In the early summer of 1997, I vehemently remember the job that entertained my waking hours of that season. Mowing grass had become a zen-like ambition of mine each and every school off-season, and I took it in stride. With the awkward freshman year of high school now firmly behind, the Oklahoma summer heat beckoned me to enter the great outdoors with weed eater in hand, and cool grape gatorade in the other.
The summer of 1997 was one of the last moments in time that a CD player was fashioned to the back pocket of my jeans or shorts. The first purchase of the season always went to a portable CD player followed by a poppish rock album. I’d discovered the power of duct tape, twine, and a good set of headphones while working outside. And much to my enjoyment, music actually made the time pass rapidly.
As I poked around at the radio dial one Saturday evening, I came across the lovely sounds of Third Eye Blind and their infectious ‘Semi-Charmed Life’ about the glitz, glamor, and horror of life on the edge. This, of course, would later be realized as a song gone wrong about wasting your life to addictions. Yikes. But the sweet tones, catchy hook, and repeatability resonated with me, and I ventured to Best Buy to buy their debut record Third Eye Blind in May of 1997.
From start to finish, this record grabbed my stomach like a roller coaster ride after eating two corn dogs. It was as exciting as it was painful. Not painful in the sense that it was horribly written, horribly performed, or horribly executed; it was actually the opposite. The pain came from the earnest words and intense lyrics by frontman Stephan Jenkins. His eternal recklessness in relationships was an insight into someone who’d been around the block a few times, but wanted others to know the ramifications of a trip like this.
Needless to say, as a 16 year old kid this made no sense to me, but I got the inflection. Thus, one of the greatest break-up albums of the 90′s blared through cheap Sony headphones for an entire summer.
The album is beautifully produced, well written, poignantly performed, and always honest. The album opens with ‘Losing a Whole Year’ followed by ‘Narcolepsy’ which traces a relationship from bitter ending and year-long retorting to a slow emergence from a painful funk.
The next three tracks ‘Semi-Charmed Life’, ‘Jumper’, and ‘Graduate’ were the most radio-friendly of the singles, but were really ugly truths about ruining your life and how self-destruction impacts every person in your circle. Ironically, these might be the three weakest songs on the entire album.
The remainder of the album is like reading your older sisters diary. It’s a whiplash of emotions from the what-ifs of ‘How’s It Gonna Be’ to the tongue-in-cheek revelry of ‘Thanks Alot’. But as the album closes it gets really challenging. The cycle of love/lost begins again (‘I Want You’), but the emotional healing continues (‘The Background’, ‘Motorcyle Drive By’). And the cost of addiction rears its ugly head once again (‘God of Wine’).
In all, the clever guitar riffs, and bombastic guts of this pop/rock band resonated with me. It’s painfully honest, and deceptively deep, but it was rendered in a completely interesting way.
Stephan Jenkins would go on to continue as the leading voice and face of the band despite some changes even after the first record. And quite honestly, the band never grew. They continued to shake the same hurt/loss shtick at us, and it stuck for a while, but ended up sounding way to whiney. The follow-up to Third Eye Blind was entitled Blue and it had some meat to it, but as a whole never competed for the attention that the debut had done.
There are chunks of 3eb’s career that I enjoy, but they never were able to craft as stingy of an album as the first go-round. Truthfully, they attempted to break away from the break-up album persona, but by that point most weren’t listening anymore. And that’s too bad, because the summer of weed eating, and lawn mowing was all about 3eb.
