Review: Maroon 5, Counting Crows concert

By Josh Eiserike

Published: August 18, 2008

I call it the “Two Jews Named Adam Tour.”

My sister and I headed out to Nissan on Saturday to catch Counting Crows (Adam Duritz) and Maroon 5 (Adam Levine) split the bill. We got stuck in traffic on I-66 and missed all of piano-soul singer

Sara Bareilles’s opening set (my coworkers had some nice things to say about her, so I was kind of disappointed I missed her performance).

Maroon 5 played the earlier slot with a fan-pleasing set.

The group is a better pop band than rock band (my sister, who enjoyed their set far more than I did, said lead singer Adam Levine reminded her of a Backstreet Boy).

Maroon 5’s catchiest — and best — tune of the evening, “Won’t Go Home Without You,” was sandwiched in the middle of the set. A mid-tempo soul number off the latest album, “Won’t Go Home Without You” showcases Levine’s songwriting chops and his ear for a hook, lost in some of the harder songs (not to mention a nice Police homage). The song was much better though, when Stevie Wonder wrote it and it was called “I Just Called To Say I Love You.”

Predictably, they saved their biggest hits such as “She Will Be Loved” and “This Love” for the end.

The Counting Crows seemed to gear its performance toward an introduction to new fans.

The Counting Crows have a longer history and deeper catalog than their tour mates but have been pretty much MIA since “Shrek 2” contribution, “Accidentally in Love.” (Not to mention the physical set, a clock tower complete with risers, streetlamps and digital screens).

The play list was a mix of the group’s biggest (“Rain King,” “Mr. Jones,” “A Long December,” and the aforementioned Shrek song), best (“St. Robinson and His Cadillac Dream,” “Up All Night” and “Catapult”) and new material (a few selections from this year’s “Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings”). That in itself is a pretty good mix to placate old fans and maybe win over some of Maroon 5’s audience, but the band was also in very good form.

I’d seen them a couple times before, once sharing the bill with Live, another time as the headliner. Both times I was severely disappointed. Duritz rambled on and on between songs, treating the audience to barely unrecognizable versions of favorites. Both times the band barely had a pulse.

Not on Saturday. Duritz had a clear head (pretty much the point of the new album) and sang his heart out. Even the between-song banter and charity pitches were passionate and well spoken.
The group of high school girls sitting next to my sister and me left a couple songs into the Crows set. From our seats, that seemed pretty telling of the crowd — which didn’t get to its feet until late in the show, during “A Long December.”

The good news, then, is the show was strong enough for Counting Crows fans to find something they liked with Maroon 5 and vice versa.