.

The key element is the whistle. You got to know when to drop the whistle. But so I want the Adam Duritt's version of this. And one version could be, remember the other semi-viral thing, the Han Zimmer Inception button? Hans Zimmer, the rock star composer, who did the quite blaring score for the Christopher Nolan film Inception. And the Inception button is just a giant red button

and you click on it and it goes, Okay, first idea is just that. giant red button but now it goes yeah i want adam duritz going yeah to be my ringtone that's a terrible impression terrible i sound like axle rose on his deathbed i can't even do the high note at the end i'm sorry when you ring my doorbell yeah when you cut me off in traffic and i haunt my horn yeah when we break up but i want you back so i show up at your house wearing a trench coat and holding a giant boombox over my head yeah but then again there is a multitude of delightful Adam Duritt's vocal mannerisms to celebrate. We're doing a whole soundboard.

Let's get some Mr. Jones shal-l-l-l-l-lars in there, of course. Thank you. You got to get the dark side of the shal-l-lars in there, too, though. Let's get some anguished, ba-da-ba action from another horse streamers blues. Ooh, let's do the uh-uhs from when he sang backing vocals on 6th Avenue heartache by the wallflowers. Adam Duritz makes this song. Listen to it again, stupendous backing vocalist performance.

The Wallflowers owe Adam Duritz their careers. Well, they owe Adam and the other guy. Thank you. Can I get just Adam Duritz singing the words, The Radio, while interpolating, have you seen me lately into an acoustic version of Round Here while wearing a pink bunny suit on Howard Stern show in 2008? The radio! Thank you.

Actually, can I get him singing I'm under the gun in the studio? version of Round here. Thank you. This is longer, but can I get him singing, Don't You Go, it makes no sense, and all these talking Superman just take away the time while covering the ghost in you

by the psychedelic furs for the clueless soundtrack? Don't you go? Thank you. Almost done. Can I get the way, way, way too long from hanging around? Thank you. Last one. Got to end on a downer.

Sorry. I need another famous, yeah. In fact, I need a series of four increasingly despondent yas. My buddy Jeff once said that that part sounds like Adam Duritz is holding an angry cat on his lap and squeezing the angry cat rhythmically. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff doesn't dig this song. Agree to disagree.

Forget all those other clips, actually. That was fun, but forget it. We only need the first and the last. Here we have the tragic alt-rock fame arc, the giddy rise and sullen fall of the 90s rock star, as illustrated, as bookended by two emotionally diametrically opposed applications of the word, yeah, as delivered by Adam Duritz, in two different Counting Crows hits three years apart. 1993, Counting Crows are spry young poetic roots rockers out of San Francisco, whose debut album called August and Everything After. after Adam Duritz was born in August, was an unlikely grunge counter-programming smash. Came out in fall 1993. 3.8 million copies sold in 1994 alone.

Mr. Jones constantly on the radio. Round here constantly on the radio. And yes, Rain King constantly on the radio. Sing it with me or don't. Ah, but disillusionment beckons. Counting Crows made the cover of Rolling Stone in summer 1994. the cover lines on this issue are as follows. Counting Crows, America's biggest new band, Jerry Seinfeld, the king of primetime comedy, and Brisbane's vampire gangs. I assume that means

Brisbane, Australia. I don't remember that. I got to look into that. Remind me to look into that. But so Adam Duritz is warmly and accurately quoted as he wanders thoughtfully around various famous Parisian art museums, giving various dour, blue period type, morose alt rock star quotes he says fortunately i don't get stage fright i just get rest of life fright he says of the famous line from mr jones these days instead of singing when everybody loves me i'm going to be just as happy as i can be i should be singing when everybody loves me i'll be about as fucked up as i can be i assume he really did that while singing mr jones live at some point he changes the words in concert all the time. Drives people nuts. He says, sometimes when we're on stage,

I wonder, what is it with these people? He says, he elaborates, what do they want? Because this is definitely not hopeful music, you know. There are a lot of songs about how your whole life as a child is hopes and dreams, endless possibilities about how you'll fall in love, have a life, and do something that's meaningful to you. Then you grow up and get there and nothing works. None of it. I'm not offering them hope. I'm not offering them anything, really. I mean, all I'm singing about is some stuff I thought about myself. If you think about it, the whole thing is pretty self-centered and bizarre. Actually, he was saying all this. Conducting his Rolling Stone cover story interview, the day the band found out that Kirk Cobain had died there in 1994. That feels relevant.

Adam Duritz, while checking to see if this particular Parisian museum had any marked, Rothko paintings says to say that Kurt should have been happy just because he was a rock star is asinine. The only reason I'm famous now is because of unhappiness. For some reason, unhappiness is something everyone wants to be a voyeur about. Your misery is everybody else's entertainment. The fact that all of a sudden everyone is looking at you doesn't change things. For some people, it can just make things more difficult and embarrassing. Huh. Second Counting Crow's album comes out in 1996 called recovering the satellites. I love this record. The displacements and disenchantment and unhappiness radiating from this record makes me very happy. The second

to last song is called A Long December. This one seems to make a lot of people happy, or at least it makes a lot of unhappy people slightly less unhappy. My name's Rob Marvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s, happy holidays. Sing it with me whether you want to or not. Adam Duritz was born in Baltimore in 1964. He turned 30 the year his band, sold nearly four million copies of its debut album. His family moved a few times as a kid, Boston, El Paso. They settled in Berkeley, California when he was a teenager. Smart kid, well-read kid, not a happy kid necessarily.

He told Rolling Stone, I wasn't one of the guys too much growing up. And I'm sure that Kurt felt like a real outcast, too. So when people start talking to you about how you're some sort of spokesman, for a generation. You can't help wondering where the hell that generation was when you were 15. He kicked around in semi-successful bands for years, namely Sorted Humor and the Himalayan's. You can find video footage on YouTube of Adam Duritz, young Adam Duritz, fronting the Himalayans, apparently in 1991 playing 924 Gilman, playing the Berkeley punk rock mecca 924 Gilman, home of Operation Ivy, pre-super stardom, Green Day and Rancid, etc.

