Is this what you mean?
Here is a pic of mine (before I dyed the grout between the black tiles!).

sounds good to me. Only need of a "backsplash" across most of the kitchen is to prevent liquid seepage down the back side of the countertop. A line of tile sounds much better than a penny-catcher ledge of something running all along the back wall of the countertop and it gains you almost an inch of wasted counterspace.

Here's one that a friend of mine did followed by my less expensive plagiarized version at my weekend lake place. I loved this idea so much that I did the same thing in the bathrooms. One has 4" tiles, one has four inches of one inch green glass tile and one has four inches of one inch mixed stone tile.

{{!gwi}}

Thanks everyone...it is great to see pics of this in real life!