With their friendly reggae/hip-hop/alt-rock hybrid, 311 are an agreeable little band, yet they’ve long suffered from an image problem. When they’re not being derided as a frat-friendly, jam-lite band (a characterization that, while exaggerated, they’d be hard-pressed to refute), they’re being charged (far more ridiculously) as racists. The claims are so dubious that nobody really believes them, yet 311 fans have dignified them with a response. See the band’s Wikipedia entry for a hilariously defensive refutation of the charges, where fans awkwardly make their case that 311 isn’t a KKK front by citing the band’s pacifist song lyrics, singer Doug Martinez’s Latino heritage and the group’s shared tour with Snoop Dogg. Come see for yourself whether 311 are klansmen when they play the Miller Lite Oasis tonight at 10 p.m.
