Third Eye Blind sabotaged its own charity concert in Cleveland to protest the Republican National Convention Tuesday evening, playing unknown songs from their late albums, cursing at the crowd, and calling their Republican fans bigots.
The concert, held by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), was intended to support Musicians on Call, a charity organization that brings musicians into hospitals to comfort patients.
Lead singer Stephan Jenkins barely mentioned the charity, and instead used the event to promote his political beliefs, and antagonize his audience. The band was routinely booed by the crowd, who suffered through 45 minutes of poorly played tunes that no one had ever heard of.
Jenkins responded to hecklers, "You can boo all you want, but I’m the motherf——’ artist up here." He later asked the crowd "who believes in science?"
The band played none of its few hits from the 1990s, except "Jumper," which they used to criticize the RNC on LGBT issues.
"This is a song about acceptance and tolerance from a friend who jumped off a bridge because he was being bullied because he was gay," Jenkins said. "And the RNC is still not to this very day been able to incorporate LGBT Americans fully, like my cousins who are gay, into the American fabric. To love this song is to take into your heart the message that to actually, actually have a feeling to arrive and move forward and not live your life in fear and imposing that fear on other people."
The band also played "Non-Dairy Creamer," an anti-George W. Bush song that ends with a repeating verse of "young gay Republicans."
Requests for comment on whether the RIAA was aware of the band’s plans to use the charity event as a stunt were not immediately returned.
Jenkins’ political beliefs are well known. The singer penned an editorial in 2012 explaining why he refused to play at the GOP convention that year, saying the party is not inclusive to his gay cousin or "people who like roads, air traffic controllers, and disaster funding for hurricanes."
"If I came to their convention, I would Occupy their convention," he wrote.
The band drew less of a crowd than John Kasich, who spoke at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier in the day. Hundreds of people stood in the blistering heat in a line stretching to the road to see the Ohio Governor.
There was no line for Third Eye Blind.