Episode 274: "Recovering the Satellites" Counting Crows (1996)

  1996 was a wild time. The President played saxophone, got BJs, and "smoked" grass.  A "Florida Man" tried to kill Bjork with a mail bomb and got WAY too close to succeeding.  The Feds caught up with Ted Kaczynski who tried to kill some professors with mail bombs and unfortunately was quite successful.  Tupac was gunned down in Sin City.       Grunge was also dead. Buried by waves of Bushes and Seven Mary Threes.  Yeah, we still had Rage Against the Machine but they were headed into the "Renegades" era.  The Strokes were just getting their first pubes and Metallica got haircuts.  "Rocking" was becoming precarious.       Was there another option?  Maybe, just maybe, we could all just chill the F out for a minute.       Enter the Crows.       Their second album hits all the right notes for this foul year of our Lord.  Mellow enough but without the Hootie-isms.  Poppy enough but with a poetic bent that owed itself to its Bay Area roots.  Just "rockin" enough to fend off Oasis fans at a festival.      Let's party like Woodstock '99 hasn't happened yet.