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    <title>Counting Crows</title>
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    <description><![CDATA[<b>COUNTING CROWS WITH THE WHO IN AUSTRALIA!</B>

<img src="http://media.thewho.com/non_secure/images/layout_images/logo_target.png">

March 24, 2009
BRISBANE Entertainment Centre

March 26. 2009
ADELAIDE Entertainment Centre

March 29. 2009
Melbourne 2009 Forumula(TM) 1 Ing Australian Grand Prix
(On sale now - The Who & Dallas Crane only)

March 31, 2009
SYDNEY Acer Arena

April 4, 2009
PERTH Members Equity Stadium


<B>WELLMONT THEATRE SHOW POSTPONED</B>
Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz is fighting the flu and unfortunately will not be able to perform tonight at The Wellmont Theatre.  Tonight's (October 27) opening night show has been rescheduled for tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 28.  Counting Crows will perform Wednesday, October 29 and Thursday, October 30 as planned.  Tickets for tonight's show will be honored tomorrow (Tuesday) night, and tickets remain available for the Wednesday and Thursday performances.  We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to seeing you at The Wellmont Theatre tomorrow night.

<a href="http://www.virb.com/countingcrows/blog/948186"><img src="http://hotlink.myspacecdn.com/images01/18/18c11502a0d387a804c4e3c1d254252c/m.jpg" border="0"></img></a>
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Join Counting Crows' social network on <a href="http:// countingcrowsofficial.ning.com ">NING</a>!
Join in on discussions, get exclusive info and content and create your own profile page and blog.  Contribute to the info and content on the network by uploading your own Counting Crows photos, videos and stories!

Join here: <a href="http://countingcrowsofficial.com ">www.countingcrowsofficial.com </a>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<b>MEET THE COUNTING CROWS BACKSTAGE...BRING YOUR FRIENDS!</b>
100% of proceeds benefit GreyBird Foundation
<img src="http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t230/SneakAttackMedia/ccimage.jpg" />

Hey, it's Adam from Counting Crows and I've got BACKSTAGE PASSES just for you to every show on this tour. The GreyBird Foundation is all about finding people who care enough to get involved. So if you're one of those people, Counting Crows wants you to come backstage so we can get a chance to meet you. If you want to come backstage to meet us, then this is the perfect auction for you! Aren't you just a little curious about what's going on back there?
 
If you are, <a HREF="http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/greybirdfoundation_W0QQ_nkwZQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZQQ_mdoZ" target="_blank">place your bid</a> to get a chance to hang out backstage with us.  The winner of this auction gets 2 backstage passes to the show! You get to come backstage and meet the band! You can have your picture taken! You can get our autographs (me and Charley have cool signatures)!

In addition to the 2 passes, for every incremental bid of $500, you get 2 more! So if you bid $1000, that means you AND 3 friends are heading back, and so on and so on. The higher the winning bid, the more people you can bring with you.
 
Please note - this auction is NOT for tickets to the show. This is only for backstage passes only. Winner and their guest(s) are solely responsible for purchasing their own tickets to the show. However, if you REALLY want the meet & Greet and you don't have tkts, we'll just give you seats on the lawns. As far as I'm concerned, if you care enough to win the auction, you can have the lawn seats on me.

To place your bid on the show in your city, please visit:
<a HREF="http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/greybirdfoundation_W0QQ_nkwZQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZQQ_mdoZ" target="_blank">http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/greybirdfoundation_W0QQ_nkwZQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZQQ_mdoZ
</a>
For more info on the tour, please visit our 
<a HREF="http://www.ebay.com/greybirdfoundation" target="_blank">GreyBird About Me page</a>
 
For more information on how to support the GreyBird foundation visit our website: 
<a HREF="http://www.greybirdfoundation.org" target="_blank">http://www.greybirdfoundation.org</a>


<b>COUNTING CROWS ON TOUR IN IRELAND AND THE NETHERLANDS WITH THE HOLD STEADY AND MELEE!</b>12/16  Brabanthallen - Den Bosch, Holland (w/ The Hold Steady and Melee)
12/20  The O2 - Dublin, Ireland (w/ The Hold Steady & Melee)    
12/21  The Odyssey Arena - Belfast, Ireland (w/ The Hold Steady & Melee)

