Third Eye Blind Trolled The GOP At The Republican National Convention

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In 2012, Stephan Jenkins, singer for ’90s movie trailer mainstays Third Eye Blind, penned a column for The Huffington Post explaining “why we aren’t playing the Republican National Convention.” No, it’s not because Matchbox Twenty accepted the invitation before them — rather, Jenkins declined because “the Republican party is on the wrong side of Lilly Ledbetter, fiscal responsibility, unions, civil rights, climate change, evolution, the Big Bang theory, stem cells, Medicare… and that’s why we will let them be, in their government-funded event center, to sell their song and dance without me.”

The GOP must have a short memory, or an inability to click on HuffPo (or else they’ll turn into a pile of dust, like a staked vampire), because Third Eye Blind performed a gig at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during the RNC last night. The concert was branded with the #RNCRockAnthems hashtag, with guitar-playing elephants flanking both sides of the Hall, but according to Billboard, “Jenkins used the occasion to say he ‘repudiates’ what the Republican party now stands for.” They didn’t even play “Never Let You Go”!

Some attendees grumbled that the only recognizable song of the set was their final number, “Jumper.” Jenkins had a reason for performing that one, and it wasn’t to placate the crowd.

Having previously described the song as “a noir about a guy who jumped off a bridge and killed himself because he was gay,” the singer expressed a wish in his intro that the party would welcome people “like my cousins who are gay into the American fabric. To love this song is to take into your heart the message and to actually have a feeling to arrive and move forward and not live your life in fear and imposing that fear on other people.” (Via)

When he was greeted with a shower of boos, Jenkins responded, “You can boo all you want, but I’m the motherf*ckin’ artist up here.” He also mocked the audience, saying, “Raise your hand if you believe in science,” which, when it comes to stage banter, sure beats, “No one rocks like [checks setlist to which city he’s in] Cleveland” (that’s a bigger lie than “John Miller”).

Republicans always preferred Vertical Horizon, anyway, especially that God song.

(Via Billboard)

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