No bands on major labels allowed. Here we observe the Himalayan's featuring Marnie Jones on bass. That's Mr. Jones to you. Performing a moody little tune of Adams called Round Here, a much moodyer and more menacing version of the soon-to-be-famous song, Round Here. Sounds like the Cure. Sounds like the Cure's Fascination Street. I'm way into it.

very minor change to the original lyrics. She parks her car outside my warehouse. Unbelievable. I love it. I love the Bay Area. My buddy Garrett used to live in the East Bay in a legal-ish warehouse behind the Best Buy in Emeryville. I was pretty jealous. These early bands fail by international fame and adulation standards. And Adam Duritz in what quickly emerges as a theme grows disillusioned and sets music aside, possibly for good and decides to backpack around Europe and so forth for a while before starting his life for real.

He's a vagabond type. In Australia at some point, he'd met a young lady named Anna. But he is inexorably pulled back to the Bay Area and a new band called Counting Crows coalesces around him, featuring various dudes from various bands in his orbit. As Adam will later put its ruling stone to the outside world, I'm the cute one, I'm the quiet one, I'm the funny one, and I'm the sad one. But still, this is a band. Maybe not always in terms of decision making, but it is a band.

Let's meet the fellas, most of the fellas. We got Dave Bryson on guitar, Matt Malley on bass, Charlie Gillingham on keyboard and organ and accordion, fantastic accordion, and Steve Bowman on drums, plus the cute slash quiet slash funny slash sad one. This first iteration of Counting Crows gets signed to Geffen Records, home of Nirvana, and gets to work on their

1993 debut album, August and everything after. Before the album's even out, though, they are tapped last minute to perform at the 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles

because the Rock Hall is inducting Van Morrison, but Van Morrison won't show up in protest of the Rock Hall's vaccine policy. Of course, I'm just kidding. So here comes this band nobody's really heard of yet called Counting Crows, and they get the call while they're in San Francisco.

And as Adam Duritz later recounts to stereo gum, quote, it was Sunday afternoon. The show was Tuesday and rehearsal was the next day. So we had to get back down to L.A. and figure out which song to do. My dad gave us a ride to the airport, and we stopped at Tower Records to pick up a bunch of Van Morrison cassettes so we could figure out which fucking song to play. end quote i must say i am tremendously charmed by every single detail of this story the grouchiness of van morrison and the sweaty eagerness of a young obscure counting crows binge listening to the van morrison catalog on cassette on a plane as they debate which of his songs to play in his stead at the rock and roll hall of fame induction ceremony tremendously charming this anecdote this

This is how the rock and roll torch gets passed. Folks, the crows decided on Caravan. Probably because it gave Adam Durrett a chance to both scat and sing the words, The Radio, a lot. Success. August and everything after comes out in September, 1993, produced by the God T-Bone Burnett. Multi-instrumentalist David Immergloak plays a bunch of stuff in the record. He will finally join the band full-time in 1999.

Long before that, lead guitar. Dan Vickrie joins up with Counting Crows in time to join him on the cover of Rolling Stone in summer 94, by which point this song is everywhere. The Mr. Jones video also is everywhere, or it's on MTV and MTV is everywhere. Giving the larger world its first glimpse at one Adam Duritz, this mercurial Jewish fellow with a voluminous dreadlocks bouncing around in front of his microphone. He got the brown fringy coat sliding off his shoulders

and his voice is scaling octaves with, not with ease per se, but certainly with a plumb. I've always loved that I don't think so there, the half-muttered aside of it. Adam Durrett sings with personality, with pizzazz, with a vivid sense of character

and of place and of time. He sings like he's singing in a hit Broadway play and the audience is going to start throwing shit at him if he sings the song the same way he sang it last night. This can make the Counting Crow's live experience quite polarizing. He changes the meter. He changes the melody. He changes the words.

He drops in lines from other songs. He appears at least to be winging it. Arguably, some people contemplate throwing shit at him for not singing it the same way he sang it last night. Or anyway, they wish he'd sing it the way he sang it on the record. But what's the fun in that? It's a fantastic line. It really is. As many people have observed, Mr. Jones is just about as funky and as meta as debut rock and roll singles can be,

and that it's an uneasy song about wanting to be famous that made Adam Durrett's famous, which in turn made him world historically uneasy. That's rock and roll for you. I can't decide if I'm being sincere when I say that counting crows were grunge counter-programming. It sounds a little glib coming out of my mouth. But here in 1993, 1994, you got a lot of rad, newish bands at this nexus of rock folk. trace amounts of country and somewhat larger amounts of jam band type action. Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, The Wallflowers, Hootie, Spin Doctors, Rusted Root,

live when Live weren't trying so hard to be agro. Some Pearl Jam, too, in their less agro moments. But Counting Crows felt like a totally separate trip from this burgeoning myth of Seattle. From the Shah Lhaz forward, of course, I recognize now the total new classic rock aspect, the prestige jangliness. R.M. course the lineage we're tracing here, Van Morrison, Tom Petty, Big Star, blah, blah, but Adam Durrett's, I think, as a vocalist, as a lyricist, as a remarkable visual experience, stood apart. And standing

apart in general is great for your band, though maybe not so great for you as a human being. All as I know is that he wrote killer opening lines. It's about the front door like a ghost into a fog where no one notices the contrast to wait on Round here is this song that got me. August and everything after was one of those records with gigantic radio singles so ubiquitous. I did not feel compelled to own it on CD. I figured thanks to MTV, I'd already totally internalized the highlights, right?

I do remember being in high school one day and study hall or something and listening to two dudes in front of me praise this record to the skies, just rhapsodizing about how beautiful and poetic and profound it was. I think both those dudes were named Scott. Is that relevant? I think it might be relevant. But I was content with the hits. Mr. Jones, great. Rain King. Yeah. But round here, first song on the record.