Fan Club [pre-sale] is Thursday August 14 5pm (local time) till Friday August 15 5pm (local time) 
Buy tickets <a href="http://www.ticketmaster.nl/cgi/request.cgi?l=EN&EVNT=COU1612&brand=nl_livenation">HERE</a>
Regular tickets sales start Saturday August 16 at 10am
In person: From 100 Ticketmaster Outlets Nationwide
24hr hotlines:
Republic Of Ireland - 0818 719 300
Northern Ireland - 0870 243 4455
Buy online: www.ticketmaster.ie


<b>COUNTING CROWS INVITE FANS TO DESIGN THEIR SUMMER TOUR POSTER</b>

To celebrate the launch of Counting Crows summer tour with Maroon 5, the band is calling all Counting Crows fans and artists to help create their summer tour poster!

One lucky winner will have their poster design printed and sold on tour.  

Entrants will create and submit an original tour poster design that captures the sound and energy of Counting Crows. You must submit your entry by July 1st, 2008.

There are just three simple rules:

1) The poster must be 18"x24" portrait or landscape.

2) Your artwork must be at least 300 DPI and be transmitted through the internet  (Files must be jpeg or gif and must be less than 10MB in size)

3) Any graphic elements you use cannot be copyrighted.

Please send your entries to winner@countingcrows.com along with your name and, of course, your email address.

Happy designing!

 <a href="http://going.com/countingcrows?src=v_wg__2470_aa59314570"><img src="http://going.com/badges/countingcrows/src-v_wg__2470_aa59314570/style-1/show_flyer-1/format-img/badge.jpg" /></a>

SATURDAY NIGHTS & SUNDAY MORNINGS
Counting Crows

Counting Crows' Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is just your average brilliant, unsparing rock & roll song cycle about the high life and the low life, about sin and whatever the hell follows. This is a dark ride -- Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is less Animal House and more Requiem For A Dream. So if Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is the last album that Counting Crows -- or for that matter anybody else -- ever releases, at least the band will be going out with one hell of a big bang. This is an album with two distinct yet deeply related halves that will not only remind longtime admirers of what makes Counting Crows a great band in the first place - it reminded the band as well.

"In my mind, we're an album band -- that's what we do," Adam Duritz says of the band that also includes David Bryson, Charles Gillingham, Dan Vickery, David Immergluck and Jim Bogios. "We make good albums. I don't know that we're a great "singles" band. We've had some good singles, but it's really accidental when it happens. Now with the whole world going byte-sized, we felt, and still feel, like it's more important than ever NOT to cooperate with all of that. So if the album IS disappearing as an art form, we wanted to make one last great album. We had a chance to make a point now and make a real album, an album that really means something to us, and this is as real an album as any we've made."

Saturday Nights-- the album's angry, electric, dissolute opening salvo -- was produced by Gil Norton (The Pixies, Foo Fighters), a longtime friend and associate of the band who previously produced the band's second album Recovering The Satellites. "Ever since Satellites, I've always turned to Gil for advice, and he was the only guy I ever wanted to produce Saturday Nights," says Duritz. The more acoustic and folk-influenced Sunday Mornings was produced by Brian Deck whose past credits include Modest Mouse and Iron & Wine. According to Duritz: "This is not unplugged Counting Crows. The great folk based albums of the Sixties and late Seventies like Carole King's Tapestry or Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water were not unplugged albums -- they were really innovatively recorded and creatively arranged albums with a lot of electric instruments. I wanted to find a guy who could make an eclectic modern version of an album like that, and Brian really came through." 

The combination of these two sides of the same coin adds up to make a deeply personal musical statement. For Duritz, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is "about dissolution and disintegration. It's about when Saturday night happens and you lose all sense of yourself. You dissolve into drink and medications and moral lack of self, and finally into a loss of faith and then madness. And it's about when you wake up Sunday morning and look back at the wreck you've made of your life and you think, "How can I possibly fix this? How can I ever climb out of this hole" And then you start to try and climb." But Sunday Mornings isn't about getting back to the top; it's about struggling to even learn how to climb. Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings isn't an album about sin and redemption; it's more the binge and the hangover.

