How Things Have Changed

Jen Simon brought in a walkman so we could listen to old demos of Counting Crows. Apparently, she used to date Adam Duritz way back in the day and too cool to be my friend now.

Anyway, she hands me a walkman. It was a strange feeling to hold on of the again. It was big, clunky, had a lot of buttons and special features. The funniest thing was that I had no idea how to use it. It had arrows instead of REW or FWD, and the auto-flip option (so you don't have to change to take the cassette out to go to the next side) made it impossible to know which way to go. After all these years, technology has gotten to the point where I can't even work a walkman any more. Awesome.

By the way, I listened to the demo of Mr. Jones, which was just Duritz and his guitar alone in a room. It was awful. You couldn't hear his voice. The guitar was different than the final version, monotonous and dull. He didn't articulate the words and overplayed the emotional aspect. Makes you realize what a good producer can do.

The demo for 'Round Here, on the other hand, was great. Much more rock-oriented, though a little too 80's reverb-sounding for me. Amazing how he actually "made it" in the business.