First song and the first counting crows record is a veteran savvy masterclass in slow burn profundity. It morosely kicked rich amounts of ass at 924 Gilman back then. And it still morosely kicks rich amounts of ass on the radio today. Only thing that changed really is that Adam Duritz doesn't live in a a warehouse anymore. Now he lives on a tour bus. But maybe I should have listened to the Scots. Yeah. August and everything after holds up. It holds up in its totality. It is shrewdly and lovingly sequenced. You can't imagine around here anywhere other than track one. You can't imagine a murder of one. The all your life is such a shame, shame, shame, shame song anywhere other than the

closer at track 11. That song is Immaculate End Credits music. The whole record feels like a complete thought, a complete universe. It feels fully populated. Is it populated by various amalgamations of Adam Duritz's ex-girlfriends? Probably. But he's always been an expert at selling his own drama, to paraphrase live, in a way that made other people want to buy it. He introduced you to Maria, to Anna, to Marjorie, to Elizabeth. He took you to Omaha, to Baltimore, to Sullivan Street, to Hillside Manor sometime after 2 a.m. And Adam sung all these songs to a.m., to Adder crowds and he wondered, what is it with these people? But he knew. He knew why people liked him and thought they knew him. Adam talked to critic author in front of the program Stephen Hayden back in

2012 and he talked about his many, many diehard fans, Adam said. They find all kinds of things about themselves and those songs. I don't understand it. I do know that it's true. People were talking at the beginning to stop using proper names, stop using particular places and details in your songwriting because people aren't going to relate to that, but they're wrong. Those details give those things truth, some sort of real weight. End quote. There's a narcissism to it. It's a songwriting this specific and this self-centered, but what is charisma really, if not the ability to convince other people that your narcissism is fascinating and relatable? Can I tell you my favorite line on August and everything after? It's from Anna Begins. Not a radio hit, but an indebted.

During live favorite. I bet the Scots love this shit. I didn't totally get it then, but I get it now. Every time she sneezes, I believe it's love. That rules, dude. I mean that in all sincerity. For me, it's the hiccups. When my wife gets the hiccups, right?

And the baby now as well. August and everything after sells a zillion copies and Counting Crow's tour for a zillion years. Adam Duritz is famous now. He starts dating a zillion famous. women? Maybe you heard about it. He's seen a zillion faces and he's rocked them all by singing his songs a zillion different ways. Well now, success. He did it. Everybody loves him. So is he as happy as he can be? Yeah, what do you think? That's from a rocking little tune called Have You You Seen Me Lately from the Second Counting Crows album, Recovering the Satellites released in

1996. I repeat that I love this album. I repeat that we got Dan Vickery. on leading guitar now and Dan Vickery kicks rich amounts of ass on lead guitar. I promise I won't use that expression again, but listen to this shit. It's not shredding in any sense, but I find it to be quite pleasingly melodic. That's from a rock and little tune called Angel of the Silences. That's going to just about do it in terms of rocking little tunes on this record. Recovering the satellites is very explicitly about Adam Duritz's struggles with mobbed on the street type fame, with intrusive media attention,

with the relentless grind of touring. Here's a fun song about touring. It's called daylight fading. What you often hear angsty rock stars say about touring is that the two hours or so they spend on stage is fantastic. It's transcendent. It's worth the soul-killing drudgery of the other 22 hours in the day. But I don't get the impression Adams too jazzed for his two hours on stage either.

He's a big fan of circus imagery, traveling circus imagery, clown imagery, self-harm for the amusement of strangers imagery. It's like he said, your misery is everybody else's entertainment. On the ballad, Good Night Elizabeth, Adam offers a remarkably succinct description of what he does every night for a living. Is this self-serving, self-pitying, a wee bit self-aggrandized? of course it is. It's like he said. The whole thing is pretty self-centered and bizarre. What self-respecting rock star isn't all those things all the time? Not enjoying rock stardom was practically an Olympic event during the 90s, but I find Adam Duritz's specific brand of not enjoying rock stardom to be the most engrossing. Here's what we got going on about six minutes into an extra moody piano jam called Miller's Angels. That song totally sounds like it was recorded at 4.30 in the morning, doesn't it? It's like he said. Round here, we stay up very, very, very, very late. Adam Duritz's insomnia is so omnipresent that it's as vivid

character as Anna or Maria or Elizabeth. This song is literally called I'm Not Sleeping. When everybody loves you, you can never be lonely. Why did I love this record? I wasn't a counting crows guy. I wasn't a scot. I was not previously susceptible. As a kid, as a teen, as a young adult, hell as an adult adult, I would have killed to have been a rock star to write songs people loved to sing those songs to people every night, to have people write nice things about how well I sang them. Seems like a pretty rad gig. Why did I fall so hard for an album in which a dude complained at incredible length in quite anguished and histrionic tones about how miserable and oppressed and isolated and empty that gig had made him.

What's in it for me? How in blazes that I find all sorts of things about me in these songs? The answer, and maybe you already guess this, is that I was 18. I was away at college for the first time. I didn't know who I was. I didn't really know where I was. I didn't know what I was doing. I felt marooned.

And it's not like I went to college on the moon. I was like three hours from home. Get over yourself. But what's the fun in that? Plus, I had a girlfriend back home, relaxed. I don't want to talk about it. You don't want to hear about it. But I do have this visceral memory of driving home once and I get home and I'm standing in my high school bedroom and I'm going out with my whole reconvened high school crew.

And we're doing something notably infantile, right? A haunted house laser tag. But I'm standing in my bedroom back home and I'm shivering. I'm shaking with cold and it's not really that cold. And I don't know what this feeling is. Excitement, anticipation, anger at myself forever leaving, fear that I'll never really get to go back. whatever it is, it ain't eloquence. I just felt lost and overwhelmed by the need to be found.

I couldn't come any closer to articulating it then, and I certainly can't now, but it was powerful. It was overpowering. It was real. It had real weight. Spend my nights in self-defense crying about my innocence. The fact that this whole internal monologue was fundamentally self-pitying and self-aggrandizing only made it heavier.

And if I self-aggrandized enough, I could convince myself that whatever I meant by the word home, carried the same weight as whatever Adam Duritz meant by the word home. This song is called Children in Bloom. I love this song. This is one of those moments in a song where I start driving 20 miles per hour faster than however fast I was previously driving. Oh, you think he can't sing the word home more, uh, histrionically? That's what you think, huh?

