Rob Harvilla’s podcast 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s turned out to be one of my favorite discoveries of 2023. It’s full of witty musical analysis and Harvilla’s personal nerdy anecdotes. It’s wildly nostalgic for any Gen Xer who was even remotely interested in popular music in the ‘90s. His podcast was such a hit that he ended up recording way more than 60 episodes, and last year he compiled some of his funniest and most interesting observations into a delightful book. Each chapter highlights a topic like Chaos Agents or Big Feelings. It’s all great. But I’m here to share my personal favorite chapter, Villians + Adversaries. Because that chapter starts out with Stephan Jenkins, legendary jerk and lead singer of Third Eye Blind, and the Third Eye Blind/“Semi-Charmed Life” podcast episode happens to be one of Harvilla’s funniest.
Now that’s a rock star! I happened to see Third Eye Blind in concert for the fourth time over the weekend, and I still think Stephan Jenkins’ douchebag reputation is hilarious.
As Harvilla says,
“The deal here, quite simply, is that if you write/sing a pop song as pristine as ‘Semi-Charmed Life,’ everyone has to listen to everything you say about everything, forever. So allow him to retort, in a brief but action-packed March 1999 Rolling Stone interview that I enjoyed very much. Stephan Jenkins on his feud with Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, who’d recently criticized Third Eye Blind for covering the Who: ‘This is Eddie, as usual, starting something he can’t finish - like Ticketmaster. So to have him policing who can play Who covers makes him a power-hungry cop. He wants to wear mirrored sunglasses and write tickets’ Boom! Roasted.”
And it goes on like that, but I don’t want to spoil it for you, because you just need to listen and read for yourself. As Harvilla reminds us, rock ‘n’ roll needs jerks, and we must honor and cherish them. We just shouldn’t form bands with them.
There’s also a lot of big names like Nirvana, Dr. Dre, Tupac, Britney, Whitney, Madonna, and Dave Matthews Band. Yes, I said Dave Matthews Band. Great little section about Dave in the chapter entitled Romance+Sex+Immaturity. Just trust me. It’s all gold. I give 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s 20 Less Than Jake fans.