Third Eye Blind Fans, Foes 'Blind' to Parody Concept

By Ian S. Port Fri., Aug. 21 2009 at 1:53 PM

Categories: Music

Just when you think nothing particularly funny happened in the music world, Third Eye Blind comes out with a new record. That's not the punchline--the joke is in Rob Tannenbaum's droll defense of the band, written for New York magazine's Vulture blog.

Sample "praise"? "In hits like 'Never Let You Go' and 'Semi-Charmed Life' (remember how great that song was in Dirty Work?) they rapped and they rocked, mixing guitars and hip-hop. What singer Stephan Jenkins did is hard to describe -- 'extremely fastly spoken lyrics' someone wrote on Wikipedia, which sums up how totally unique it is. And plenty of people since then have imitated Jenkins; without Stephan, there would be no Jason Mraz."

Tannenbaum's tongue is jammed into a pretty sarcastic cheek here, but the comments section provides just as much humor as the piece itself. Sample feedback? "FUCK the elitists. Great piece Rob, dead on!!!!!!!"

Not only did some Third Eye Blind fans not get the joke, but Tripwire was either totally clueless to the concept of satire, or they were trying to out-deadpan the deadpan. (I kinda think it's a case of the former).