And shit, the wildest part is none of these songs are even the song. along December Track 13 of 14 That is crucial It could only be the second to last song The exhaustion only resonates if you are Yourself Thanks to the previous 12 songs

Already exhausted Also Charlie Gillingham on accordion Best accordion player on all rock radio Outside of They Might Be Giants Just stupendous And sure, okay, the piano two I saw Counting Crows play a Cleveland Area outdoor amphitheater deal

In 1997, the Blondeau. Awesome music center. Terrible parking situation. Took forever to get out of the parking lot. After a Blossom show is like a one lane exit. Who designed this shit? For all you know, I might be recording this remotely from that parking lot, still stuck in my car waiting to get out of that show. Any way they played with either live or the wallflowers or hell, maybe both.

And the crow set climaxed, of course, with a long December. And right before they played it, this dude behind me started yelling, Go to the piano at Adam Durr. It's like repeatedly. go to the piano go to the piano it was quite aggressive given the circumstances the circumstances being a counting

crows concert anyway then Adam went to the piano he did what he was told let's get the most obvious part of this out of the way the long December and there's reason to believe maybe this year

will be better than the last yes that's a killer opening line and always has been. And yes, it hits different. It hits harder in December 2021. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Smell of hospitals and feeling that it's all a lot of oysters but no pearls. A friend of mine from college, this girl Amy, she raved to me about that line once. It's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls. It really affected her. genuinely feel the despair in that line. It felt rude of me to say that I myself prefer the smell of hospitals in winter, and even that wasn't my favorite. I mean, as a kid, as a crowd and room to see the way that light attaches to a girl. I mean, as a kid, as a teen, as a young adult, as an older adult, how much would I have given?

How much would I still give to write four consecutive lines of that striking, that radiantly glum, that magnificent, the way that light attaches to a girl? How did the guy who strung those words together not have it made? I'm not even into Courtney Cox like that. Cougar Town is a great show, though. But how did the guy who strung those words together in a hit song who's hit video co-starred his girlfriend Courtney Cox not have it made?

The saddest aspect of the long December for me is that someone could write a sad song this fantastic and reap the spoils of doing so but still not be happy this is a melancholy so suffocating that writing a perfect song about it can't get you out of it where do you even go from there not out west that won't help adam duritz's good friend got hit by a car and was laid up in the hospital for quite a while, and Adam went to visit him a lot and had to smell said hospital in winter. That's what Alon December is about logistically.

Emotionally, it's about a very cautious, almost disbelieving hope. Maybe this year will be better than the last doesn't require much interpretation. Now more than ever. Yes. Yes. Okay. Our friend Steve Hayden wrote a lovely piece

for Up Rocks recently about Alon December is the ultimate holiday song. He wrote about the particular or desolation of winter in the Midwest. His favorite line seemed to be, I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her.

A lot of potential favorite lines in this song. A writer named Nico Stratis wrote a thing on a long December for spin. She wrote about what she called a back and forth love sick relationship she'd been in with a woman who was later diagnosed with cancer. Nico often went to visit her in the cancer ward.

Then the woman passed away. Nico writes that she didn't feel anything for a long time afterwards. She felt like a half-programmed robot. Then she writes, early December of that year, I had to drive out of town for work. I was a construction worker at the time, and I had to drive hours away down some long Yukon highway to do some constructing. I loaded into my Ford Econnelline van, top myself up with coffee and cigarettes and an FM transmitter so my click-wheel iPod could play through the van's meager stereo. Some out on the highway in the dark early hours of the winter, a long December came on shuffle.

I pulled my van over to the side of the highway and cried until I had nothing left. That'll change the tenor of your whole day. Reading something like that, I'm glad I read that. It sure puts me shivering and confused in my bedroom before I went to play laser tag into perspective. A long December has this power, I think, to intensify whatever melancholy you've got lurking inside you,

whether you're dealing with something truly heavy or just something frivolous that just feels heavy, even if that in turn makes you feel a little silly. And like Adam said, the specificity, the proper names, the solipsism helps fuel your own solipsism. The more personal the song gets, the more universal the feelings it inspires. How much of pop music, the magic of pop music, is just that alchemy, that contradiction? Much to think about. Okay, yikes. I try to tell myself to hold on to these moments as they pass.

Who am I kidding? That's the line. That's the line that knocks me flat every time. What I'm feeling really ornery, though, you know what I try to convince myself is the single best moment in this song when he goes fh, the little flustered, agonized,

right before he sings, and it's so long since I've seen the ocean. For so long since I seen the ocean. You hear it, right? You feel it, right? I used to have this idea. Who am I kidding? I still have this idea that my life would culminate with me creating one perfect thing

that would justify all of it, right? A song, a record, a novel, a screenplay, a viral short story, a smashed McDouble caliber tweet, I don't know. The fantasy changes. The goalpost. move. But along December, when the winter light hits it just right, when the song hits me just right, feels like the platonic ideal of that endpoint, that artistic and professional peak of my whole existence, make something this pure and this beloved and you're happy forever, as happy

as you can be. Here's what Adam Duritz told our friend Steve Hayden. This will change the whole tenor of your day too. He says, for most of my life, there wasn't anything as important as writing a song. There wasn't anything as important as playing it or recording it, and it certainly took precedence over being happy. I thought that being happy, people made too much of it. It just wasn't possible to always be happy, and not everything you do in life should be geared around that. We have a career that is a hobby for a lot of people, so they associate it with fun, but we do it because it's who we are. Not that it's not fun, it is, but it's our job, too. It's not always fun, but it's not supposed to be.

That's like for kids, but it's supposed to be meaningful. He's not done talking yet, but this is all turned out substantially more emo than I intended and I feel bad. So as an interlude, here's a clip of Porky Pig singing Blue Christmas. Okay, Adam goes on. He says, there was a part of me that thought it didn't matter if I was happy because I was making music. making a mark and how it's going to be remembered and that seemed to be everything. He talks a little about struggling with mental illness as he's done for his whole life, or at least his whole career,

and quite publicly as well. And he says, I guess what I'm saying is, I think there are things that are more important now. There's a way in which I resent the songs or how for all those years it didn't matter what happened in my life because I wrote songs. That isn't a good replacement for life. That's just a way of describing life.

