311 Band • Page 7

Not surprised - I should've listened to the other Friday, but it's been a minute since I've listened to Bandsplain. I found it and bookmarked it for an upcoming long drive.

And yep - they're back on unique city t-shirts. You're in Charlotte right? Curious what they've got for that. Last show I went to was in Baltimore and it was a purple t-shirt with an artsy Edgar Allan Poe/Raven theme and the 311 logo of course intertwined.

 

it’s essentially in the color and font of the hornets

 

i’ll post pics tomorrow

 

damn they sold out of the charlotte shirts. sick show though. will definitely be back. solos for both pnut and chad!

 

Bummer about the shirt, but really glad you enjoyed it!

I took a look at the setlist, definitely a great one for a first show. I always find it fascinating how they will highlight a particular 'late-career' album at certain shows during spring tours. You got THREE songs from 2011's oft-forgotten, and always under-represented live Universal Pulse. And that album only has 8 songs lol.

 

yeah i remember liking time bomb quite a bit

 

The solos have lost their novelty for me after seeing them 10-ish times, so it's hard to tell if people are still into it or not lol. Glad to hear that there's some appeal there for a first timer.

Speaking of "late-career", this is the only thing I did not really enjoy about the Bandsplain episode. They were great about hitting the major points throughout most of the band's career, but when they got to Stereolithic, it was like they sort of checked out. Which is a bummer because Stereolithic, MOSAIC and Voyager are basically considered their resurgence. They spend like 5 total minutes between those three albums and then gush about Nick's album with George Clanton for about 15 lol. You could kind of tell the guest she had on to talk about them was a mega-fan up until around Don't Tread On Me and then has only loosely followed them from that point on.

 

I JUST started the Bandsplain , but glanced over the playlist that goes along with the episode, and noticed that as well, only one track from 2010-present. And it's "Revelation of the Year" - also an odd choice.

I also realized that the critic they brought on is the same guy that wrote the long piece for AV club after 3/11 Day 2020, which I thought was GREAT - but even he still couldn't avoid making all of the obvious jabs at 311's music that critics always go for. It's like he was almost apologizing for being a fan, which just reeks of snobbery. Have some fun and fuckin' like what you like.

I get it though - there IS only a small faction of us that truly care enough to appreciate the "late-career" resurgence that you referenced. I am happy to be a part of it though, I had a blast listening to my Mosaic vinyl on 3/11 day this year, and I actually just picked up Voyager on vinyl last week.

 

Shoutout tho also, Nick's album with George Clanton is indeed fucking awesome. Essential warm weather listening.

 

Yeah, the guy has pretty extensive knowledge about the band from the 90s through the early 2000s but hardly had anything to say beyond that, so it makes sense that he almost felt like "apologizing" for liking them considering he seemed to check out when it wasn't "cool" to like them after their heyday. In all fairness though, he does say over and over in the podcast that he thinks they are unfairly criticized and part of the reason is that they are so hard to describe and get miscategorized ("they are rap/metal like Limp Bizkit!", "They are reggae/rock like Sublime!", "They are funky rock like the Chili Peppers!", etc.)

To your last point, it is pretty wild how many former fans have missed out on a lot of great music from them simply because of how lackluster DTOM and Uplifter were (by comparison). Stereolithic is probably in my top 3 from them and MOSAIC and Voyager aren't far behind. The bummer is that the latter two have had issues with unoriginality, a couple of accusations of plagiarism, making some questionable songs with Feldmann, etc. but the guy didn't really even begin to articulate any of that in the podcast. He's more like "eh, not for me".

 

I'm really curious as to what they come up with next. The few accusations of plagiarism aside, I actually really respect the variety of sound they achieved across both of the last two albums. They know they have some fans who are into the poppy-reggae stuff, and many who are into the spacey, heavy rock/rap stuff. So they just throw it all on there, and even change their production approach between Feldmann and Scotch Ralston. It always makes for an enjoyable, and never boring listen.

I even like the Feldmann songs to be completely honest lol they don't bother me at all.

And speaking of unpopular 311 Fan opinions - I will argue that Uplifter is NOT among their weakest albums. Probably/possibly because it came out during a very good summer in my life, and I associate a lot of great fun memories with it, but I still love that album. I'd tweak the tracklisting around a bit to cut a few in favor of some of the b-sides left off the original sequencing, but otherwise - great stuff.

 

I’m here for the Uplifter love. But I also have great memories tied to it: first summer after moving to Chicago post-college.

