Favorite Song: "Motorcycle Drive By" by Third Eye Blind

This song is perfect. One of the all-time best examples of the soft-hard-soft progression in a rock-pop song. Lyrically: heartbreaking, relatable, sad, angry, hurt, but near the end, forward-looking. The acoustic guitar is beautiful. The build to the electric guitar explosion with Jenkins' scream is impossible not to feel in every muscle.

This was one of the four gems at the end of their 1997 debut album, which many listeners who only knew their hits (semi-charmed life, jumper, and how's it going to be) missed out on. This was, for many people my age, an essential album. Right in those key identity-formation years, with songs about such issues and feelings! "And there's this burning / like there's always been / I've never been so alone / and I've / never been so alive." Absolutely perfect; the best song Stephan Jenkins ever wrote. After just reading these lyrics again, I thought, "this song has a California feel" (not just the line "New York City is Evil")...turns out that makes sense coming from this San Francisco quartet....The album was produced by Jenkins and recorded in SF, following the attention from major labels after opening for Oasis in '96 and performing a number of Bay Area shows.

When I listen, only listen to this song, it sets me back, in time, and emotionally; my chest opens up and I'm entirely vulnerable all over again. This song is powerful enough, probably because of my past tied to it, to open up closed wounds.

"This is a song about a girl who dumped me. On my skinny ass. And I wrote a song for her...It's a song called Motorcycle Drive By" *(crowd bursts into laughter)* "Hahaha, I never thought of it that way. And you all did!" - from a live recording I have. So while it's not about mowing down an ex with an Uzi, it is about a relationship that has just ended, and about that feeling that outweighs any other: that penetrating grief and regret tinged with an inevitable, heartbreaking fondness. This song plays out like a meandering journey of memories in our watery head: from one scene to the next, the images come and go, from the good to the bad, until the renewing tide brings us home.



Summer time, and the wind is blowing outside
in lower Chelsea
And I don't know what I'm doing in this city
The sun is always in my eyes
It crashes through the windows
And I'm sleeping on the couch
When I came to visit you

That's when I knew
That I could never have you
I knew that before you did
Still I'm the one who's stupid
And there's this burning
Like there's always been
I've never been so alone
And I've
Never been so alive

Visions of you on a motorcycle drive by
The cigarette ash flies in your eyes, and you don't mind
you smile
And say the world it doesn't fit with you
I don't believe you
You're so serene
Careening through the universe
Your axis on a tilt
You're guiltless and free
I hope you take a piece of me with you

And there's things I would like to do
That you don't believe in
I would like to build something
But you'll never see it happen
And there's this burning
Like there's always been
I've never been so alone
And I've
I've never been so alive

And there's this burning
There is this burning

Where's the soul I want to know
New York City is evil
The surface is everything
But I could never do that
Someone would see through that
And this is the last time
We'll be friends again
When I get over you
You'll wonder who I am
And there's this burning,
Just like there's always been
I've never been so alone, alone
And I've, and I've
I've never been so alive

So alive

I go home to the coast,
it starts to rain,
I paddle out on the water
Alone
Taste the salt and taste the pain
I'm not thinking of you again
Summer dies, and swells rise
The sun goes down in my eyes
See this rolling wave
Darkly coming
To take me
Home

And I've never been so alone
And I've never been so alive