So I guess a part of me now resents my own habit of substituting songs for people, songs for relationships, songs for whatever. You can't wait too much longer to get your shit together because you only have so many years to live. End quote. Ah, man. Here's more porky pig. But I'll have a blue, ever be a blue, blue, blue Christmas. I actually do think next year will be better. We are thrilled to welcome Bill Simmons back to the show.

In addition to running the ringer and hosting the Bill Simmons podcast, he is the creator of HBO's new music box series of documentaries. And he is, I think it's safe to say, a Counting Crow's super fan. Thank you so much for being here, Bill. Yeah, I guess I would count as a super fan. I definitely out of the bands from the 90s, it's still one of the ones I still listen to. But I think when my daughter especially, it's her favorite band,

and I think that's kind of reinvigorated it for me. right because i i did notice your spotify wrapped bill your top five artists of 2021 are from five to one alonis morissette hall and oats juice world conier west in at number one counting crows that is a remarkable top five right and it's all kids related yeah honestly right all of it all it is first all of it is kids really i would not have guessed counting crows there that's that's that's the outlier that i figured was all you but that's your kids too yeah i mean your kids kids, you end up passing music you like down to them. Alanis was a good example because we were working on the music box doc.

And I showed my daughter a rough cut and she just started listening to them. So it's a lot of like when you're driving around and they take the phone or whatever and they're playing. But kind of crows, see, I think it makes more sense than you because especially for somebody like my daughter who likes to sing and she thinks she likes the lyrics and stuff like that. Like they're just a really good band. Like their lyrics are good. The songs are good. The structures are good. They're fun to sing.

Like even for somebody like her voice, she can sing along. Like her favorites Mrs. Potter's Lullaby, but she has a bunch of them. And they, you know, I think they are one of those bands that they haven't released that many albums. Every album they've released and put out, I think has had at least a couple good songs on them that you put on a playlist. And then that stuff adds up. There's probably like 30 good ones at this point. Yeah. Did you make a conscious choice?

Like, I'm going to get my kids into Counting Crows now. Like, how did that happen? Interesting. No. I think when you're driving around a lot, you end up playing different music in the car. And there's different mood music, right? Like, Counting Crows is a good one. It's a great road trip band, right?

Sure. Totally. One of the things, especially when you're in soccer, you're driving around Southern California for hour, two hour, whatever. And so a place that has a lot of tournaments is, Norco, which is like an hour from here. And it's just put on counting crows. Lately it's been the Beatles.

Like I think the Get Back documentary got us really into the Beatles again. So just like whatever mood you're trying to create. And for soccer especially, it's like mellow. Like she's trying to get ready for the game. And you just want something that you can kind of sing along to, but you know, we're not listening to Guar or tool. You know, there's. We don't want her too hyped up.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You got to ease into it. I see. I see. There's been some ones that didn't take as the way I thought, though. Like who?

Like, yeah. Who don't they like that you liked from the 90s? Who have they rejected from your personal canon? Oh, from the 90s? Well, definitely, my son loves Nirvana. I mean, he had a whole Nirvana fage. But Pearl Jam, neither of them, huge on Pearl Jam, which really honestly hurt my feelings. I think I wanted my daughter to love Oasis more than she does.

She probably likes like three, four songs, but I really wanted that to be one for her. I mean, the biggest one leaving the 90s is Springsteen, just not being able to get them to like Springsteen. Nothing, nothing for Springsteen. Even with counting crows, it would seem like that's the logical next step. If you start with counting crows,

you would get into Springsteen. But no, huh? You're sitting down, thank God. Out of all the 90s bands, the one that surprised me the most with my daughter was Goo Goo Goo Dolls. Goo Dolls. Oh, she's 16.

They actually do have more songs than I think people realize. And she just thinks they're like geniuses. She loves the Goo Goo Goo Dolls. Totally. And I think Iris. Oh, my God. They have so many good ones. And I think that band at least 50% was destroyed by their choice of a name.

That is a very... One of the worst names probably ever for a good band. 50 to 80%. Yeah, yeah. I'm with you on that. Nobody wants to wear a Goo Goo Goo Dolls T-shirt. I think they agree with you at this point. They don't seem too hype on the name at this point.

One other one that surprised me. The wallflowers. Yes. That they like them or that they don't like them. No, that my daughter likes them. No, that makes total. I mean, that's sort of a sister band of counting crows. That seems like, you know, just that's not even a next step.

You're just in the same place. And that's, yeah, that makes total sense. You say that as like a half compliment. It's like a half compliment. It's a sibling band accounting cruise. Rob said derisively. Mostly, mostly a compliment. Yeah, mostly common.

My boys are 10 and 8, and I think they're already suspicious, like when I play them something, like they're resisting my efforts to brainwash them. Like, it's a tricky thing to try and get a teenager to love something that you loved as a teenager, right? Yeah, once they had 12, 13, like my, actually really with boys, it's probably 11, but that, you know, my son really got into juice when he was like 11, and I wasn't listening to juice. And I started listening to him because he kept putting him on in the car.

and there's been a few hip-hop rap artists like that too. Like MF Doom he's really into and things like that. I think my best brainwashing ever was Kanye with both of them. And that was super early. We're talking when my son was like five and my daughter was seven. And I just started playing Kanye. I wanted them to understand, you know, what good music was, what kind of beat is relatively safe.

I mean, there's some tough ones, obviously. like, you know, there's some songs that maybe the lyrics aren't fantastic for young kids. You didn't play them Yeezus, I hope. Maybe that wasn't. Maybe Runaway has a couple tough parts. But their favorite was family business. And that's actually a relatively clean Kanye song. You know, Gold Digger has a couple bad words in it.

But Gold Digger is another one that's relatively safe. But family business was the one that they loved. And we've been singing in the car. and they just think. So they've been with Kanye the entire ride. They're very protective of them. If you follow my son on Instagram, he'll do Kanye quotes. He'll be some crazy Kanye quote.

