Jimmy Eat World One of Rock Music's Best-Kept Secrets
By: Henry Gayden - U-WIRE
February 16th 2002 12:37am
(U-WIRE) AUSTIN, Texas -- Even at the peak of its success in 1973, Led Zeppelin was dubbed "rock's best-kept secret." They might have been the biggest-selling group in the world, but no major magazine showed it. Zeppelin usually ducked press like the plague and instead relied on its cult-like fan base and word of mouth. According to the word, they passionately performed songs at lengths that would make Tolstoy blush. And judging from their fan base, rock's best-kept secret wasn't going to be exposed by articles like this or record-breaking sales. It had something to do with experience. It is almost 30 years later, and it seems Jimmy Eat World have inherited that title, if for a slightly different milieu. Rock music has changed. The biggest-selling group in the world is Linkin Park. And Jimmy Eat World -- despite a healthy relationship with the press -- are more of a secret than Zeppelin ever was. Although the single "Salt Sweat Sugar" from their self-titled album (re-named from "Bleed American" to avoid misunderstandings after Sept. 11) frequents mainstream radio, Jimmy mostly inhabits a world of critically lauded obscurity and die-hard fans. Yet that fan base reaches far -- they once played to sold out concerts in Europe, where their albums weren't even available yet -- and wide (fluff-rockers Blink-182 cite J.E.W. as their favorite band). Last September, Jimmy Eat World was scheduled to play Emo's in Austin, but the show was canceled. "Partially because of 9-11, but mostly because my wife was pregnant at the time," said Zach Lind, the drummer for the band. "We weren't sure when she was going to deliver, but I knew I didn't want to miss it." Now with a new baby at home, Lind will return with the band to Austin this Saturday to play Emo's with Midtown. Still sold out from September, the venue will admit all valid ticket holders from the canceled show. Interrupting their overseas schedule to play every canceled location from September (including Dallas and Tucson), Jimmy Eat World will headline its U.S. shows for the first time in a while. Last fall the band played to stadium audiences, but only by opening for Weezer with Tenacious D. Now the band gets to do what it does best: play to that smaller, cult-like audience that comes to see only them (and in this case, waited four-and-a-half months to do it). Receiving high praise for an album that the band considers its best, Jimmy Eat World can definitely feel the butterflies -- a phrase that continually emerges in their song "For Me This is Heaven." For years they've been clumped into the indeterminate "emo" movement, but lead singer Jim Adkins rebuffs that pseudo-classification in favor of "pop rock." Their earlier work, most notably Static Prevails (1996), definitely blisters with the driving guitar-punk energy that characterizes the emo genre. But anyone who's listened to their last two albums -- the mellow Clarity (1999) and subversively poppy Jimmy Eat World (2001) -- wouldn't dispute his argument. Jimmy Eat World has matured into a compulsively listenable rock band. Perhaps more of a diet alternative to Zeppelin's literary ruminations, they nevertheless exhibit symptoms of the well-kept rock secret: a devoted international following that revels in the kind of sincere, straightforward rock shows that would make Marilyn Manson blush - even through the makeup. As one German critic put it while attending a concert in Cologne: "Jimmy Eat World enters through the soles of my feet, shoots up my legs and smacks me right in the Muladhara chakra." As long as you can feel the butterflies.
 (C) 2002 Daily Texan via U-WIRE
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