Songoftheday 5/4/19 - I was down at the New Amsterdam staring at this yellow-haired girl, Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation with a black-haired flamenco dancer...
from the album August And Everything After (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: unable to chart
Billboard Hot 100 airplay peak: #5 (one week)
Weeks on the Hot 100 Airplay top-40: 38
Today's song of the day comes from the alternative rock band Counting Crows, who came together at the start of the 1990s with singer Adam Duritz and guitarist David Bryson in San Francisco. Adding drummer Steve Bowman, bass player Matt Malley, and keyboardist Charlie Gillingham, the band's first big break came when they played the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Van Morrison at the beginning of 1993. In the fall of that year, the band released their debut album August and Everything After. The song first promoted to radio from the set was the jangle-pop classic "Mr. Jones". Written by the entire band and produced by T-Bone Burnett, the song painted pictures of guys aiming for fame in the music industry. After three months of low-level promotion, MTV got on board at the end of the year, as did rock radio, and soon the song became a hit, then a smash despite not having been released as a proper single...
Since "Mr. Jones" wasn't released as a physical single, it was disqualified from appearing on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 chart in America. But on their monitored airplay component, the song was massive enough on mainstream radio to reach the top-5 in July of 1994. The song also climbed to #25 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, spending half a year there. And of course, the song was a staple on rock radio, spending three weeks at #2 on the Modern Rock chart, and two weeks at that position on the Mainstream Rock list. Internationally, the single topped the Canadian singles chart for one week, and reached the top-40 in France (#7), Australia (#13), Austria (#27), and the UK (#28).
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Here's the band appearing on SNL in 1994...
And in a small live gig in Germany for TV that same year...
Here's their appearance at Woodstock 99 in 1999....
and finally, fast forward to their 2014 tour...
Up tomorrow: A Canadian vocal queen is being duped.
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