And he'll just be like, quote, ye. Like it's like this profound moment. So that one works. That one works. Do you, when you're, does, do the counting crow sound like classic rock to your daughter? Like it's wild to me, her getting into counting crows now, the way like people who are teenagers in the 90s might have gotten into the who or something. Like, does she hear it explicitly as old music?

No. No. And I think, I don't think that generation differentiates between eras and music the way ours did, right? I was very aware of it growing up in the 80s and then into the 90s of like there was formats and there's classic rock and, you know, Elton and Billy were over here and Led Zeppelin was over here. And then Van Halen came up and he's over here. foreign journey over here and everybody was in their little bucket. Everyone was siloed, yeah. She loves hollow notes, which is one of the reasons that became, that ended up on my

last minute playlist. But she sings all those songs and the harmony of them. And they had this, there's this 1976 performance they have on like the, it's like, you know those YouTube clips or those shows they used to have in the 70s? It's like the old whistle test or whatever those. Old gray whistle test. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they do a thing of She's Gone, which is probably still one of the five best things you can find on YouTube.

And everyone makes fun of Oates. And maybe certainly with reason with some of the album covers of the posters they've done. I get it. I get it. Oates an easy target. But he's unbelievable in this. And the harmony of those guys, when their voices were really young, you know, voices get deeper as you get older. But the notes Hall could hit and the notes Oates could hit.

So we love that. And that got her into. Hall notes. So she doesn't think of it as like old, new. The only thing with new is just when it's somebody like Olivia Rodriguez, where she's just like, oh, my savior has arrived, you know, and that's when the new, that's when you feel the new thing, or Billy Ilish two years ago. Right. So I really know that video of your daughter playing Mrs. Potter's lullaby, like from the Kind of Crow's third album from this Desert Life in 1999. Am I right that that's one of your personal favorite Counting Crow's songs? Like, what is it about that record and that song?

for you specifically? Well, I think some of their best songs, and I think, like, you know, to me, an essential counting crow's pieces when they do the, it's kind of like an unplug concert. It's like 97.

They do the one in New York. And for the most part, it's all over the map, some of the performances. And we can talk about, you know, some of the issues Duritz has when he sings live or he just, he mixes it up to the point

that the audience actually gets upset. But they saying, have you seen me lately and the Angels of the Silencees and that, I think the first disc. And it's a more slowed down, stripped down version of it. And, you know, as she, I don't know if she's ever going to, like, write her own songs or whatever because she loves singing.

But we would listen to those two versions of those songs and then the actual versions on the albums and how different they are. And I think that's one of the last pieces for a band. This is like Cobain. That's why the Nirvana unplugged is so crucial. when you can reinvent your own song with a completely different feel and rhythm, and it almost becomes like this separate property, and it's like two distinct versions of the same song,

and they don't really overlap at all, that's such a hard place to get to. So we would talk about that and kind of like, what was so good about those unplug things? What did they do differently with those songs? How do you reinvent that song? Because if you listen to Have You See Me Lately on that album, it's a fast song.

Like the lyrics- It's a rockin. The lyrics are really rich, but you're not really thinking of it because it's kind of one of the more rocking songs they have. Same for Angel's Sounces. But when you listen to the slower version, now it's this painful, painful song about I'm on the road and disappearing. Yeah, I don't know where the fuck I am in my light. I hear myself on the radio and I'm famous and I don't even know who I am anymore. Like it's all the, it's the classic like second album stuff that I think a lot of bands have.

but I think that's one of the best versions of it. So, you know, like a long December is another one where that song, which was a huge song in the mid-90s, I think it's probably the biggest song from that second album. And I think people thought they knew what it was about. And they assumed it was about, you know, because he's dating every actress at the time. They assume it's like about one of the friends.

But it wasn't. Like he talked about it on my podcast. It was about this friend he had who got injured. And it was a song about that. but I think, you know, that was still, that was the tail end of the mixtape era when you made mixtapes for whoever you were dating or even for your friends or for a party or whatever. And that was always kind of the, a mood kind of song you would put on a mixtape. And I actually think that hasn't aged as well as some of the other songs in the album.

But I think it's a really important Count and Crow song because there was so much anticipation. I'm sure you covered it in your intro, but there's so much anticipation for that second album because they really seemed like they were like the modern day. Van Morrison after that first album. And those were the stakes. It's still one of the best, it's still one of the best beginning to end first albums anyone's ever had, in my opinion.

Right. You had Adam Duritz on your podcast, and you talked to him about the idea of a track list as a batting order, right? Like, it's so important. Like, every song has to fit into a certain place. What do you think it is about, like, the first two records, really?

Like, they work so well together in sequence. And, like, everything is in its right place and it enhances every song. like the position that song is on the album. Like, that's really hard to do. Like, why do you think Counting Crows did it so well, like, so immediately? I honestly don't know, and I don't know why more people haven't done it that way. I do feel like it's the tail end of an era because by the time we get to the 2000s,

people are thinking more like songs. And once iTunes comes in, what was that, 2004? 2003, 2004. Napster before that. but really iTunes when people were just cherry-picking songs they liked, and that just completely changed the concept of everything. The album is dead, right. Yeah, and I know.

You've talked about that before. I still feel like in that 92, 93, 94, 95 range, the concept of an album really mattered. Like, what were you trying to say? Like, a really good one that nobody would even go look him up on Spotify. He has some bangers. It's Matthew Sweet. I love Matthew Sweet, dude.

That first album he has, it's like Evangeline, and I've been waiting. girlfriend. And it's like this guy who's like he's, he loves love, but he keeps fucking it up. And that's what all the songs are about. And it just kind of makes sense in the moment. And I think for that first Counting Crow's album,

you get this sense of like, and he talks about, he talked about in the pod, like this guy was these big dreams. He can kind of see the landscape. He's stuck in a place, right? For them, it was always Baltimore. And just kind of,

it's almost like a bunch of short stories. I think it's an amazing album. I would defend it to the bitter end. Like if the construct of that album, how he picked all the songs, I think it ends with the murderer one, which is like one of the best closers. And that song kind of gets lost because that song had like eight hits. Mr. Jones swallowed up that album for better or worse.

