I’m sure your first thought upon seeing that title was either “why does that sound familiar” or “holy carp, I haven’t listened to them in years.” Well, if it was the first, this little video should jog some memories for you, provided you were in high school in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

Treading the poppy ground between punk and grunge (I guess? I’m really not sure…they were just rock, I guess), Eve 6 were a force to be reckoned with…at least in my puberty-addled mind. “Inside Out” was the hit single from their self-titled Eve 6, but for me, “Open Road Song” was THE SONG that struck a chord (haaah!) with me. I grew up in a very rural area…it was 20 miles to school and most of friends houses, so I spent a lot of time driving. While I wholeheartedly despise and loathe everything about that place, there’s something undeniably appealing about driving down an open highway in a 20 year old car that struggles to top 65 with the windows open on a starry night and that song blasting out of janky speakers.

Another song that has always appealed to me from the album is “Leech,” about duplicitous friends–something anyone can appreciate. In fact, the whole album is without a weak link, though it only comes in at 38 minutes.

After their success in 1998, they released their sophomore album Horrorscope in 2000, with that graduation standard “Here’s To the Night.” Out of place on the album, it was a slower (dare we say boring) song about getting drunk, hooking up with random strangers, and waking up hungover. Somehow, high school students across the States assumed this song was about “the best years of their lives.” It wasn’t (the singer explained the song in no uncertain terms in interviews), but for many it probably was the best years of their lives. Do not mourn them. They got what they deserved.

Still, the album, overall, was quite good, as can be attested by “Promise,” the album opener.

While the self-titled album was raw, teenaged hormones, Horrorscope was surprisingly mature (or at least it seemed so when I was 16). For me, the song “Amphetamines” sums up that maturity quite succinctly. Like any pop punk/radio rock band, most of their songs focus on the doldrums of relationships and tedious break ups, but this song in particular carries an undercurrent of the real with it’s honest nostalgia for what once was.

And, while “On the Roof Again” was notably for its sly description of a love-lorn, suicidal cheater, “Sunset Strip Bitch” is possibly my favorite send up the Los Angeles wannabe (an appropriate soundtrack for the latest Entourage movie news, and, yes, I will watch that movie while hating myself with dark intensity).

So, what’s your favorite Eve 6 song? And your favorite band from high school that you still listen to?

Finally, I’d like to leave you with a final song that I can relate to all too well.

(Be sure to check this week’s story “Dirk Dirkenson” too!”)