3 DOORS DOWN
It has been a long time since a record grabbed me the way the Invisible Eyes did. I was reminded of the first time that I heard “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down (the most successful rock band from the Mississippi Gulf Coast region) on the local alternative-rock radio station WCPR: I cranked the radio up full blast after I heard the first four or five notes, and I bet I hadn't done that for at least 20 years. This was long before they got their national label contract, when they were just a local band.
A year or more before all that happened, someone told me that they had recorded a CD; and I went all over the Coast looking for it, only to be told that they hadn't gotten it in, or they had sold out, or whatever. Finally – I believe it was in the Sound Shop at the mall in Gautier – I found a copy of 3 Doors Down; and it was every bit as good as I thought it would be. It is one of the true treasures of my record collection; it is not mentioned in the Wikipedia or Allmusic article on the band, and I have never seen it listed on eBay. About half of the tracks on this CD are on their debut album, The Better Life; I still hear the original version of “Kryptonite” on local radio once in a while.
(December 2012)
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The biggest rock band to come out of our area, 3 Doors Down (from the community of Escatawpa near Pascagoula) had a #3 hit song “Kryptonite” and a hit album The Better Life in 2000. The song was a radio hit here for years before that though, and I have already told the story of how much I loved the song and how hard I worked to at last find that early demo CD, 3 Doors Down. They are still going strong: Their fifth album Time of My Life (2011) debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 charts; and their two previous albums, Seventeen Days (2005) and 3 Doors Down (2008) hit #1. Next year, the band celebrates the 20th year since its founding, and 3 Doors Down has sold 20 million albums.
I bought a CD by another local rock band at about the same time as 3 Doors Down; it was Super Feinds by Level with the Ground. It is an excellent album, and everyone thought that they might hit the big time also. I read on the Internet years later that the album sold an amazing 5,000 copies; I have never heard how many copies of the 3 Doors Down demo CD were sold. Level with the Ground began performing with another hot local band, Stereo Crisis; and later the two bands merged to form Seven Left.
(December 2015)