	In a sense, that same journey was mirrored by the thrilling but sometimes maddening process of making Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings. "When we started to make this record, I began right away beating on the guys hard, and then they started beating on themselves," Duritz confesses.  "I had long talks with the band about all their gifts AND their limitations, because I thought this was our last record. I thought `I'm doing it and then I'm getting out.' And the first songs we had, like `1492' and `Los Angeles', were just statements of decay and disintegration because the album we thought we were making then was just Saturday Nights. I didn't even really conceive of Sunday Mornings 'til much later. At the time, I just knew I was tired of being in the band and I felt like that was dragging us into mediocrity. But then we spent twenty days with Gil in New York City in June of 2006 and we came out with music that felt real and raw. We went back on the tour that summer and we felt revitalized. 

At the beginning of 2007, we went back in the studio with Gil for another 3 or four weeks and finished Saturday Nights. We beat on each other over and over until we got better. I just said, "We can be great or we can just not be a band, and I know we can be great, so let's do it." We took a few weeks off and then went out to Berkeley with Brian and recorded Sunday Mornings in about 25 days. And that might have been even harder than Saturday Nights because we had NO idea even how to make that kind of music. We sort of had to teach ourselves on the fly how to compose and play this whole...I don't know...reinvention of our acoustic music, but it was worth it."

	For all that, Duritz says the process has only increased his tremendous respect for his bandmates. "People don't give the band enough credit for how amazing they are. How many times have you seen some young singer-songwriter guy playing in a club by himself and he's amazing? And then the album comes out and it's absolutely bland and flat. That's because his band didn't get him. My band has always gotten me right from the very beginning. The songs I write only come across because the band is so good at listening to me and to each other that they're almost telepathically dynamic. They're sensitive to every nuance of my singing, which means I can go anywhere I want to go. People think music is all about playing but it's really ALL about listening. Those guys...they're just great musicians."

In many ways, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings represents the latest and arguably greatest chapter in a story that began with Counting Crows' highly auspicious 1993 debut August And Everything After and continued with the group's excellent subsequent studio albums 1996's Recovering the Satellites, 1999's This Desert Life and 2002's Hard Candy. 

I first met Adam Duritz in a Paris hotel lobby only moments before Adam received a call from America that Kurt Cobain had killed himself. I was struck then as now with how much Adam took on his shoulders and his deeply ambivalent but complex relationship with the notoriety music would bring him. Less than the desire to be a star, Duritz has always had a heightened desire to be understood.

 "Even before I had one moment of experience with fame, I ended every chorus of `Mr. Jones' with `when everybody loves me, I'll never be lonely.' And you're supposed to get that's not true, okay? The guy is making a mistake if he thinks it's going to work that way. And I knew THAT before I'd ever even put a record out. I wanted to be a rock star, but the assumption that it will fix all the problems you have is just silly. And that misconception, ironically, has lasted for fifteen years now. I'm still catching shit from people who think all my problems should be...well...solved - perfectly intelligent people who still don't get that being famous or getting a girl doesn't actually solve all your problems. Often the most complex response I get is, 'Well, you asked for it.' I guess I did but...haha...well... I guess I did. "

Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is a remarkable album about the lives that Duritz has led -- at least in his head -- as brought to life by the only band that could make it all sound this real and this raw.

- David Wild



www.countingcrows.com 
www.myspace.com/countingcrows 

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      <title>COUNTING CROWS WITH THE WHO!</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/962559</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Arguably THE greatest live band ever The Who will make an explosive return to Australia in March/April 2009 for a national concert tour. The legendary band will play for the first time ever in Perth, and for the first time in 40 years in Brisbane and Adelaide. This is the news The Who fans have been waiting for since the band's last national tour in 1968!

The band last played Melbourne and Sydney four years ago, and were recently announced as headlining the spectacular concert to close the 2009 FORMULA 1(TM) ING Australian Grand Prix.

Promoter Andrew McManus is thrilled to have secured the rock legends for this very special tour. "I had the opportunity of watching The Who headline the 02 festival in Ireland last year and was simply blown away. This is a real coup in particular for Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane - 40 years is too long!"

Special guest support act will be the wonderful Counting Crows. Headed by the enigmatic Adam Duritz, the San Francisco Bay area band is a global phenomenon, having sold over 20 million albums worldwide. With a new album 'Saturday Night And Sunday Mornings', which debuted on the US billboard chart at 2, they are back on the road again.

Aussie rockers Dallas Crane have landed the highly-prized support slot.

Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Simon Townshend (guitars), Zak Starkey (drums), Pino Palladino (bass) and John 'Rabbit' Bundrick (keys) have just finished a US and Japanese tour, performing to rave reviews and are keen to continue on the road next year.

