ELEVEN albums. I'll give'm this - it is consistent. It does not change. It does not evolve. It does not ever innovate or get any better. It might get a little worse. But it goes on and on and on. Song after song the same. I wanted to quit. I wanted to give up on the whole project. I wanted to listen to anything besides another 311 song, but I did not. And now I am invigorated about this whole listen-to-all-music-chronologically project: if i can listen too eleven 311 albums in a row than I can listen to anything!
The first album kinda sounds like a demo tape, but it's deeper, dubbier, and groovier than most anything that follows. Good for them for continuing to play some of the songs from the first two albums live even these days.
They achieved a mainstream breakthrough with 1995's self-titled non-debut (self-titled non-debuts are always irritating), known as The Blue Album because it was blue. It seems everyone in college had that album. I did not, but I remember seeing them live in college. More accurately, I remember they played at my college and I got very drunk. Their big hit was "Down" (See below), but I genuinely like the song "Don't Stay Home," which was technically the first single from that album. It's a good song with a great message.
Here they are in all their mid-1990s glory:
I also really enjoyed their cover of Human Rights' "Who's Got the Herb?" from the Hempliation compilation that NORML put out in 1995. The hardcore break at the end is pretty satisfying. I'll admit to being more familiar with this version than with the original. (Although if "Human's Rights" doesn't sound familiar it is HR from Bad Brains.)
But then it just goes on and on. They tour with G Love and Special Sauce and O.A.R. They get another mild hit by covering The Cure. They have a 7th album, and 8th, a 9th. It just keeps going. The songs are all relatively the same. They hosts cruises to the Caribbean. They have big events on March 11th every year. They sponsor NASCAR and their own cannabis vapor pen dubbed the "Grassroots Uplifter," which I guess is a song or album. I don't know, it all sorta started blending hopelessly together. It is all very monotone.
And can we talk about the live albums? The first one, after their big hits and pretty impressive mainstream stardom, is not good. It sounds like someone playing their studio album loudly in front of a crowd. There is so little improvisation or anything interesting for the audience to hang their hats on. (I went to AllMusic guide instead of Wikipedia for the first time in years to try to get some sort of subjective confirmation that I had just listening to ten consistently sub-par albums in a row by the same band, and AllMuisc was at least able confirm the pointlessness of 311's first live album). But then their next live album, recorded many years later in New Orleans- where they have also celebrated 311 Day occasionally, is a real mind-boggler. I had just listened to every single song of theirs in a row before listening to this live album and then they hit me with a set of ALL new songs I had never heard before, with an orchestra, maybe one old song. It was super-weird, and not in a good way. Them playing with an orchestra was not all-bad, but it was also good because their discography was finally coming an end.
Although some would even call them nu-metal or rap-rock, and they are irritating sometimes (frequently?), it's sorta hard to hate these guys. They DO like to party. And they do preach positivity consistently, and yet they and their fans got mercilessly mocked (See below). It's hard to get aggressive in the face of their apparent mindfulness. But it's also hard not to get aggressive in the face of their actual music. I might have punched the steering wheel and screamed a few times towards the end of the several weeks it took to listen me to this band's entire discography from start to finish. I did not listen to the Greatest Hits collection, so I can't speak to that. I make no apologies for the exclusion.
And then this happened in 2016 - right after I'd been through all this - but I'm not exactly OK with it
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