There is no escaping the tragedy of loss-too-soon when discussing Blind Melon. It’s woven into the very fabric of this band and their music. But this is a celebration and that’s what we’ll do. Tight, beautiful, hopeful, clamoring for its voice to be heard. This record was one of the first to come out in the early 1990s to signal a new dawn of rock ’n’ roll based on the substance of the songs and not the gimmicks or easy tricks of the genre that had so dominated the previous decade.
Yes, there was a video with a precocious girl in a bumblebee outfit, but she wasn’t a prop used to move units. She was all of us; the outcasts, the free-thinkers, the spirits that would not be crushed by the wave of conformity popular music seemed to demand of its disciples. And all of that was perfectly encapsulated in the music on this record. If anything, Blind Melon signaled a hopeful future, a promise of better things to come. A promise, tragically unfulfilled.