"We don't want to stop now," Roger Daltrey told Billboard Magazine. "We don't want those long hiatuses that we used to have. We feel at this time of our lives it's too precious a thing to take liberties with time. When you're young, you've got that time. When you're old, you haven't."

In spite of the loss of original members Keith Moon (in 1978) and John Entwistle (in 2002), the Who remains the standard-bearer for great live rock and roll and are still one of the most in demand live acts in the business. Recent U.S set lists include 'Can't Explain', 'Who Are You', 'Behind Blue Eyes', 'Won't Get Fooled Again', 'My Generation', 'Pinball Wizard', 'Tea And Theatre' and 'Baba O'Reilly' to name a few!

Their music still forms the backdrop to 21st century life and is all over television in such shows as all three versions of the hit TV series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and in many movies.

They have sold over 100 million albums and been an inspiration to everyone from The Clash to the Ramones to Pearl Jam. It is impossible to underestimate their importance in the annals of rock history. They have been honoured with every prestigious award going. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame by Bono in 1990 in the very first year they were eligible, the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005, the first annual Freddie Mercury Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, a Lifetime Achievement award from the British Phonographic Industry in 1988 and from the Grammy Foundation in 2001. And in an honour many bands would crave, The Who also is recognized in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's loudest band!

The 21st century has sparked resurgence in the creative collaboration between Townshend and Daltrey. The 2004 greatest hits collection "Then and Now" featured two excellent new songs, "Real Good Looking Boy" and "Old Red Wine Work", and the band released "Endless Wire", their first new studio album since 1982 in October 2006. The album debuted at 7 on the US Billboard chart and 9 on the UK albums chart, won a rave 4 Star Review in Rolling Stone and was well received by both fans and media, sparking their current world tour.

Counting Crows have been a huge presence in the music world; from initial hit single 'Mr. Jones' to the 2005 Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated 'Accidentally In Love'. Their latest album 'Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings' sees the band split their musical personality with the rock 'Saturday Nights' produced by Gil Norton (of Pixies and Foo Fighters fame) whilst the more acoustic 'Sunday Mornings' portion had Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron and Wine) at the desk.

Melbourne's sleeping rock giants Dallas Crane arise from their well earned slumber, (after spending the majority of 2008 taking a well earned break from the road), to join the bill. This will be the only opportunity for some time to catch the Crane back on stage doing what they do best.

TOUR DATES ARE:

March 24, 2009
BRISBANE Entertainment Centre

March 26. 2009
ADELAIDE Entertainment Centre

March 29. 2009
Melbourne 2009 Forumula(TM) 1 Ing Australian Grand Prix
(On sale now - The Who & Dallas Crane only)

March 31, 2009
SYDNEY Acer Arena

April 4, 2009
PERTH Members Equity Stadium

ALL SHOWS ON SALE WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 3

Tickets available at ticketek.com.au & 132 849
* Except Perth on sale from ticketmaster.com.au & 136 100]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:11:59 -0800</pubDate>
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      <title>COUNTING CROWS NETWORKS!!!</title>
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      <description><![CDATA[Join Counting Crows' social network on <a href="http://countingcrowsofficial.ning.com">NING</a>!

Join in on discussions, get exclusive info and content and create your own profile page and blog.  Contribute to the info and content on the network by uploading your own Counting Crows photos, videos and stories!

Join here: <a href="http://countingcrowsofficial.com">www.countingcrowsofficial.com </a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:41:03 -0700</pubDate>
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      <title>COUNTING CROWS WILL OPEN THE WELLMONT THEATRE WITH THREE SHOWS OCTOBER 27, 29 AND 30</title>
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      <description><![CDATA[Montclair Entertainment, LLC, an independent New Jersey concert-promotion company, today announced Counting Crows, with special guest Wild Sweet Orange, will open The Wellmont Theatre with three shows on October 27, 29 and 30.  

Tickets will go on sale to the general public beginning Saturday, October 4 at 10AM, at <a HREF="www.Tickets.com" target="_blank">Tickets.com</a>.  American Express Cardmembers may purchase tickets beginning Saturday, September 27, at 10AM through Friday, October 3 at 10PM.  In addition, a fan club presale will take place on <a HREF="www.CountingCrows.com" target="_blank">CountingCrows.com</a> beginning Saturday, September 27th at 10AM. A special three-day ticket will be available for purchase during the presales and general public on sale. The historic, newly renovated theatre is located at 5 Seymour Street in Montclair's downtown area.

