Third Eye Blind

Speaking of alternative hipster rock, am i the last person on earth who still remembers all of the lyrics to Semi-Charmed Life? Remember when Michael Stipe needed someone to transcribe It's The End Of The World As We Know It and physically hold the sheet of paper up in their Unplugged? As far as i recall, Third Eye Blind never did an Unplugged, but i have referenced them several times over the last 2 years. Let's not jump off the skyscraper and instead listen to their self-titled debut. 

My fellow discerning drugs in music listeners will know that Alcohol is obviously at the top of the pyramid, with Marijuana being his Vice-President. Below that we have the Twilight tandem of Heroin and Cocaine. Bit of a free-for-all below that, but basically you have Amphetemines, Hallucinogenics, and Barbiturates. Third Eye Blind fall under the influence of cleaning your entire bathroom with a toothbrush, because "Ooh-wooo, Meth!" 

We're going to have to put the question of Stephan Jenkins's objective narcissism and business douchebaggery aside, because at the time they made it they thought they were still a group of friends. Filing articles of incorporation and trademark in his own name and relegating the rest of the band to contract employees came after he realized just how much money he was going to pay them instead of himself. Some people turn into monsters when they win the lottery. It just happened to turn out that Stephan was team Edward (a vampire, if you missed that Twilight set up). You can be a jerk if you own up to the consequences, but not telling your cofounding cowriter that you secretly cut him out of your verbal 50/50 is pretty terrible. More on that later. 

The album itself is about loss, or rather trying to avoid/deal with loss that stems from relationship problems, addiction, suicide, and splitting royalties evenly among all those annoying co-writers. 

Unlike Chris Martin, Jenkins's borderline obnoxious California nasal voice with an occasional lisp makes my knuckles itch from time to time. I'm not going to compare Third Eye Blind to Dave Matthews Band, but this album is very much like Crash in that you have to decide how you're going to listen to it. If you mistakenly think the feelings and perspectives presented here are normal and totally justified, then i'm gonna squint and make the paper-machet in my mouth face. This is wholeheartedly narcissistic douchebag type stuff, but the question is if it's serious or sarcastic. Is he saying these are the inner demons i need to work on, or is he saying everyone else is just not good enough in his eyes? Hard to decide since he never actually clarifies. 

Not everything misses the mark, only certain moments where "i'm not sure how to take that." Don't think i'm being overly fussy, that's a pretty well documented reaction to most everything he's done over the last 25 years. No one knows if he's being subtly introspective or if he's just being a self-important jerk-wad. I have a feeling his heart is in the right place, but he always seems to create his own fork in the road and end up taking the wrong tine. Consolidating stakeholder shares to a single person isn't necessarily bad, it definitely helps cut out the direct influence of industry goons from the decision making process, but Cadogan eventually realized that he didn't own his own songs, Jenkins did. Didn't work too well for John Lennon, and even though the settlement is private i can assure you that Cadogan walked away with ownership of the songs he wrote; splitting the money evenly (if that was Jenkins's intent) wasn't what Cadogan cared about, and he flat out refused to sign a million-dollar advance on an EP if he didn't own the songs he wrote or get production credit on it. 

More of that white-guy almost-rap, it was a really popular, now slightly embarrassing, trend at the time. Singing with rhythm like any drummer might do, as Tommy Lee vainly defended his own abysmal attempt at it. The tarot cards are all stacked against this album. That's where the "falling man" logo actually came from, we're way back in 1997, remember. 

But is it a good album? Only one way to find out. Man, this is fun. It goes by a whole lot faster than Coldplay's first album even though it's 15 minutes longer. 

So, i think the tricky thing about this album is that these are all reaction songs; he's responding to a situation that negatively affects him. If i've taught you anything it's that those reactions are 100% selfish and whiny 100% of the time, what's actually important is working through which one's are valid and which ones go in the dumpster. This album doesn't have a Sorting Hat moment like Harry Potter, so it's a bit unfair to force Stephan's shittily adolescent business decisions on it. 

Now the real conundrum, is this Alternative Rock? It's rock, obviously, but is it Alternative? Spoiler alert, no not even freaking close, this is total Mainstream for 1997. I know you're confused, but i think you'll agree that Foo Fighters was Alternative in the mid to late 90s, and but they survived the battle of the bands and they are now the platinum standard of vanilla Rock. This though, whether it's good or secretly ironic or not, is total mainstream "other people are cramping my style" garbage. 

It's a coin flip. I mean it sort of ends with the revelation that he can't fix the world, but what does that do to the previous 12 tracks? It's a "you can't go back, only move forward" statement, and in that respect i can say it's great, but you can still hear even that sentiment as a passive-aggressive "if you would only listen to me" kind of thing. I'm just gonna have to assume it feels like what reading my drivel feels like if you didn't know that I'm laying it out there to decide if the way i feel is fair or justifiable. Lots of times it is, but sometimes it's not. I really like this album, but i could definitely be wrong. It could be garbage and i'm intentionally reading it wrong. Stephan strikes me as a total douchebag, but i'm not at all convinced that he's actually trying to be that guy, maybe he's just naturally and tragically good at it.