Blues Traveler "Four" [1994]

Epitomizing the horrid little secret of the 90s music scene -- frat-stoner rock -- Blues Traveler rode the thrift-store coattails of Dave Matthews and Spin Doctors toward infamy and a few extra bucks by annoying the rest of us with their faux-hippie East Coast meanderings, peppered with plenty of shit-ass whiteboy funk (I mean, at least Matthews had actual black dudes in his band). Vamping -- endlessly -- off Grateful Dead conceits for similarly-minded fucktards who bought tie-dye t-shirts at Saks for 50 bucks, this was "safe," "wholesome" music that yuppie parents could get into, too. So if you were a rich mama's boy or daddy's girl, this was likely the band you cited to your even more vacuous friends who thought there was no good music besides Hootie & the Blowfish. Led by harmonica-swallowing fatso John Popper, who sounds like if Magic Dick's name was Magic Asshole, Blues Traveler neither plays any actual blues nor goes actually anywhere. In fact, they never veer too far from redneck music, approximating country & western enough to satisfy racist white college kids from New Jersey, though ultimately they hoped to reach FM rock radio staple status. Unfortunately for them and for the rest of us, too, Popper's tortured-robin soloing and his moronic guitarist thinking it was a good idea to try and keep up with him doomed Blues Traveler to the realms of Weird Al parody, had Weird Al given enough of a shit about these guys.