Fresh off of selling out amphitheatres this past summer, Counting Crows will provide fans a rare chance to see the band in a mid-size, intimate setting at The Wellmont Theatre.  A global phenomenon, Counting Crows have been a huge presence in the music world, from their initial hit single "Mr. Jones" to 2005's "Accidentally In Love" which was featured on the Shrek 2 soundtrack and saw the band garner an Academy Award and Golden Globe nomination.  In March 2008, Counting Crows released their long awaited new thematic and double album "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings," which debuted at number two on the Billboard Top 200.   

Anthony Makes, who previously programmed at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles and the Chicago Theatre, currently books The Wellmont Theatre.

"It's an honor to have an act of Counting Crows' stature open The Wellmont Theatre." said Makes.
"Bringing a career artist like Counting Crows to such an intimate venue in the New Jersey and New York region makes this a great opening three-night run for us, and we couldn't be more excited to have them." 

Please visit <a HREF="www.wellmonttheatre.com" target="_blank">Wellmont Theatre</a> for schedule updates.

]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:45:20 -0700</pubDate>
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      <title>Meet Counting Crows Backstage...Bring Your Friends!</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/779798</link>
      <description><![CDATA[100% of proceeds benefit GreyBird Foundation
<img src="http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t230/SneakAttackMedia/ccimage.jpg" />

Hey, it's Adam from Counting Crows and I've got BACKSTAGE PASSES just for you to every show on this tour. The GreyBird Foundation is all about finding people who care enough to get involved. So if you're one of those people, Counting Crows wants you to come backstage so we can get a chance to meet you. If you want to come backstage to meet us, then this is the perfect auction for you! Aren't you just a little curious about what's going on back there?
 
If you are, <a HREF="http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/greybirdfoundation_W0QQ_nkwZQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZQQ_mdoZ" target="_blank">place your bid</a> to get a chance to hang out backstage with us.  The winner of this auction gets 2 backstage passes to the show! You get to come backstage and meet the band! You can have your picture taken! You can get our autographs (me and Charley have cool signatures)!

In addition to the 2 passes, for every incremental bid of $500, you get 2 more! So if you bid $1000, that means you AND 3 friends are heading back, and so on and so on. The higher the winning bid, the more people you can bring with you.
 
Please note - this auction is NOT for tickets to the show. This is only for backstage passes only. Winner and their guest(s) are solely responsible for purchasing their own tickets to the show. However, if you REALLY want the meet & Greet and you don't have tkts, we'll just give you seats on the lawns. As far as I'm concerned, if you care enough to win the auction, you can have the lawn seats on me.

To place your bid on the show in your city, please visit:
<a HREF="http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/greybirdfoundation_W0QQ_nkwZQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZQQ_mdoZ" target="_blank">http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/greybirdfoundation_W0QQ_nkwZQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZQQ_mdoZ
</a>
For more info on the tour, please visit our 
<a HREF="http://www.ebay.com/greybirdfoundation" target="_blank">GreyBird About Me page</a>
 
For more information on how to support the GreyBird foundation visit our website: 
<a HREF="http://www.greybirdfoundation.org" target="_blank">http://www.greybirdfoundation.org</a>]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:20:30 -0700</pubDate>
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      <title>COUNTING CROWS will play Ireland and the Netherlands with the Hold Steady and Melee!</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/758997</link>
      <description><![CDATA[12/16  Brabanthallen - Den Bosch, Holland (w/ The Hold Steady and Melee)
12/20  The O2 - Dublin, Ireland (w/ The Hold Steady & Melee)    
12/21  The Odyssey Arena - Belfast, Ireland (w/ The Hold Steady & Melee)

Fan Club [pre-sale] is Thursday August 14 5pm (local time) till Friday August 15 5pm (local time) 
Buy tickets <a href="http://www.ticketmaster.nl/cgi/request.cgi?l=EN&EVNT=COU1612&brand=nl_livenation">HERE</a>
Regular tickets sales start Saturday August 16 at 10am
In person: From 100 Ticketmaster Outlets Nationwide
24hr hotlines:
Republic Of Ireland - 0818 719 300
Northern Ireland - 0870 243 4455
Buy online: www.ticketmaster.ie
]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:26:17 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/758997</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>COUNTING CROWS/MAROON 5 EXCLUSIVE WEBCAST</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/755638</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Want to check out Counting Crows/Maroon 5 live, right here online?  Join us on August 7th at for an exclusive concert event.   The show starts right at 3 PM ET (1PM PT/2 PM CT) only at www.nowwhat.com/music_club.  See you then!]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:45:18 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/755638</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>CC Video Nominated for VMA's Best Pop Video</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/736148</link>
      <description><![CDATA[This year, the first round of VMA nominees will be voted by the viewers. And guess who's nominated for Best Pop Video?

