Songbook #4: Mr. Jones
Mr. Jones and me tell each other fairy tales,
And we stare at the beautiful women,
"She's looking at you. Ah, no, no, she's looking at me."
Counting Crows
Mr. Jones
I could have picked any number of songs for this slot. Options included "Hey Jealousy" (Gin Blossoms), "Come to My Window" (Melissa Etheridge), "Run-Around" (Blues Traveler), "All I Wanna Do" (Sheryl Crow), "Ironic" (Alanis Morissette), "What's Up?" (Four Non Blondes), any number of songs by the Spin Doctors, tracks by the Goo Goo Dolls or Pearl Jam, "500 Miles" (The Proclaimers), "New Age Girl" (Deadeye Dick), "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" (Crash Test Dummies) fucking Soundgarden... the list goes on. What do all these bands have in common? They had massive commercial success during the only four years where I ever consistently listened to brand new Top 40 music, namely 1993-1996.
Is this usual? I have really have no gauge for how much new Top 40 the "average" person listens to in their lifetime. My gut feeling based on most of my coworkers is that most people listen to new music in junior high, high school and college and then promptly stop listening to any new music, but that's merely speculative on my part. For all I know my four years at the mainstream media trough is more than most, but at least I have some defense. I never consciously turned on the radio to listen to this stuff. I pretty much only listened to it when I was lifting weights, and if I wasn't at school or at home between 1993 to 1996 I was probably at the gym.
As I mentioned back at the start of this mess, I took football really seriously. There was the running, which I've touched on, but that was really only in the summer. Weight lifting was a year round activity. I went three or four times a week, every week, and unlike running, I knew what I was doing.
Obviously I didn't know what I was doing right away. I don't think there are any weight lifting prodigies who magically know what weights to lift to get the desired results. However, I was fortunate enough to have a membership at what was then called Great Plains. Their primary business was physical therapy; my mother had screwed up her knee skiing on a Boy Scout trip and had to get therapy. I joined up, and to my great fortune this gym had something that most of the subsequent gyms I have since belonged to had: trained PT staff, and free sessions with them. A guy named Jay set me up with a workout routine and then met with me every 8-12 weeks to adjust the routine. He made sure I understood why I was doing given exercises instead of just doing them blindly. In short, he was awesome and just what I needed.
I was more than a little pudgy in the eighth grade, and although I've never completely lost the gut in all my years of working out, I packed on a lot of muscle underneath it. As a lineman, I was told leg and core strength was more important than arm strength, so I focused my efforts there to phenomenal success. I squat-pressed 425 pounds ten times for witnesses my senior year, and actually did 515 during my first week of college football. I can say with absolute certainty that I was (and am) much better at weight lifting than I ever was at football.
The downside to all this was that the radio at Great Plains was perpetually set to the local Top40 station, which means that pretty much every night I heard the same songs in the same order. As a direct result I have large portions of all the songs cited above, not to mention many others, permanently wedged in the dark corners of my brain, where they occasionally break free and wreak havoc on my sense of musical taste. Don't get me wrong, "Mr. Jones" is a pretty darn good song, but it's pretty easily the high water mark for Counting Crows. Most of the other songs aren't even close to that good.
I can confirm this, because for a few masochistic years I actually bought many of these albums out of various bargain bins. For fifty cents here and a dollar there I picked up most of the albums that were big when I was in high school. To nobody's surprise, they're pretty much all terrible once you get past the focus track. How come my father got to go to high school during the era of The Beatles, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, etc., and I get stuck with a a bunch of crappy bands that for the most part won't be remembered by anyone in fifty years? How is that fair?
On a fun side note, the time I spent on various step machines, ellipticals, bikes and treadmills is also the only time I ever watched prime time network TV, which is why I have seen many episodes of Seinfeld, Home Improvement and Ellen. Thankfully, most gyms now have an ESPN option; it's not always good but it's always better than sitcoms.
I haven't been back to Great Plains since I lived at home prior to boot in the fall of 2001. Jay was long gone at that point, but Jill capably filled his shoes. Those five months was my last serious exposure to Top 40, and the music was even worse; "Hero" (Enrique Iglesias) and "Superman (It's Not Easy)" (Five For Fighting) figured prominently. It's pretty clear that the state of Top 40 had not improved since 1996. Since then I've managed to avoid most Top 40 altogether. No doubt I've missed a few good songs, but I suspect I missed far more bad ones in that time, so I'm ok with that.
