"I wish it was a small world/Because I'm lonely for the big towns."

The Song: "Raining in Baltimore," Counting Crows. Words & Music by Adam Duritz. Track 10 of August and Everything After, 1993.
How/when acquired: Purchased CD, 1994
Listen/watch here.

It is, in fact, raining in Baltimore as I type this, according to the news and an email I just got from my friend Sue Lin. We're supposed to get that rain, but not until tonight; right now it's just overcast and muggy.

This album will always be my soundtrack for 1994, beginning with New Year's Eve 1993, when it was playing at my friend Joanna's as we got ready to go to a party/concert. Almost 17 years later (!), it still holds up. I never got tired of it, although by the summer of 1994 Adam Duritz was apparently so tired of these songs that the versions they played in concert were almost unrecognizable.

I don't know how I feel about that. I respect an artist's need to keep material fresh for himself, but fans pay large sums of money to hear the songs they love. I fell asleep once at a Little Feat concert that turned into an extended jam session, with no melody I recognized as a song; shades of "Spinal Tap Mark II."

There's so much I love about living in a small town, but on days like this I wish I were closer to my family and friends. Here it is 2010 already; where's my teleportation device? Where's my jetpack? In a perfect world, I could spend my days in Gardiner and step through a door at 6:00 p.m. that would deposit me in Greenwich Village, or Cleveland Park, or Westwood.