Voting starts tomorrow (Friday July 25th) at 8pm and ends Wednesday at 11am. Vote <a href="http://www.mtv.com/ontv/vma/2008/best-pop-video/">here</a> to help us out!

View the **hopefully** award winning video <a href="http://www.geffen.com/artist/player/default.aspx?mid=3938&aid=83&bhcp=1">here</a>.



]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:59:56 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/736148</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>COUNTING CROWS INVITE FANS TO DESIGN THEIR SUMMER TOUR POSTER</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/674856</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Entrants will create and submit an original tour poster design that captures the sound and energy of Counting Crows. You must submit your entry by July 1st, 2008.

There are just three simple rules:

1) The poster must be 18"x24" portrait or landscape.

2) Your artwork must be at least 300 DPI and be transmitted through the internet  (Files must be jpeg or gif and must be less than 10MB in size)

3) Any graphic elements you use cannot be copyrighted.

Please send your entries to winner@countingcrows.com along with your name and, of course, your email address.

Happy designing!

]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:27:55 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/674856</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Yahoo...Apple...and VH1</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/573002</link>
      <description><![CDATA[YAHOO LIVE SETS
Check out  <a HREF="http://www.music.yahoo.com/nissanlivesets" target="_blank">Counting Crows' Nissan Live Sets performance on Yahoo.com</a>.  The band performed songs from their new album, <i>Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings</i> as well as some old favorites.

LIVE FROM SOHO
View a couple of clips from Counting Crows'  recent live <a HREF="http://www.apple.com/retail/soho/week/20080413.html" target="_blank">performance at the Apple SoHo Store</a>  in New York on March 27th (avaiable until April 25.)

VH1 TOP 20
Vote for <a HREF="http://www.vh1.com/shows/series/top_20_countdown/vote.jhtml" target="_blank">Counting Crows in VH1's Top 20 Video Countdown</a>.  You can vote as many times as you want, so get clicking.












]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:44:24 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/573002</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Possibility Days (Blog post from Adam)</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/572968</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Dated Monday April 14, 2008 8:20pm
Minneapolis, MN

I had a really hard time the day I did the photoshoot for Rolling Stone back in March. I couldn't stop smiling. I hate smiling in photos. I always feel so self-conscious and then someone tells me to smile and it all feels so fake. I end up with this stupid grin on my face. I look like an idiot. I used to feel natural. I used to be comfortable in my own skin. I used to occasionally feel in real life the way I do when I'm singing: like myself. But that was a long time ago, and then I had this photoshoot for Rolling Stone, the first in many many years, and I was really nervous about it...

...and I couldn't stop smiling. All because someone wonderful had just made me very happy. The photographer would tell me to move to a certain position and I'd turn that way. I was actually feeling pretty comfortable. I'd move to the position he wanted and I'd look deep or intense or one of those things I try to do to avoid looking like an idiot...and then a smirk would steal across my mouth...and then a smile...then a grin...and finally I'd start fucking giggling like a complete fool.

And then he'd tell me a new position and it would start all over again. Over and over and over.

I told her later that I thought she'd ruined me for photoshoots forever and that I'd probably never be a believable serious mopey guy again. She thought about it and said, "I think you've been sad enough in your life that you'll probably never be entirely free from that...but living in smiles is probably better anyway, isn't it?"

Living in smiles is better...?

Huh.

Yeah, I guess so. But how do I find myself in a life where that's possible. I can see finding myself in a photograph where that's possible. I have photographs like that, moments frozen, happiness captured and static and pinned to a piece of paper, memories strapped and caged in two dimensions. I look at them sometimes and remember.

"She wore a silly yellow hat that someone gave her.."

