My pathway through music has been a mess of happy accidents and burning curiosities. That feeling's kinda what 311 is in a nutshell.Īs the eldest of three siblings, I didn’t have the mythological Older Brother/Cousin Who Teaches You About Music around to show me what the good shit was. There is literally a bonus track on their latest album Stereolithic called “Vape’n Away.” It is the exact sound you would want to hear as you casually huffed a Fruit Loop flavored e-cig and floated off as your cloudy breath dissipates. But throwing on the classics on a warm, sunny 311 Day, I’m struck by how much I still love all of them. The band slipped off my radar as I got to college and my tastes diversified, but they pulled me back in with the rock radio staple “Amber,” the throwback ska bop “I’ll Be Here Awhile,” and a moody cover of the Cure’s “Lovesong.” (You probably forgot about “I’ll Be Here Awhile,” but it’s better than “Amber.” Fight me.) Not long after that, I would begin picking through the dub, ska, and dancehall records that inspired 311 and bands like them and end up ditching them for The Real Thing. The next album Soundsystem would do it all again in less space, and it has my respect forever for introducing my unprepared teenage ears to Bad Brains via a cover of “Leaving Babylon.” The length allowed the band to branch out with weird, smooth shit like “Stealing Happy Hours” and “Use of Time” but still pitch the expected reggae-metal burners like “Transistor” and “Beautiful Disaster” at rock radio. My “Let the tape rock ‘til the tape pop” 311 album is 1997’s Transistor, which got slagged in reviews for being too long and stuffed with ideas. While the angsty bros were getting out their frustrations to songs that expressed and incited violence, 311 was like “Guns are for pussies.” Every video looks like a sick party, hella people pleasantly faded and some band perched in the corner playing music you’re not sure if you should headbang or pop and lock to. That slipperiness would keep them popular long after peers in either scene found their pop culture stock in sudden freefall. (If the false stop before the second verse in “Down” doesn’t make you want to karate kick a hater in the solar plexus, what are you even here for?) 311 is mad versatile.ģ11 was more laid back than the spastic 80s punk-funk tradition they came out of and not near as suffocatingly serious as the nu-metal scene they’d rub elbows with in the 90s. does the singing and Nick does the raps on the other. The flawless one-two punch of “Down” and “All Mixed Up” blew our minds, not least of all because Nick sings while S.A.

Was the grass ganja? Well, it hard to say.ģ11’s mid-90s self-titled album is where I and my Cool But Not That Cool 90s Kid friend set officially got onboard the bandwagon. The title track is all “311 has grass roots.” True. What the hell?) The next album was called Grassroots. 311 is a band so chill they called their first album Music and closed it out with a song called “Fuck the Bullshit.” Music collected songs from their early independent releases alongside some new ones, and “Fuck the Bullshit” (known to squares as “Fat Chance”) is basically “Click Click Boom” ten years before “Click Click Boom.” There’s a sick bass solo in the middle played by a vape enthusiast who goes by 'P-Nut.' (Yeah, that guy on Twitter who goes by “P-Nut” isn’t even the OG P-Nut.

311 transistor album cover