Taking Sides: Third Eye Blind vs. Sugar Ray

From what I can remember Third Eye Blind are better - I know I liked one of their singles. I'm not quite sure where it came from either - it's kind of a stadium pop sound, like Travis but glossier.

OK, Sugar Ray I don't know but 3EB have choruses that are catchy while they're playing but don't linger and annoy you as you go about your business, and they don't make any real demands on you, but nor do they have anything obviously trivial or dancey or girly or poppy about them. The vocals use a bare minimum of 'soulful' tricks so you know that the singer means it but you're never embarrassed by anything too extreme. The whole thing actually is based round this - the illusion of technique and craft, like veneered wood - the idea is to think that 3EB could do all that fiddly songwriting and chopsy stuff, they just don't see the need cause like Travis they believe in the simplicity of good rock. (Obviously this excludes actually rocking.)

Who listens to them? There's a charitable and an uncharitable theory. The uncharitable theory is that just as 80s yuppies needed Phil Collins so the younger yuppies chucked up by the 90s boom needed 3EB. The charitable theory is that this is music for nice jocks - the sort of people who would try hard and treat girls well and not get trashed and sing Baha Men tunes, or at least not loudly. In the Britney film I would imagine the character she'll end up with owns 3EB albums, in other words. The reason I'm calling this theory 'charitable' is that whether this lifestyle exists or not (probably not) the idea of it is quite sweet and enviable compared to the usual overcomplicated nonsense of life. Which is why I liked "Never Let You Go".

Sugar Ray's a totally different beast, though - they've had the DJ from the beginning, when being a potty-mouthed rap/punk band was their raison d'etre. After "Fly" (the ONLY track of that sort on their 2nd album, so I've heard), they switched up styles and are now purveyours of the guilt-free sort of fluffy musical shenanigans that get Q's pubes in a twist. So, yeah, they probably are a "marketing stunt", but in the opposite direction of the other "rock band w/ the DJ" folks.

Tom's description of 3EB (the mix of pop & soul) is what I wanted to get at as the reason I can't stands them. Given my pedigree, this isn't surprising.

Raposa nails it with his 'mixture of rock and soul' thing - these genres don't mix well for me.

I don't hold Dave Q's level of sheer passion about them, but I do share the disdain in general. And "Semi-Charmed Life" ranked up there with "Walking On the Sun" as reasons to punch somebody, so let's throw in Smash Mouth as well.

what if Morrissey gave you a unicorn with the condition that you couldn't seell it on e-bay?

I think we've found the secret to Blues Traveler's success.

So is syphilis.

a bit of your attention is robbed by a 3 minute pop song? boo fuckedy fuck fucking hoo. what about the years spent giving one's precious attention to classrooms and shit jobs and tv shows and lying newspapers?

In any case, you can always change the music or even turn it off if your aesthetic sensibilities are so highly tuned and delicate. you write as if you were strapped into one of those clockwork orange brainwashing chairs.

(you're not are you? maybe someone should go round and check.)

Actually, I kinda like Sugar Ray. I saw that guy on this episode of VH1 Jeopardy, and he destroyed a destitute and rather confused- looking Joe Walsh, who acted as if he couldn't be bothered, and a Graham Nash who, surprisingly enough, knew some contemporary R&B reference like TLC or Mary J. Blige, I think... but Sugar Ray singerman was like, I'll take obscure 70's balladeers, and actually called them all out! It was really kind of disturbing.

I would actually opt for a semi-charitable split of Tom's polarities, which is that 3EB-type bands, at least, play music that offers up the spectacle of people emoting and performing and then does its best not to distract you from that with any of the actual music. Hence their value to, say, young folk just starting to buy records: "Ahh! Cool older boys who play in a band and seem to mean something about love, I think!" And it's within that that the listener can learn to decode what actually is being conveyed -- and can learn how to enjoy musical elements (the transition from "I don't like that one track where it gets noisy, though!" to "Wait, sometimes I like the noisy bit!"). If offers all of the trappings of earnest honest music without having many actual signifiers in the music itself, and by doing this it allows people to learn what conventional music is (and how to like it) so they can eventually begin to understand what's going on when those conventions are altered or subverted.

I suppose this is to say that it is something like the musical equivalent of a non-literary "young adult" book. Which I do not mean as an insult: young-adult books can be quite good as young-adult books, and occasionally can be quite good by any standard.

...3EB-type bands, at least, play music that offers up the spectacle of people emoting and performing and then does its best not to distract you from that with any of the actual music

Perhaps I would understand this better if you gave an example of the alternative (emotive spectacle, w/ "actual" music).

In this sense, they are somewhat like tail-end Warrant-style hair- metal bands, who spent a lot of time trying to seem great (in their own hair-metal way) but had songs that were just sort of nothing-y -- the music itself was secondary to the idea that here were these guys playing it.

I look at Sugar Ray as pretty much the opposite: a bunch of guys who wanna play one thing but play another just to get on the radio (sorta like Asia). I won't call it "dumbed-down", because I suspect the music they want to play would be every bit as dumb.

As for possible unconventionality with 3rd Eye Blind, I must admit that I haven't really heard enough of their stuff to have a firm handle on it, plus I sometimes confuse their songs with Matchbox 20's (since I never really hear either and discussion of them tends not to differentiate much). I mean, they certainly don't come across as having anything interesting about to happen, but I'm certainly glad to hear that they might -- back to that "learning listening" idea, each unconventionality is essentially a workbook lesson in "now you're going to learn to get into this!"

Saying "fuck normal people" is so fucking normal. The Normal People I know are just as smart, sad, unpredictable, drug-addled and weird as the hipsters. They just listen to different radio stations and go to different shops and bars.

Matchbox 20 and Sugar Ray are aggressively normal, and they give me a shudder of recognition that is uncomfortable. A feeling of "there but for the grace of God go I." It's so condescending and embarrassing to feel that way, but I do.

3EB = Dismemberment Plan???

3EB = Spin Doctors?

In many respects, this does say it all, I agree.

So I don't know about all suburbs, but east coast US Suburbia = a pretty life sucking place to live. I wouldn't be as ridiculously cynical as I am if I'd grown up elsewhere, I'm sure.

Just to be on topic, Sugar Ray has had a few catchy songs (I'll admit to enjoying the one with the line "every morning my girlfriend leaves her halo on the bed"), but mostly they just sound like generic TRL cotton candy pop to me. Kind of blah, but if you don't listen to commercial radio or watch MTV, it's not too hard to avoid.

I also like how the band members and packaging are so ordinary. There has to be something bold about this.

Dolphins are underwater puppys.

If Morrissey gave me a puppy I would gently and carefully ease it up his backpassage, which is what, I presume, is what he's requesting.

Sugar Ray have "Every Morning" and "Someday" to their credit.

Damn straight without guilt. Fucking awesome pop song.

Indeed:

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/08/in_defense_of_third_eye_blind.html

oh man, this thread was so classic