And then I put them back in whatever drawer they came from and I close the drawer. Because you can't live in them. They are one or two dimensions shy of actual life and we are all stuck living actual lives, whether we like it or not. Photographs and memories are all well and good but living in them...living in them is not the same thing as actually living.

And that's my problem. I've never been able to string the moments together to the point where they stop being a string of moments hung like xmas lights across my life and just start being a life. A life. Something you can live in. I would never have thought of a smile like that, but then again I would also never have thought to find myself grinning my way through a photoshoot like an idiot. But there I was, swimming through these days all lined up in a row like a real life.

Possibility days...

Another friend called me on Valentines Day and she asked me what I was doing. "You know I'm not doing anything," I said, "You know damn well this year hasn't exactly been a high water mark year for me as far as romance goes. I got booted on New Years Day."

She said, "I know. I hate Valentines Day. It's such bullshit. It's just this total fake holiday created by Hallmark to sell cards and all it does is make everyone miserable."

I said, "Oh, no I didn't mean it that way. It doesn't feel like that to me. I kind of like the idea of Valentines Day. It's a Possibility Day."

She asked me what I meant and I said, "I don't know. I guess I just think it's nice to have these days that remind you that things are possible because I have a really bad habit of thinking they're not. And it doesn't matter who invented it either. I mean, I know I'm gonna have a shitty night tonight but that doesn't mean I'm gonna have a shitty night every night. And if I'm ever in love and it happens to be on a day when we're all supposed to celebrate being in love...then I am fucking going to town. So I'm just gonna think of tonight as a down payment on some other night."

"Huh," she said and thought about it for a minute. Then she said, "Nah, you're an idiot. This fucking holiday sucks, tonight's going to suck, you're going to be miserable, and all this bullshit you just spewed all over me is going to seem as idiotic to you tomorrow as it does to me right now. Screw it, I'm going to a party. You wanna come?"

I stayed home. And then two weeks later I laughed my way through a photoshoot. But what does that leave me with? Photos? I already have those. Video? Strangely enough, I got that too. But...you know, it's just moments and moments and more moments and some longer moments and what?

What?

What? Because things come to an end. Not all things, I guess, but most things, and then what are you left with? Another set of snapshots, another set of memories, another set of moments captured and frozen in place...some are happy, some are giddy, and some are so sad, especially the last few moments as you feel time slowing down and your life, or the movie it has become, the life you have lived in motion, decelerating and separating into an ever more clearly distinguishable line of photographs again until there is no motion at all...just memories. You stare at them and then you collect them and press them between the pages of an album.

And you go back and you look for the place where the line snapped...but you don't find it because people are woven together on a loom in innumerable threads and there is no single one that snaps. There are only the places where the weaving begins to look more like a tangle and then you either untangle it and find the weave again or...well, love is a very fine weave at first (maybe always), easily divorced or divided from itself. It is a lace that can be easily untied, accidentally or otherwise.

Still, anyone who can weave...can weave again, I guess. It doesn't change the fact that there are always so many possibilities. There is always a tomorrow in which you are not doomed. I didn't understand that once. I watched love unweave itself and saw my life unwoven and untethered and I began to simply drift away. I don't think I'll drift away anymore. I hope not anyway. Things only end, after all, because they once began, so maybe all these endings are just the last things that happen before something else begins. Maybe you even come to an end so that you can simply step back and take a clearer look, then see a better way to begin again. There are things I wish I could begin again.

Possibilities...

I spoke to Gemma Hayes the other day. I sent her Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings a few months ago and she sent me her new album, The Hollow of Morning, more recently. The record, like all her best music is beautiful and jagged and distorted at the same time, all fuses and electricity and lace. It's brilliant, so of course no record company is interested. I told her how, in my opinion, that isn't such a bad thing for an independent artist these days. The world is an endless garden of opportunity for artists free to make use of all the possibilities the internet offers these days. Unshackled from the restraints placed upon the rest of us by the labels, anything is possible.

We hadn't talked in awhile and we spoke for a long time. I thought later about all the time and life that had passed since we first became friends over bottles of champagne backstage at The Point Depot followed by pints of Guinness and a run through the bars of Dublin culminating in an impromptu songfest as one by one, Dublin's finest picked up acoustic guitars and we all drunkenly sang a song for (to?) ourselves. I think Gemma sang "Helen Meets A Stranger" although my memory is not at all clear on that point. I know I stood in the middle of the floor and stomped my foot and sang an a cappella version of "Oh Susannah". I can't play guitar for shit. You do what you can do and I'll be damned if I was going to be the one who pussed out. It ended, like so many other nights on that tour, stepping out of the darkness of the bar into the disturbing and unforgiving sight of a sun already long risen and a day already begun.