Tracklist
#1 - Welcome to the Jungle
#2 - Runnin' Blue
#3 - Cryin'
#4 - Mr. Jones
And we stare at the beautiful women,
"She's looking at you. Ah, no, no, she's looking at me."
Counting Crows
Mr. Jones
I could have picked any number of songs for this slot. Options included "Hey Jealousy" (Gin Blossoms), "Come to My Window" (Melissa Etheridge), "Run-Around" (Blues Traveler), "All I Wanna Do" (Sheryl Crow), "Ironic" (Alanis Morissette), "What's Up?" (Four Non Blondes), any number of songs by the Spin Doctors, tracks by the Goo Goo Dolls or Pearl Jam, "500 Miles" (The Proclaimers), "New Age Girl" (Deadeye Dick), "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" (Crash Test Dummies) fucking Soundgarden... the list goes on. What do all these bands have in common? They had massive commercial success during the only four years where I ever consistently listened to brand new Top 40 music, namely 1993-1996.
Is this usual? I have really have no gauge for how much new Top 40 the "average" person listens to in their lifetime. My gut feeling based on most of my coworkers is that most people listen to new music in junior high, high school and college and then promptly stop listening to any new music, but that's merely speculative on my part. For all I know my four years at the mainstream media trough is more than most, but at least I have some defense. I never consciously turned on the radio to listen to this stuff. I pretty much only listened to it when I was lifting weights, and if I wasn't at school or at home between 1993 to 1996 I was probably at the gym.
As I mentioned back at the start of this mess, I took football really seriously. There was the running, which I've touched on, but that was really only in the summer. Weight lifting was a year round activity. I went three or four times a week, every week, and unlike running, I knew what I was doing.
Obviously I didn't know what I was doing right away. I don't think there are any weight lifting prodigies who magically know what weights to lift to get the desired results. However, I was fortunate enough to have a membership at what was then called Great Plains. Their primary business was physical therapy; my mother had screwed up her knee skiing on a Boy Scout trip and had to get therapy. I joined up, and to my great fortune this gym had something that most of the subsequent gyms I have since belonged to had: trained PT staff, and free sessions with them. A guy named Jay set me up with a workout routine and then met with me every 8-12 weeks to adjust the routine. He made sure I understood why I was doing given exercises instead of just doing them blindly. In short, he was awesome and just what I needed.
I was more than a little pudgy in the eighth grade, and although I've never completely lost the gut in all my years of working out, I packed on a lot of muscle underneath it. As a lineman, I was told leg and core strength was more important than arm strength, so I focused my efforts there to phenomenal success. I squat-pressed 425 pounds ten times for witnesses my senior year, and actually did 515 during my first week of college football. I can say with absolute certainty that I was (and am) much better at weight lifting than I ever was at football.
The downside to all this was that the radio at Great Plains was perpetually set to the local Top40 station, which means that pretty much every night I heard the same songs in the same order. As a direct result I have large portions of all the songs cited above, not to mention many others, permanently wedged in the dark corners of my brain, where they occasionally break free and wreak havoc on my sense of musical taste. Don't get me wrong, "Mr. Jones" is a pretty darn good song, but it's pretty easily the high water mark for Counting Crows. Most of the other songs aren't even close to that good.
I can confirm this, because for a few masochistic years I actually bought many of these albums out of various bargain bins. For fifty cents here and a dollar there I picked up most of the albums that were big when I was in high school. To nobody's surprise, they're pretty much all terrible once you get past the focus track. How come my father got to go to high school during the era of The Beatles, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, etc., and I get stuck with a a bunch of crappy bands that for the most part won't be remembered by anyone in fifty years? How is that fair?
On a fun side note, the time I spent on various step machines, ellipticals, bikes and treadmills is also the only time I ever watched prime time network TV, which is why I have seen many episodes of Seinfeld, Home Improvement and Ellen. Thankfully, most gyms now have an ESPN option; it's not always good but it's always better than sitcoms.
I haven't been back to Great Plains since I lived at home prior to boot in the fall of 2001. Jay was long gone at that point, but Jill capably filled his shoes. Those five months was my last serious exposure to Top 40, and the music was even worse; "Hero" (Enrique Iglesias) and "Superman (It's Not Easy)" (Five For Fighting) figured prominently. It's pretty clear that the state of Top 40 had not improved since 1996. Since then I've managed to avoid most Top 40 altogether. No doubt I've missed a few good songs, but I suspect I missed far more bad ones in that time, so I'm ok with that.
Tracklist
#1 - Welcome to the Jungle
#2 - Runnin' Blue
#3 - Cryin'
#4 - Mr. Jones