1998
JamTV
Third Eye Blind dubbed their fall tour the Bonfire tour, because lead singer Stephan Jenkins wanted to recreate the sense of community and pagan revelry that you get from sitting around the campfire late into the night. But now he wants to reconsider.
"I think it's time to rename this tour the Bus Fire tour after last night," the singer says.
"Our bus burned when we were in Boise, Idaho, last month, and last night Eve 6's bus went up into flames. Completely destroyed, with forty-foot flames. The bus was burnt to a crisp. Luckily no one was hurt, but it was so rock," Jenkins chuckled. 'I was out singing "Life's a Piece of Shit,'" while the firefighters tried to put out the fire. They really didn't understand." As a result, Third Eye Blind have taken in their homeless brethren, Eve 6, and the two bands will share a single bus for the five remaining dates of their tour.
Third Eye Blind also flamed the ire of officials at
James Madison University in Harrisburg, Va. Last week that police were called to a 3EB performance at the college on Nov. 17 and attempted to arrest a semi-clad young woman who opened up the show for the band on charges of public nudity. After
police investigated the matter, they decided not to press
charges, but the University was not so forgiving.
"They've trying to contact our sponsors, and we don't have any sponsors. So they sent out letters to MTV's sponsors who put on this collegiate tour," Jenkins explained. "The Coordinator of Student Organization Services wrote a letter to the sponsors
and the other colleges on the tour to warn them of
the danger of having Third Eye Blind perform on their campus. The letter stated that "Members of Third Eye Blind were propositioning female students, volunteer workers, and possibly other juveniles, throughout the entire day performance and in the late evening following the event."
"How could we proposition them during a performance?" Jenkins raged. Bassist Arion Salazar, no stranger to controversy after his high profile skirmish with Green Day's Mike Dirnt at last
summer's KROQ Weenie Roast said, "Of course we propositioned students. You should have seen the propositions we got from them. Next to the women's prison, the JMU coeds are naughty, naughty, naughty." Drummer Brad Hargreaves vented, "I don't care what anyone thinks and neither do our fans. We don't bow to bureaucratic losers or give a shit about how uptight the administration is about big, beautiful, bouncing tits." As you might surmise, the band has absolutely no intention of halting the nude dancing segment of their show.
"The whole idea of our shows is to just kick joy around. There's nothing about our shows that are salacious or sexist," claimed Jenkins. "That's the mood in which girls take their clothes off. Because they feel safe. It becomes this bacchanalia. I don't care what any administration thinks about that at all. I don't have any corporate sponsors to please, so I'm not going to bow down to anybody."
In slightly less controversial news, Third Eye Blind was also just nominated in two categories at the upcoming American Music Awards, including Favorite Alternative Artist. Also elected in the same category were their Bay Area nemeses Green Day, as well as Pearl Jam, another band that 3EB apparently has riled. "You know how I feel about Eddie Vedder? I can't stand him," Jenkins said. "He got on stage at Madison Square Garden and said, 'We heard this band do this song last night. They had no right to do this song. So we're going to show those corporate cocksuckers how it's done.' And they played 'Baba O'Reilly.' And we were the band playing 'Baba O'Reilly' the night before. What's he, the keeper of the Who flame? Somebody has to call him on his shit. It's one empty gesture after another."
Added: December 1, 1998
Back to Articles Page