The purpose of this post is to spotlight Eve 6 lead singer Max Collins and the unique contributions he’s made to the alternative rock world. True, in general, Eve 6 is very well received, by the listening public, if not necessarily the critics, and “Inside out” is pretty much everyone but the Scrooge’s favorite song. The band has been known to headline festivals such as Milwaukee’s Summerfest, and, concurrent with the release of their debut album which featured “Inside out”; conspicuously did a tour opening for the venerable Third Eye Blind.
Still, misconceptions do exist about this band, as well as hidden wrinkles I find interesting or entertaining, so I thought I’d tackle him as my subject here. One common fallacy which tends to loom over this band’s head is the mediocrity of their third album, It’s All in Your Head (2003), an LP which attracted a two-stars-out-of-five review in Rolling Stone, and received pretty much no radio play, at least of which I’m aware. According to Wikipedia, two journals gave the album laudatory scores: the relatively obscure Alternative Press and Pop Matters. For what it’s worth, my “Dream Eve 6 Setlist” Spotify playlist will hint, theoretically, at some merit on the part of It’s All in Your Head, with the mighty “At Least We’re Dreaming” (arguably the band’s best song to date) placed penultimately, within the encore, and about four or five other tracks also chosen for the “fantasy concert.” Actually, I even left out a song, “Friend of Mine”; not for its lack of weight and artistic value but rather just for the gushing overflow of genuine feeling I thought might bog down the mood in the setting of a concert attended by several thousand people.
Wikipedia offers fairly little backstory on Collins, from before the 1995 formation of Eve 6 (when he was a high school freshman), but an interview with Gallery Space Media should give us at least a glimpse into his early musical interests: “Back in the ’90s, you’d see a ska band, a hardcore band, a pop-punk band and a noise band all on the same stage.” From there, ironically, we advance very quickly to pop stardom and MTV rotation with “Inside out”; whose music video portrays Max Collins getting rained on at a table where everyone else is left dry (this exact thing happened to me at cross country camp in the summer of ’98, amusingly enough), and then wielding an emotionally complicated disposition toward an attractive love interest, a storyline that was starting to seem more and more realistic for Collins around this time. In total, I think, Eve 6 is a pretty mediocre album, with “Showerhead”; “Open Road Song” and “There’s a Face” standing as notable exceptions. There is, though, a live version of the whole LP on Spotify, “The Fly Record Live,” perhaps for sentimentality purposes, or because a number of parties disagree with me on its quality.
2000’s Horrorscope sauntered in fairly inconspicuously, with “Promise”; while perhaps being a little underrated still, lathering up a pretty median amount of enthusiasm as a fun, summery pop-punk anthem. Of course, here, we get more clever, ironic and playful lyrics from Collins: “I promise not to try not to fu** with your mind”… “Everyone wants charm and a smile and a promise / Well I promise not to try”. I didn’t care, at 16: the music was great, the album really consistent, and, again, the music video for “Promise” funny and amusing.
It’s when the second single from this album, “Here’s to the Night”; came out, that this band was solidified as a mainstay in alternative rock. My high school class actually ended up embracing this song as it’s official theme (even though we didn’t graduate until 2002, making it almost two years old), and I’ve met dudes in bars as young as 30 or so who say this song is really special to them. This one guy I met said he and his faraway friends listen to this song every time they get together, just when they’re about to depart.
It was in the summer of 2000 I was lucky enough to see Eve 6 with my dad at the Q101 Jamboree in Tinley Park, Illinois, at what was then the Tweeter Center, a very vital and busy music venue. I don’t remember too much about Eve 6’s set (while very much enjoying The Suicide Machines and Goldfinger, at that same event), other than Collins exhibiting very strange behavior on stage. He was dressed in red, leather pants and a white, spandex shirt, and at one point started strutting around the stage like Rico Suave, asking, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Does this outfit show off my figure well?” I was mystified and dumbfounded… my only guess as an explanation for what he was doing is that he was trying to probe what he saw as the homophobic Chicago concert crowds, which certainly seems like a possibility.
As I allude to earlier, It’s All in Your Head was released in 2003 to pretty much no buzz or publicity, whatsoever. I’ll admit, I even thought, at the time, there’s no way this new Eve 6 album is any good. I was in the height of my Strokes fandom (a band Collins famously hates, for some reason), getting stoned to Led Zeppelin’s live album How the West Was Won, which had just dropped, hence not noticing the out-of-tune guitar on “Immigrant Song”; and in general wanting to explore outside the box of the mainstream pop-punk fabric I’d embraced so whole-heartedly in high school. I would have treated a new Third Eye Blind album with the same apathetic disdain.
After It’s All in Your Head, Eve 6 would release another album, Speak in Code (2012), an altogether listenable and decent effort, really. One interesting thing about this album is that it contains “B.F.G.F.,” an obvious stab at “blockbuster single” territory and radio play, on the part of the band. It’s more overtly sexual than the band’s default lyrical strategy (“I guess you just weren’t made for monogamy”; “Put your back in / Baby put your back into it”). Of course, it failed miserably in this quest for mainstream success and ubiquity, but it’s really not a terrible song, if somewhat awkward for in part representing a selling of the band’s soul, in a sense.
Since then, Eve 6 have treked on and released a few more albums, with Collins, meanwhile, known for making hilariously awkward and sarcastic comments in social media wherein he ribs fans and other concertgoers for attempting to hate his band, while at the same time paying attention to everything they do. His ephemeral but bizarre beef with Third Eye Blind singer Stephan Jenkins has been widely publicized: in Alternative Press he relates an episode of Jenkins, in the dressing room, after inquiring about Collins’ girlfriend, asking, “‘You know I fu**ed her, right?’” In true artistic and worldly form, then, Collins proceeds to extrapolate constructively on Jenkins’ behavior: “‘I would venture to guess that there is a performative aspect to his seemingly abject shi**y personality, which is ok with me… I think at the end of the day, the stuff can be pretty entertaining.’” The sooner, I think, we accept that Collins and his band will always be misunderstood and unpredictable, the more easily we forge a path to new enlightenment and entertainment, by their unique and catalyzing sort of way.
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