I think that was five years ago, sometime in January of 2003.

So many things had happened to both of us since then. Still friends, we talked about the time between then and now and all the people that had fallen in and out of our lives. I think that was Jim's 1st tour with the band. She'd made two more albums and left Ireland for Los Angeles. I'd drifted for awhile, left Los Angeles for New York City, and finally made another album as well, two if you count the the evening and the morning (but after watching so many of the former fade into the latter, it's sort of cheating to do that). We'd both fallen in and out of love. But there we were, once again, with a pair of records finished, our lives spun from the air into the electricity and waiting to be plugged into all of you. We were so different than we had been back then but, in the best ways, nothing had really changed.

All art is the music of possibility.

The girl with the smiles and I went to see Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George the night after the Rolling Stone shoot. It's a play about the painter Georges Seurat and, in a greater sense, a play about all artists and the nature of art itself. At the very end of the play, his great-grandson, an artist himself, is reading from a book in which his great-grandmother had scribbled some notes of her memories of Seurat. The final lines of the play, spoken as the shimmering colors of Seurat's most famous work, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte" fade slowly into the greys of charcoal sketches and then to a few simple swaths of black paint on white walls and then to the white walls themselves, are:

"White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite...so many possibilities..."

And he smiles as the lights on the stage go out.

The girl rolled over one time and said to me "It's nice to just be happy and live for a minute in a perfect bubble that the world outside can't touch. It seems almost a shame to have to go back to real life."

You see, she was smarter than me that way. She knew a bubble when she saw it. I always think they're real life. I always think it's really happening...but the world is a dream for me sometimes and however nice and bright and full of possibility it seems, I always seem to wake up under a dimmer sun. It's because, even though I always say the opposite, I really want to stay in the bubble, or at least I did (maybe not so much anymore), and, in the end, you always have to pop it. You have to pop it and walk outside and find your way through a real day. You have to live without perfection and love a flaw.

I saw this bullshit artist on TV last Sunday morning and he said some crap about god wanting us to forgive each other our imperfections. What a pile of crap. What arrogance to think that someone's imperfection is yours to forgive. Why not just see it for what it really is: a perfect expression of something unique and incalculably rare and irreplaceable...like a spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose or a hand that can reach across your whole life and lay a palm against your cheek and make a bed into which everything you are can fall and rest. We spend our lives strung so tight across wires that stiffen us into far more jagged versions of ourselves than we were ever meant to be. We are so much harder and so much more brittle than our mothers ever intended. All that love...and then they let us go and we hang ourselves like scarecrows in solitary fields, hung up to keep ourselves from ourselves and far far away from everybody else

And then a hand touches your cheek and...

...and you still have to figure out how to live outside the bubble. Nothing changes that. I don't know how that works. I can keep something perfect but learning to love someone in an imperfect world...I don't know how to do that. I DO know that the bubble is just a photograph. I know a bubble will eventually just be a memory and even the best memories are always gone. But she said that living in smiles is probably better and I know that's true so everything that comes after is...so full of possibilities...

ad]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:34:11 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/572968</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Saturday Nights &amp; Sunday Mornings in stores!</title>
      <link>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/529788</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Counting Crows new album <i>Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings </i>is out today, March 25!

<a HREF="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=nsdzvYWNtqg&offerid=78941&type=3&subid=22&u1=countingcrows.com&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fphobos.appLe.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewPreorder%253Fid%253D274750195&s=143441 " target="_blank">PURCHASE ON ITUNES [Standard]</a>

<a HREF="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=nsdzvYWNtqg&offerid=78941&type=3&subid=22&u1=countingcrows.com&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewPreorder%253Fid%253D274753003&s=143441" target="_blank">PURCHASE ON ITUNES [Deluxe]</a>

<a HREF="http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?path=ASIN/B000WMGDD4&link_code=as2&camp=1789&tag=siteids100-20&creative=9325" target="_blank">PURCHASE ON AMAZON</a>



]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:52:38 -0700</pubDate>
      <guid>http://virb.com/countingcrows/posts/text/529788</guid>
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