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His seemingly genuine thankfulness was expressed repeatedly, refreshing for a show this big, grasping front-row hands every once in a while. He’d stalk the stage carrying half the mic stand, pulled separate from the bottom half, a move you know he pulls all the time. It began to feel like a very cool club I didn’t know about, and a lot of that is because Jenkins is a secret charisma beast he’s able to control an audience beautifully, made seemingly of pure swagger. Perhaps they’re the RNC-trolling arena rockers we need now?īefore Blue’s “Never Let You Go” – the set’s third song, a real power move – frontman Stephan Jenkins addressed the audience, admiring them for coming out en masse despite not having a new album, and welcoming those of us who haven’t seen them before. Packed with towering LED screens, an intricate array of lights surrounding them, and lasers, they fit the space like a glove. Nobody seems to have told 3EB that they stopped being as visible after 1999, and maybe that’s for the best: they play like they’re the biggest band in the world, which is part of why this show was as satisfying as it was. Seeing “The Middle” made me wish we could all see the bands who made enduring honest-to-god hits play for crowds big enough to process their impact, a concept I’d think about repeatedly throughout Third Eye Blind’s set. Remind me to see Jimmy Eat World on their own tour as soon as possible. Predictably, the crowd exploded for their final song, “The Middle,” a taste of some of the explosive crowd energy yet to come. Industrial-strength fog machines billowed plumes into the venue, and as I watched the crowd dancing to show opener “Pain” from Futures or Clarity’s “Lucky Denver Mint,” I felt mad I wasn’t on the floor dancing with everyone else.
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Once they ended, their backdrop was pulled down to reveal four LED-surrounded fans and “JIMMY EAT WORLD” emblazoned above them. I came in at the tail end of Ra Ra Riot’s set, but seeing the band on a stage that big was truly strange. Some people are just exhausting to be around, no matter what cool bands they see. They draped their legs over chairs, took like 20 selfies in different poses with the flash on and got fucked up on $10 Coors Lights (“I’m NOT HAPPY that Miller Lite is out!” a man behind me literally yelled after opener Jimmy Eat World’s set). Who comes out for Third Eye Blind in 2019? It’s the people who were in their late 20s/early 30s in the band’s heyday, if our section was any indication, which felt like a Gen Xer Gomorrah. To my amazement, people turned out for the show, nicely packing the floor and lower level. It’s still wild that Third Eye Blind, even with emo royalty Jimmy Eat World and modest indie rock darlings Ra Ra Riot as their openers, would have the draw in 2019 to fill seats.
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It seeks to equalize the fact that the multi-purpose edge given to the arena makes for horrible acoustics, and provides an alternative to the outdoor, lawn-based Edgefield Amphitheater. The show was held in Moda Center’s Theater of the Clouds, an abbreviated version of the space that’s curtained off by thick black curtains that reduces the 20,000 capacity space to just above 6000. This is what stops their opulently-named Summer Gods Tour from being a nostalgia cash-grab: those who have kept up with the band got the chance to see them do a big, theatrical show, and play some massive hits while they’re at it. Those songs are 20 years old, but the band made three more albums after that, the last of which, Dopamine, came out in 2015. Third Eye Blind had hits – “How’s It Going to Be,” “Never Let You Go,” “Jumper,” and of course “Semi-Charmed Life” were all huge parts of the culture for anyone who listened to Top 40 or “alternative” stations, with non-radio songs like “Motorcycle Drive-By” and the drugged-out murder ballad “Slow Motion” entering the canon for those in-the-know. Just because we stopped listening doesn’t mean they stopped existing, and ultimately those bands become blindspots for us all. Every band is somebody’s favorite band, even the ones we forgot after the ‘90s.