You know, it just was to the point that I don't even like, I don't even listen to Mr. Jones anymore. It became one of those songs. I think there's probably three or four better songs than that album. Mr. Jones still really good. But when it got to that second, an album, there were real stakes because it felt like they were the legacy to this type of music that they hadn't succeeded for a ton from the 70s. It definitely didn't really exist at all in the 80s.

And they were bringing back kind of this songwriting, a little folksy, a little bit country, not too much. And then this really charismatic singer that was really polarizing almost immediately. Like guys just instinctively were mad that he was dating all these actresses, you know? They really were. They really were. They really. upset us. I was one of them. I was furious. I was like, this fucking guy, he's getting everybody. What's his secret, Bill? Just at the bottom of everything. Is he just that charismatic? I think it's really easy for guys like him who can sing on stage and who have meaningful lyrics in their songs, many of whom are about the ladies. Like that story he told on my podcast about

Monica Potter, how he became enchanted of her in a movie, wrote a song called Mrs. Potter's by and somehow ended up on a date with her almost immediately like there we go how do we even identify with that what world is that this alter universe so there is no blogging equivalent to that move unfortunately nobody's like hey i read your i read your blog post uh let's go to dinner i think they became underrated by the early 2000s because their concert performances were so polarizing people were mad at him but he was dating everybody and their first two albums were really, really, really high end. And I think they've stood the test of time.

You know, you think, like, how many people have had that many good songs that they've come up with over the years, you know? And I think you still see the energy at their shows. Yeah. It's interesting you say that a long December hasn't aged as well as other songs for you, because I feel like a long December is the one, I'm seeing a lot of, like, think pieces and reevaluations and, like, personal essays about a long December. Really?

Even this year. It seems like a song that's, our friend's, Steve Hayden did one recently. It seems like this song is growing on people. Interesting. Yeah, I think people always liked it, but this seems to be the one song in particular that's enduring from those first two. I think you're totally right. A song like Mr. Jones, like I think Adam said on your podcast, it's like, you play a song that many times in the radio and people don't even hear it anymore. They just know it. And it blows right by them. But I think a long December, it got a ton of radio play, of course. But I think it's just enough under the radar just to like grow in

people's estimation even now. That's the way it seems to me. You think that's pandemic related? I think that's a lot of it. I think it's, I mean, it's almost hacky to say, but like maybe this year will be better than the last. Like totally, yes, that's an element of it. Absolutely.

You know, one other thing with them, they had so many good songs over like a five or six year run that three of them weren't even available on any of the albums. And you're big into this. The bootleg that got stolen from your car. Oh, yeah. But you can find them on Spotify now, right? Marjorie Dreams of Horses is really good. This is the one for you.

What is it about that song? You talk about that song a lot. He didn't even like it. I brought it up to him. He was like, yeah, I'm Luke War about it. That's fine. Yeah, you really dig that song. I like when somebody can pull off a long pause in his song.

But I like the concept of Marjorie. He would always have these two characters in a song. Marjorie and Maria would pop up in multiple songs, which I always appreciate when an artist is, you feel like you're in their universe. So it makes sense An extended universe, yeah. It makes sense that Maria is in a second song

or a third song because I know who Maria is or I think I know who she is. But they have Marjorie. They had Einstein on the beach, which never ended up on an album. Right. It was on, was it a movie soundtrack? Yeah, it was hearing that a lot of the radio.

It was like the Albert Einstein movie. And then the big one, which we talked about on the pod, but the song at the end of Rounders is probably one of their best 10 or 12 songs. It's just nowhere. It doesn't exist. He seems to agree. with you and it still doesn't exist. He said, didn't he say that he watched the movie just to hear that

song again? Oh yeah. Put that up somewhere. Yeah. I think, you know, this happens with writers too, but especially musicians where I think he was in such a good spot creatively for a couple years there. But then when there's like a little backlash, people start coming at you, especially him, sensitive dude, like every little, every swipe or whatever gets in your head and you become a little more self-conscious. I think there's nothing self-conscious about that first album. The second one's more self-conscious. In kind of the right ways, for the most part, it's self-conscious about fame and do I deserve this? Do I want this? Do I deserve it? What happened in my life? Was it better the old way? Those are all themes that are great with an album. The first one is not self-conscious. That's just like,

here's some great songs that have good lyrics. And the combo of round here, Omaha, to start an album, it's just really distinct, you know? Yeah. And I think there's that 90s and one of the reasons I love this podcast is there's just a lot of albums that are distinct. Right. Maybe that's coming back. I don't know. It may be Taylor Swift and Adele have certainly tried to bring back the concept of this album's about this.

Right. You know, Adele, the way she titles it after our old she is. And Taylor Swift's always there's some sort of intention. with the album that is pretty old school. Distinct eras, right? Yeah. How are you on Adam Duritz Live? Like, are you one of the super annoyed people who just wishes he'd sing it like he sings it on

the record because he just refuses to do that ever? Have you come around to that or is it still, is the live experience still a little hairy in that sense because he's like scatting or just quoting multiple songs in every song? Like, it's a lot to deal with Adam Duritz's life. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. And I say that as they're one of my favorite bands, but I'm out. Yes, that's clear. I respect that. I get why he does it the way he does it, right? He wants every night to be different, and he really cares about vibing with his band and fucking around with his band, and he doesn't want to just do karaoke. But there's something to be said for karaoke. I love karaoke. Billy Joel gets it, right? If he's going to play Vienna at MSG,

Yeah, 50 times. He's not fucking around. He's playing Vienna. You know, and I think it's funny, you two who used to do like kind of versions of their songs on steroids in the 80s, Bono would, you know, he would get a little, you get a little Randy in the songs, but not too much. But then by the early 90s, now he's pontificating and their speeches and there are, there are characters. He's got his own extended universe. Yeah, and he's judging us. I'm just like, I'm drunk in row 38 here. Can I not be judged? I'm in college. I paid $200 for this, Bono.

