The breakout hit that launched the career of Adam Duritz and his band Counting Crows is not the greatest song the rocker has written, the singer told Brooklyn Paper Radio, claiming that the band’s most-popular ditty “Mr. Jones” is not as good as some of its more recent work.
The singling-out of his 2014 single “Palisades Park” as better than the seminal ’90s classic came while explaining to hosts Gersh Kuntzman and Vince DiMiceli that songwriters can and do get better with age even despite Kuntzman’s claim that, for the last five or six albums, Bob Dylan has been awful.
“A guy can be really ahead of his time at a certain point, and it may take everybody a little while to catch up with him, and then they get it,” Duritz said. “But maybe he moves on to something different, and you don’t catch up with him next time.”
Duritz explained that at the beginning of Bobby Zimmerman’s career, a lot of people were critical of him, but soon realized it was cool. Forty years later, we have a chance to look back on it, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how good it actually was.
“Believe me, you’re a moron if you can’t figure out that ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ is a good song at this point, whether it was ground-breaking then or not,” he said. “Maybe he’s just interested in doing something else right now and we’re not quite seeing it.”
Duritz then pointed his fondness for “Palisades Park,” claiming that it has the best arrangement his band has ever pulled off, that it is difficult to play live, and that he is proud of it on 50,000 levels — despite the fact it never has and never will get the airplay of hits like “A Long December.”
“It’s weird that it came in a time in my career when, no, the whole world is not going to know it,” he said. “But I’m still making music because your life doesn’t end when you become slightly less famous. You keep doing your work.”
And Counting Crows will keep doing its work this summer at the new Coney Island Amphitheater, where the band will play on Aug. 16, dual headlining with Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 — with opening act K Phillips and the Concho Pearls.
“If you’re coming to the show, come out early and see K Phillips,” Duritz said. “That kid is a genius. He’s worth seeing.”
The August concert will be the band’s second performance in Brooklyn in its long touring history, but two of its videos including “Palisades Park” and “Big Yellow Taxi” were filmed here — largely in Coney Island.
Also on the show, author Joshua Fischer talks about his new book “Meet the Regulars,” which looks at where famous and not-so-famous Brooklynites like to hang out.
Brooklyn Paper Radio can be found, as always, right here on Brook
Brooklyn Paper radio is recorded and podcast live every Thursday at 4:45 pm from our studio in America’s Downtown.
