It happens once in while. There’s a band you remember from adolescence, with just a couple snippets of songs you recall them recording. Big hits you still hear on the radio 18 years after they were released. A friend invites you to a gig and you think “well what am I gonna do for the other hour and half they are singing songs I don’t know?” Then the band bursts onto the stage, wailing away at a recent number, and 20 minutes later you realise you know every single tune. Third Eye Blind may only stir up memories of the late 90’s hits “Jumper” and “Semi-Charmed Kinda Life”, but they’ve continued to leave their mark on popular music without you realising it. I stood there stunned, as the entire sold-out audience of the Kentish Town Forum sang along to every number, making this an easy gig for Stephan Jenkins, as he was often able to stop the vocals and let the audience take over. Not that he needed to, his boyish tenor sounds as strong and clear as it does on the recordings, belying his 51 years of age.
Yes, there were moments this felt like a retro-gig, and you were transported to before the turn of the century, when heavily-produced jangle-pop felt revolutionary. But for the most part, the show was a 90 minute timeless revelry of great songwriting and positive-vibe California blissfulness. I’ve always been drawn to the way Third Eye Blind writes about dark topics and tragic stories, yet puts them into sunshine-soaked poppy tunes that seduce the masses into listening to songs about overdoses and suicides. The band very much accomplishes the same thing live. The mixed-age crowd sang and danced their hearts out cheerfully, while the band performed the first three numbers in total blackness. Afterwards Jenkins thrashed on stage in head to toe black, thick boots, and a wooly hat covering his eyes. 18 years and 12 million record sales later, Third Eye Blind still carries a darkness within, and this is what I believe has sustained their artistic and commercial success. Unlike many record-label powerhouse pop bands of the 90s, they’ve always had more than a catchy tune, they’ve always had something darker to reveal.
Full Set List:
Persephone
Everything Is Easy
Wounded
Dopamine
Never Let You Go
Back to Zero
Motorcycle Drive By
Can You Take Me
Graduate
Rites of Passage / With or Without You
Slow Motion
All These Things
Can’t Get Away
Mine (Beyoncé cover)
Losing a Whole Year
Crystal Baller
How’s It Going to Be
(Drum solo)
Jumper
Encore:
Something in You
Semi-Charmed Life
The Background
Bonfire (Reduced/Acoustic)
London, England