311 - 311

311 spent the early nineties as a band from Omaha that nobody outside Nebraska had much reason to notice. Their third album changed that permanently. Released in 1995, the self-titled record most people just call the blue album reached number 12 on the Billboard 200, went triple platinum, and turned up on every rock station in America for roughly two straight years.

"Down" topped the Modern Rock chart in 1996 and "All Mixed Up" followed it, both built on the same trick: Nick Hexum's melodies handed off to SA Martinez's raps over a rhythm section that could move between reggae, funk and outright metal inside a single song without ever sounding like it was showing off. The deep cuts are where the band's actual chops live. "Hive," "Misdirected Hostility" and "T & P Combo" are faster, heavier and stranger than anything the singles suggested. Ron Saint Germain produced at NRG and, unlike the two albums before it, cut the band playing live in a room together, which is exactly why it has the bounce it does.

Thirty years on it remains the definitive 311 record and a genuine outlier from 1995, a year when almost nothing on rock radio sounded this loose or this cheerful. Plenty of bands tried this combination afterward. Very few made it swing.

Remastered from the original analog tapes and pressed as a 180-gram double LP in a gatefold jacket with color insert. On Volcano.