This is usually the part where I give insight and background information for a new album, along with reasons why you should not waste another minute to buy it. I’ve chosen to devote efforts to a band that skips the consumerism and helps us survive a decade that included Creed, which was polled the worst band of the nineties by Rolling Stone in 2013; so in my opinion is completely justified by public vote.
Hailing from San Francisco, Third Eye Blind got their start in 1997, with top-ten charter “Semi-Charmed Life” and continued that sensation with numerous other hit singles while touring with U2 and Oasis. Lead singer, Stephan Jenkins, became a solo musician only after receiving an English degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
In 1995 former bassist of Fungo Mungo, Arion Salazar, guitarist Kevin Cadogan, and former drummer of Counting Crows, Brad Hargreaves joined Jenkins forming Third Eye Blind, so named to suggest the concept of the mind’s eye. Signing with Elektra/Asylum afforded the band a considerable degree of artistic freedom, and later that year they released their first album, Third Eye Blind. Subsequently, the album Blue, released 1999, sold 150,000 copies within its first month.
Despite the loss of guitarist and co-songwriter, Cadogan, and the writers’ block lasting six years, the later albums prove to be just as strikingly truthful and indispensable as their predecessors. Songs such as “Can’t Get Away,” “Crystal Baller,” “My Hit and Run,” album Out of Vein, and “Can You Take Me,” album Ursa Major, are comparable to “Semi-Charmed Life,” “Jumper,” How’s It Going to Be,” “Graduate,” “I Want You,” album Third Eye Blind, “Never Let You Go,” and “Deep Inside of You,” album Blue.
The band received awards for every album they released establishing Third Eye Blind as one of the most popular bands of the late ‘90s. Their albums received awards such as “The Billboard 200,” “Top Independent Albums,” and “Top Internet Albums” usually within the top 40. Every year from 1997 to 2003, hit singles excelled on charts like “The Billboard Top 100,” “Top 40 Tracks,” and “Adult Top 40,” www.allmusic.com.
“Fans found songs that they cared about and spoke to their sense of identity. And, that’s my short answer. Music is this identity generation device. I think the overriding energy about the lyrics is trying to make sense of things, trying to reconcile things, trying to come to terms with things,” said Jenkins in an interview with Rolling Stone.
The alternative lyrics combined with the soft rock, pop tempo blend have made TEB a difficult band to label. Taking cues from The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, and 70s rock in general, the band uses realistic atypical lyrics to identify with its eclectic target audience.
“We got Third Eye Blind together not because we wanted to join a scene, but because we wanted to make one of our own. … There was this whole sort of post-grunge noise pop thing going and the level of musicianship was really bad, sort of a limited emotional range addressed and what we were trying to do was have a much wider scope,” said Jenkins in an interview with Dutch National Radio, 1997.
According to an interview with The Rave, TEB is rumored to be releasing another album, Ursa Minor; if this is true, then it can be expected to uphold the legacy that makes the band unforgettable. A band that shaped a “semi-charmed life” that saved the “jumpers” of the 90s while transitioning into this millennium with their individual sound.