Yeah, I get you. I saw that at St. Patrick's Day in 92, 91 or 92. Probably one of those years. And I'm so excited Boston Garden. Just like this is like. St. Patrick's Day and Boston with you too. That is intensely Irish, Bill. It was so great.

And they were good. But Bono is really, he was really, really talkative. Little preachy. And the mass holes did not like it. They're like, just sing Sunday, Buddy Sunday and shut up.

I don't suppose they did. Yeah, they weren't huge fans of that. Wrong audience. Yeah. But yeah, I think with Dirk, it's like he decided

somewhere in the late 90s, this is what I'm doing. Right. And that's it. If I want to scat, I'm going to scat. Is a long December canonically a Christmas song to you?

Interesting. So this is like a holiday movie argument where it's like, is diehard a Christmas movie? I guess, I get a Christmas movie. Like, because it's said during Christmas, does that make it a Christmas movie? I don't. I think that's part of the reevaluation of it is like it's the perfect way to describe the holiday season now, like the endlessness, but the hope amidst the endlessness. I think that's the vibe I'm getting now, is that it's become more of a Christmas on than maybe it used to be. That's so weird. I feel, I feel like there's a difference between,

winter songs and holiday songs? Yes, totally. Like, you know, the greatest Christmas song of all the time. Do they know it's Christmas? That is a holiday song. And when I hear it on like December 3rd, I'm like, here we go. Christmas is coming.

Let's do this. And then you get, you know, some of the classics. I have my Christmas playlist like everybody else. I wouldn't put along December on a Christmas playlist. That almost feels like a gloomy winter playlist. It's a pretty downer of a, That would bring the party down. Yeah, that's a song you want to put on when it's like eight degrees outside.

You put on, you put on four pounds from Rice Krispy Treats on holidays. And it's too cold to go out and work out and you're just sad. And now you're playing along December. There you go. That's a vivid, very relatable image. So do you have it in like top five, top six for them? For counting crows? Yeah.

I'd have to say, I'd have to say it's my favorite counting crows. Wow. Yes. I'm not as deep as you are. I love recovering the satellites from beginning to end. That was the first record I got into. And I was going to say, like, along December only works at the end of that album. It only works as the second to last song of that album, even though it's the best song on the record, even though it's the obvious single. Like, it would fail completely as like track two or track five or whatever. Along December is my favorite song, but in the context of that entire record, it's very important.

in a way it usually isn't. Like, other songs can stand alone, and it does to a degree, but I think of it as a whole, and it shines for me within that hole. I think it was the first single from that album. Is that right? It was either, we played Angels of the Silences on my college radio,

but I don't know if we were just freestyling there. It is a banger. That's a good one of the rowdy. It's one of the rowdier ones, as you say. Angels of the Silence is, I think officially it was the first single. Yeah, that was good. Angels of the Silence is a long December and daylight fading. Ooh, bad third choice.

I wouldn't have gone with that as the third one. What would you say? Have you seen me lately? Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I think have you seen me lately? I think Catapult could have been on there too. Yeah, look, once those first two came out, plus everyone bought the album anyway, who liked them.

But I think having two songs come out of the gate and that second one felt like a bigger one. I thought that was the first one, but that felt like the biggest song in the album. But also, I have this vague memory of a video for it that had one of the friend stars. Is that possible? That come up in your research? For a long December? Yeah. Or for the other?

Oh, yes. It's Courtney Cox. It's just him and her, like, looking incredibly sad, like, just extremely, it's a very gloomy. It's appropriate in that way, but it's a very funny, very intense, morose type video that I think fits a song. Let me take you back to 1995, Rob. Please do. This is one of the biggest popular music bands we had. Friends is a phenomenon at this point.

Sure is. People still care about music videos in 1995. People are still going to MTV. MTV is like, I love MTV. Still a massive cultural force. And that video had those two in it. And just the fact that Courtney Cox was in another video with the Bruce Springsteen DNA from Right. That's right. That's right.

So that was like this moment. And that was when I actually think that video is when people probably started when the backlash probably started. We're like, all right, fuck this guy. Now he's getting Courtney Cox and fuck this guy. And I agree. Once you're in that fuck that guy's zone, it's tough. Yeah. You got to work harder at that point. That's what leads to Mrs. Potter's Loewby. You got to like keep reinventing. Yeah. That's your next book, Bill. The fuck that guy. Fuck that guy. I'm into it. Is there a great counting... Luca Dachach is in this right now. He's 260 pounds.

People are like, fuck that guy. Why is he so fat? He is. Yeah, he's looking pretty relatable to me these days. I agree. Is there a great Counting Crow's documentary to be made or will Adam Duritz just never let anyone point a camera at him for long enough to do that? Yeah, I think it would have happened already.

But I'm surprised there isn't something from the 90s. I mean, in general, like, you know, I think it's so much easier to make documentaries now. But the equipment's easier. When I was in college, we're lugging around like these 20-pound cameras that had the accompanying little pack with it. So I'm sure, like, following any sort of band on tour was pretty tough. But think about all the stuff that, like, should have happened from that era that we could have had. But people just weren't thinking that way back then.

I mean, hoop dreams came out. I'm going to say, 93. And that was the first time, I think people, like, like me even thought a documentary was supposed to be entertaining. Right. You know, when I was growing up, documentaries were like, this person went to Bosnia and spent seven years and taped whatever. And then here's their story and it gets nominated for an Oscar.

Hoop Dreams comes out and it's like, wait a second, what is this? Is this a movie? Why do I care so much about these people? And eventually it translated into music. Yeah. Well, there's still time. Bill, thanks so much for talking. This has been great.

It was a pleasure. I'm sorry. It's been a long december. for you, Rob. Next year will be better, Bill. I promise you. Thanks a lot, man. Thanks very much to our guest, Bill Simmons.

Thanks, as always to our producers, Lonnie Ronaldo and Justin Sales. Thanks very much to you for listening. We're going to take two weeks off. We will be back in the new year. But until then, without further ado, here we have Counting Crows with a Law in December. See you soon.