Maybe I'm just getting old, but is seems like love in the 21st century is a lot more cynical than the idyllic 90s. Back then, when we wanted to call someone we had to use a pay phone ("Raining in Baltimore") and we had time to deal with "the status of (our) emotions" ("Anna Begins"). "Love is a ghost train" is such anachronistic imagery in 2010: nobody rides trains anymore, except for commuters in big cities, and gone is that perception of it being able to be "lost" in some kind of metaphysical fog, because the reality of modern life is that everybody is connected with Twitter and Facebook and there is no such thing as "disappearing" or "going off the radar" anymore.
Too bad, because the wonderful thing about escaping is not only the solitude where one can regroup and think about things, but also the comfort of getting "found" again:
And I get no answer
And I don't get no change
It's raining in Baltimore, baby,
But everything else is the same
There's things I remember and things I forget
I miss you I guess that I should
Three thousand five hundred miles away
But what would you change if you could?
(From "Raining in Baltimore")
Adam Duritz (lyricist/singer for CC) has crafted an entire album of anonymous "sameness". Sameness in thought and persona:
Gray is my favorite color
I felt so symbolic yesterday
If I knew Picasso
I would buy myself a gray guitar and play
(From "Mr. Jones".)
Sameness in location:
Omaha, somewhere in middle America
Getting right to the heart of matters
It's the heart that matters more
(From "Omaha".)
White light blindedness = too much information = sameness in situation:
Step out of the front door like a ghost into a fog
Where no one notices the contrast in white on white
And in between the moon and you
Angels get a better view
Of the crumbling difference between wrong and right
(From 'Round Here".)
Oblivious slumber is all I crave:
Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby
Try to keep myself away from myself and me
(From "Perfect Blue Buildings".)
I looked up at the calendar yesterday and realized that 1990 was twenty years ago. This album has held up surprisingly well. When it came out I remember a friend telling me that his impression of the album was that they were the "kings of jangle", and if you think about it, this came out right in the middle of the grunge surge, so it was groundbreaking for its time. Even then, it lyrically called for more reflection and introspection. It seems so out of place in today's technological millieu where, if you can imagine it, anything and everything can be produced. Some of my favorite bands are this way (re: Wilco, Radiohead). But from 1993, here come the jangling Crows, pulling us back to the heart of matters: it's the heart that matters more, and at the end, reminding us in the gentlest of ways, that true change doesn't come from being pushed and prodded by technology, but only after genuine soul-searching, introspection, maybe some gentle urging, and a LOT of talking.
I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow
Casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there
counting crows
One for sorrow Two for joy
Three for girls and four for boys
Five for silver Six for gold and
Seven for a secret never to be told
There's a bird that nests inside you
Sleeping underneath your skin
When you open up your wings to speak
I wish you'd let me in
All your life is such a shame
All your love is just a dream
Open up your eyes
You can see the flames of your wasted life
You should be ashamed
You don't want to waste your life
I walk along these hillsides In the summer 'neath the sunshine
I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me
Change, change, change
(From "A Murder of One".)
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