3eb, GBV, Rick Springfield, and the definition of musical relevance (Music commentary)

I’m sorry to say that Third Eye Blind’s new album, “Ursa Major,” is nowhere near as good as its self-titled debut from 1997. It’s also a cut below its second and third albums, from 1999 and 2003.

I blasted it through a few spins in my Jeep over the last couple weeks, and it just doesn’t do it for me; I keep popping in an old Killers disc instead. 3eb still has those distinct whiny vocals from Stephan Jenkins, but it doesn’t have the hooks. Remember the first album? It had 14 hook-packed tracks — “Graduate,” “How’s It Gonna Be,” “Losing a Whole Year,” “Jumper” (not to mention “Semi-Charmed Life” … seriously, not to mention it). And it tacked on some emotion at album’s end with “The Background,” “Motorcycle Drive-By” and “God of Wine.” Damn, that was/is a fine record. Those were the days, am I right?

But listening to this new and inferior Third Eye Blind disc has at least given me some questions to address in this post:

Why do we define bands by decades? Why do I want to call Third Eye Blind a ’90s band? Why can I say they were more “relevant” 10 years ago and have everyone agree with me? — after all, they are just as popular now, and quality is just a matter of taste. And at what point do you stop following a band you used to love?

We mainly do this decades thing with musicians. If we did it with everyone, I would be a “’90s journalist,” because that’s when I burst onto the journalistic scene with my college paper. Of course, that’s a flawed example because it assumes too wide of a relevance level. I could maybe be “’90s journalist John Hansen, from the North Dakota State University school of journalism, such as it is.”

If you’re a musician, there are two ways to avoid the decade label: 1, Continue to be relevant for three decades or more. That’s why we don’t say “’70s rocker Bruce Springsteen” or “’60s folkie Bob Dylan.” But those two, and the Beatles, are the only exceptions among the mainstream; everyone else gets a decade, even if they are still playing high-priced shows in good-sized venues and releasing new albums regularly, like ’80s pop-rocker Rick Springfield or ’80s hard rockers Motley Crue. Because of our decade labels, it’s actually possible to put out “a new album of ’80s music” and have everyone know exactly what you are talking about.

Oh, here’s the second way to avoid being pinned to a decade: Stay out of the mainstream. That’s why you hear “beloved indie band Guided By Voices” instead of “Eighties indie band Guided By Voices.” GBV’s level of relevance has been exactly the same from 1987 through today. Even when it ceased to exist in 2004, it maintained the same level of relevance. Guided By Voices didn’t rise above a specific time; it stayed below a specific time, so to speak.

By the way, popularity and relevance aren’t exactly the same thing. Third Eye Blind is, in terms of chart position, more popular than ever. (“Ursa Major” charted at No. 3, higher than any of its previous releases.) However, as we all know, the band was obviously much more relevant in 1997 than it is now, so therefore they are still “Nineties band Third Eye Blind.”

Oddly, talent and relevance aren’t the same thing either (although they are linked — but only by chance — in the 3eb example). Here’s a case in point: Rick Springfield put out an album in 2004 that blew away everything he had done previously. I’m not joking; I know you never heard the 2004 Rick Springfield release and never will, but seriously, it was very good. But without a doubt, he was irrelevant in 2004 — I saw him at casino that year, for crying out loud. He was much more relevant in 1981, even though he was less talented then.

(Furthermore, Springfield’s 2008 album was pretty bad, but it charted at No. 28, whereas the superior 2004 album didn’t chart at all. And now he’s playing small arenas/big clubs instead of backwoods casinos, and tickets cost more. So he’s slightly more popular now than he was when he was doing his very best work, but he’ll never again be as relevant as when he was just starting out.)

I also want to raise the issue of how a CD ends up on your CD rack (or how digital music ends up on your computer, as the case may be, but I’m still of the philosophy that it’s nice to hold music in your hand). If you’re like me, your CD rack — even if you’ve just sorted through it and dumped the rejects at a second-hand store — has two halves: One half is albums you really like, and the other half is albums you don’t like but which you keep because they were made by bands that you like.

The latter is the category this Third Eye Blind album falls into. I am a Third Eye Blind fan (by definition, because I graduated high school right around the time 3eb was huge, and I saw them at the Red River Valley Fair; they were awesome and I got the T-shirt, etc. In my own small way, I contributed to their relevance circa 1999.). Because I’m a fan — by definition — I will keep this album, even though it doesn’t do me much good to own it.

That leads to the question of “When does a band fall off of your list of Bands Whose Albums I Always Buy”? Is it after the first misfire, or after three or four bad albums, or do you research the purchase every time via MySpace streaming music? Researching makes a ton of logical sense, of course, but it doesn’t allow for the “getting to know the music in my vehicle” phase, which is where you can go from liking to loving a song. It also does away with the phase — common before the Internet age — of anticipating the release of a new record.

Anticipating a new release by an old favorite is something I still get caught up in, even though it’s stupid. I should spend more time with that first half of my CD collection: Music that I actually like. I have two of those coming in the mail this week — the “(500) Days of Summer” soundtrack (I heard the music when I watched the film) and the Acid House Kings (a friend tipped me off and I loved what I heard on the band’s music site) — and one from the “I always buy their albums” category — God Help the Girl, a side project from Stuart Murdoch, the lead singer of Belle and Sebastian, probably my favorite band (although, oddly, I needed a friend to tell me this CD existed).

Until next time, I’m late-Oughts Midwest-based entertainment blogger John Hansen, and please consider this a blip in quality and give my next blog entry a try — even though I haven’t been culturally relevant in “having my own blog” circles since mid-July. I think my last big hit was that “15 movies I hate” post, and I’ve been desperately trying to recreate the magic ever since.