Check out the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and you’ll find not one, but two songs from Third Eye Blind lodged in the Top 20.
Glance at the Billboard 200 album chart, and you’ll see a small black dot to the right of the group’s self-titled CD, indicating a certified gold record.
Scan the renowned Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and you’ll see the group’s breakthrough single, “Semi-Charmed Life,” sitting comfortably in the Top 10.
MTV and VH1 are airing their videos, and even The Rolling Stones and U2 have called the band, offering opening slots on their respective tours. (Of course the band said yes to spots with both acts.)
Seems more like a totally charmed life.
“We haven’t pervaded the culture in a total way, but people have been pretty cool,” says vocalist Stephan Jenkins. “I’m very flattered when someone comes up to me and says that the music that we make connects with them in some way. There’s something very humbling when people actually relate to your music. “When I meet fans, I feel very grounded.”
Formed four years ago in San Francisco, the band includes guitarist Kevin Cadogan, Arion Salazar, bass and Brad Hargreaves, drums. Unlike many groups signed by major labels today, Third Eye Blind didn’t sell thousands of independently released records before gaining notice.
Jenkins says the group was spotted by Elektra Records based mainly on the strength of its demo tape. Still, he doesn’t see the band as a group that bucked the system.
“Labels are so eager for talent, that if you’re playing music–if you have music going on–they’re going to see you,” he says. “It’s just going to happen. Go play your music, jump up and down and make a noise, and people from record labels will notice you.”
The band’s current smash, “Semi-Charmed Life,” combines elements of rock, pop and even a twinge of rap.
“We just kind of make ’em the way they come out,” says Jenkins of the songs. “If you listen to `Semi-Charmed Life’. . . it whirls around a lot. We just make the music in a way that’s exciting to us.”
In a press release from Elektra, Jenkins says that most of the songs on the album are about “loss.”
“I never really considered what the themes of the record are until I started discussing it with journalists and critics who need to put this into some sort of intellectual perspective,” he says. “I think a lot of it is about loss, but I also think it’s about things you could never get, and things you could never have. Perhaps music is a reconciliation between those two conditions that I’m pulled in between.”
Jenkins says that living, and sometimes simply music, inspire songs.
“They come from the life that I lead, stories that I see and some emotional impulse,” he says. “The idea is to keep it true to it’s basic source. That’s what hopefully keeps the song real from start to finish.”
