Counting Crows---Far From The Madding Crowd
Without Prejudice
The Counting Crows song of Round Here on YouTube, take a listen.
The intro to this song is quiet, in fact you think the sound is not working, then comes a haunting guitar riff. I love the intro and this song is one of my favourites of all time.
The trouble is the radio dee jays play Mr Jones much more. Mr Jones probably a more popular choice. The lead singer, Adam Duritz embodies in body movement the build up to the end. Building in music and voice until the end frame. I was shocked by the last frame.
This song for me brings so many memories of my Mum. Her loneliness, her fear, her isolation until the end.
The Groups name is taken from a Child's Nursery Rhyme or a divination
Rhyme that suggests that,
" Life is as pointless as Counting Crows."
There is considerable variation in the lyrics used. A common modern version follows:
- One for sorrow,
- Two for joy,
- Three for a girl,
- Four for a boy,
- Five for silver,
- Six for gold,
- Seven for a secret,
- Never to be told.[1]
Origins
One magpie at the birth of Jesus, perhaps presaging sorrow for Mary:[2]Piero della Francesca's Nativity.
The rhyme has its origins in superstitions connected with magpies, considered a bird of ill omen in some cultures, and in Britain, at least as far back as the early sixteenth century.[3] The rhyme was first recorded around 1780 in a note in John Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquitieson Lincolnshire with the lyric:
- One for sorrow,
- Two for mirth,
- Three for a wedding,
- And four for death.[3]
One of the earliest versions to extend this was published, with variations, in Michael Aislabie Denham's Proverbs and Popular Saying of the Seasons(London, 1846)
Crows are supposedly harbingers of death. Or at the least unlucky symbols.
Their colour, their eating of Carrion, their harsh call, all help to perpetuate this myth.
They were supposed to be at Christs birth, causing sorrow for Mary.
The songs lyrics are what " grab " me.
The loneliness of the " Mad " and the premonition of death by Suicide. As far as you are ever going to get hence the " Far from The Madding Crowd" term in my title of this story.
Take a listen, it's haunting