 

Okay revised tracklist:

1. Hey You
2. It's Alright
3. Golden Sunlight
4. Week Of Saturdays
5. I Like The Way
6. Daisy Cutter
7. Too Much Too Fast
8. Never Ending Summer
9. Two Drops In The Ocean
10. Sun Come Through
11. Get Down
12. Jackpot
13. My Heart Sings
14. Simplify

I realize I only cut 3 from the original tracklist and actually made the album longer, but damn I really love those outtakes. lol

 

I like them as well outside of "Til the City's on Fire", I think. The only thing that really bugs me about them is that they are so repetitive and the guys are sort of forced to simplify the musicianship so that the vocal hooks can take priority. Like "Good Feeling", there are only about two guitar parts and one or two drum patterns with minimal fills in the entire song. It's fine and I know that's a common tactic, but I don't think it utilizes 311's best qualities, if that makes sense.

I still like it and it's a lot of fun, but I'd still put it towards the bottom (even though "Too Much Too Fast" and "Sun Come Through" are two of my all time favorites). A lot of my complaints above about Feldmann's tracks also apply to Uplifter as a whole.

Really though, the main thing that holds it back for a lot of people are the lyrics and subject matter. I don't know why, but Nick really went heavy on basing his lyrics around a single cliche or metaphor. Instead of writing a song about music or about love, he started from one thought and tried to write a whole song around it... Music is your friend, music is like magic, our love is like a math equation, our love is like water, "You're the bomb", etc.

It's just cheesy in a lot of places. I have a hard time singing along to these songs if I'm sitting in traffic lol.

 

All really great points. My only counterpoint to that would be just that I never really cared or was bothered by the cheesiness of any of their lyrics. It's all part of the 311 package as far as I'm concerned. I don't think that

"My daisy you make me go crazy, Forever amaze me, Now let's let the day go lazy" is any more cringe-worthy than

"Can't nobody do it like 311, Fuckin' up competition 'cause there really is none".

And I love both of those songs lol. All good though - I don't want to deep dive into lyrics per se, I know Nick and SA have been capable of some more vague and metaphoric sort of lyrics on Transistor and such too.

 

For sure. I know this band's lyrics are always somewhere on the spectrum of cheesiness (and it's kind of an endearing part of them tbh). My main point though with Uplfiter was more about how they wrote entire songs around a cheesy line. Rather than just having a clunker of a lyric somewhere in there, you really couldn't escape it here because of how front and center they were. The cheesiness just dominated. haha. Hopefully that makes sense.

For what it's worth though, I always ranked Uplifter higher than Don't Tread on Me by a mile. DTOM feels like 311 just simply making a 311 album and churning out an uninspired, by-the-numbers album. Uplfiter, love it or hate it, at least felt fresh and vibrant, like they were passionate about it at the time. They still maintain they had fun making that record, so for me, it gets a pass for that reason.

 

I really enjoy this band, but I have always thought their lyrics are garbage lol.

 

It's definitely part of their brand for sure lol.

 

MIX IT UP UH JUST MIX IT UP WHAT.

LOL - and yeah for the most part it is totally endearing. I also put Don't Tread On Me as my least revisited album of theirs. Still enjoy quite a few songs, but agreed it was by-the-numbers. It especially felt like Nick was really phoning it in on that one, whereas SA had quite a few fresh ideas. "It's Getting OK Now" still rips. Kinda makes me wonder if there is a better album in there somewhere if the band really was INTO it more at the time.

 

I also wonder if the last bit of their enthusiasm from that era was killed whenever someone leaked all of their demos for that album (I thought they would cover this a little in the Bandsplain episode but they didn't). It seemed like with everything else going on in the band at the time, that made them even more disheartened.

 

Nick was dealing with his Pussycat Dolls breakup, in the midst of owning a private island, on pills, etc - definitely not a time where he was on sturdy ground.

Then mattyboo went and leaked the demos on the old 311 BB. I think if anything was going to be able to be salvaged, that was the breaking point.

Though some demos of this time did turn into songs later on - Ebb & Flow and The Great Divide both came directly from this era's demos.

If the album was well received due to SA's increased participation, that could have been a silver lining. Instead an album tanking where SA arguably had the lead role couldn't have helped things. It was at this point where SA turned more into "token verse in the middle of an entire Nick song" role.

 

Thanks for the context , @robb !! I knew about the Nicole breakup, and the island stuff , just hadn't thought of it. The pills tho wow didn't know about that at all. Really glad that he's in a much "better space" now - pun intended.

Interesting to think about where the trajectory of the band could have gone had that record been more well received. I am always a big fan of SA - driven songs, so that is intriguing to me for sure.

I feel like it's a good time to do an album ranking Since we seem to have at least 3-5 fans in here. I'll post mine tomorrow

 

My album rankings are definitely in tiers, I can never decide which ones I put at the very top or bottom lol

 

Yeah - I know I've done this exercise before and I'm certain that my answers have changed. And are always subject to change. The sign of a fun and enjoyable catalog.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if the demos are an off-limits subject for interviewers. It is a sore subject for them, especially Nick.