August and everything after (do I have nostalgia?)
Today, on social media, I saw that August and Everything After by Counting Crows is thirty years old. I don’t need a special “listen” of this album — it’s on my playlist, and its songs come up all the time when I drive or run. Oh, well, today, after seeing the thirtieth anniversary, I did have a special listen of August and Everything After. I played it in its entirety. It’s not just the hits that don’t tire. Anna Begins is one of my favorite songs.
I have such warm memories about this record. I came to the US for the first time in June of 1994. I was fourteen.
Did I have the best time of my life in the summer of 1994? Absolutely not. I suffered from anxiety. From Moscow to Kansas… I was a shy teenager from Russia.
When August and Everything After came out in the fall of 1993, I was already deeply in love with Western pop music, even though I was still in Moscow, but I don’t remember listening to Counting Crows before I arrived in the US.
In the summer of 1994, however, as I was settling down in Wichita, Kansas, this…
