Tag Archives: blink-182

#1133: Blink-182 – The Rock Show

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I’ve never listened to Blink-182’s 2001 album Take Off Your Pants and Jacket in full. I don’t think I’m missing out on anything if I never did. But I may be being a bit too harsh. I’m sure it has its fans, but the album being sandwiched in between what are considered to be the band’s best works with Enema of the State in ’99 and the self-titled/untitled album arriving in 2003 has built up this preconceived idea in my head that the whole record probably wouldn’t be as good. ‘Happy Holidays, You Bastard’ is a regular at the Christmas parties I have with friends. I’m pretty indifferent to it. And I’ll be one to say that ‘Anthem’ is way better than ‘Anthem Part Two’. So we’re off to a good start.

‘The Rock Show’ is a song that can be found on the album, however, and is one that’s been around in my life for a long, long time. Maybe even since 2001. I have a memory of watching the video on TV, even before I was consciously looking for music of its type. It was probably on The Box or something. My sister laughed at the scene where Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus buy a box of doves from a store and free them from their captivity. It wasn’t until years later, after finding out who Blink-182 actually were and getting into their music, that they were the group who made that song about falling in love with the girl at the rock show. The track, mainly written by bassist Mark Hoppus but credited to the entire band, was released as Take Off’s… first single.

The track is a tale of young love. Very pop-punk oriented. A boy meets a girl on the Warped Tour, they’re both into each other, they tell their parents they going to move Las Vegas… and by the song’s bridge it seems that some time’s passed and the relationship has ended, but it doesn’t stop the narrator remembering those good times as he stares at her picture on the wall and waits for a phone call that never arrives. I never realised that there was a line that was a nod to Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, but it’s there, that’s quite neat, actually. It’s a tight performance by Hoppus, DeLonge and Travis Barker, energetic and very cathartic with those cymbal crashes on the “Fell in love/She said what/She’s so cool” moments in the choruses. The whole track just seems like a brief snapshot in time when things in America seemed to be carefree before another event in 2001 happened and messed everything up.

#947: Blink-182 – Not Now

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I’ll always think of this track as Blink-182’s last ever song. It was the track released after their break-up in 2005, and its music video consisting of clips from their old videos and footage of Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker goofing off or posing for pictures, very much gave off the idea of “This is the end, but thanks for everything.” Then as we all know, they got back together a few years later, Tom then left, Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio joined and they’re still going somewhat strong today. But this definitely capped off what was the band’s golden era. And I guess their cover of The Only Ones’ ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ was the coda in a way.

‘Not Now’ was recorded during the sessions for the band’s untitled/self-titled record that was released in 2003. You can find a documentary online based on the making of that album, and you’ll come across footage of DeLonge working on the song’s acoustic guitar in there. The song wasn’t included on the final product though, and was instead giving the bonus track treatment on some versions and placed as a B-side to ‘I Miss You’ when that was released as a single. But fast forward two years and it was selected as the single to promote the band’s Greatest Hits compilation. With an overarching theme of death and going into it head-on, I’m guessing that it was considered to be the most appropriate song to represent the band’s end.

But man, this track contains one of Blink’s best performances as a group. Travis Barker is firing on all cylinders, I don’t think there’s a large period of time where he stops hitting the drums. Tom DeLonge’s voice is maybe at its peak here. Its at that point where it hasn’t transitioned to his vocal shift that was present in his first Angels & Airwaves album, but it’s getting there, yet it still has that youthful punk energy to it. Everything’s delivered at this frantic pace. Things calm down for the choruses, but then the music always explodes back into the instrumentals. It’s such a great dynamic. Hoppus doesn’t have much of a standout presence on this track, I’ve noticed. Of course he plays bass, and I think he has a harmony vocal at one point. I’ll assume that’s another reason why he was against having ‘Not Now’ as the lead single for their Greatest Hits. But really, I don’t think there could have been a better choice.

#803: Blink-182 – Man Overboard

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Blink-182 fans know that ‘Man Overboard’ could have been on Enema of the State, the 1999 album that essentially propelled the band to the masses and provided pop-punk anthems like ‘All the Small Things’ and ‘What’s My Age Again?’ It didn’t make it though. The band worked on the song, they made a demo and everything, but couldn’t get the lyrics down so left it on the shelf. A year later, the group released a live album to keep fans happy while they waited for a new studio release, and there ‘Man Overboard’ was in its final form as the ‘last’ track. It precedes a large number of hidden tracks of fart and sex jokes.

The song’s about the band’s original drummer, Scott Raynor, who left/was fired because of his alcoholic tendencies. Well, it hasn’t been confirmed, but it’s more or less what it’s commonly agreed to be about. The song’s title compares the whole departure issue to the moment when a person calls the titular phrase after falling off a ship. Because it doesn’t appear on a ‘true’ Blink album, I think the track is overlooked in a way. Bit of a shame because it’s a really good one. It’s a great show of alternating Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge vocals with Travis Barker going mad on the drums, as was the usual for a long time in the band’s initial run. Fast-paced pop punk with an almost child-like taunting tone to it is how I would describe it in short.

The music video caps off the Enema era humorously. It parodies the videos of that album’s singles, but in the place of the band members are little people. A great way to look at the recent success, and I guess ring in what was then the new millennium.

#791: Blink-182 – M+M’s

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This is a toughy. Only because I have no reason to gush over this song, I just think it’s very good. ‘M+M’s’ has been a mainstay in my music library for a long time. Some time after Christmas 2007, to be sort of exact ’cause that’s when I got Blink-182’s 2005 Greatest Hits compilation as a gift. ‘M+M’s’ is the second track on that collection. I can’t say it’s been there at major moment of my life, wasn’t the soundtrack to a specific moment in time. It’s just a damn catchy tune.

Like a lot of pop-punk tracks and Blink-182 songs in general, it’s about a boy-girl relationship. Hoppus sings about this girl he’s found that he’s got something good going with, and is determined not to mess things up. It seems that he can’t believe his luck, the way things are going for him, and the only thing now is to really seal the deal and ask her to be his girlfriend. The song contains a memorable riff by Tom DeLonge, thinking about it now he uses the same technique on some parts of ‘Dumpweed’, and the rhythm’s very tight too. Travis Barker may be the better drummer technically, but for his time in the band, original drummer Scott Raynor was a perfect fit for the song’s the band did back then.

‘M+M’s’ was Blink-182’s first ever single, released in 1995 when they were to bring out their debut album Cheshire Cat. They made a music video for it too, which you can see above. That is the censored version. The original had a scene at the end where the bandmembers and their ‘girlfriends’ have a shootout. Fake gunshot wounds and everything. That is below.

#675: Blink-182 – Josie

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Was sometime in 2005 when I first came across ‘Josie’. Blink-182 had quite recently split up, and the video for ‘Not Now’ was usually on the tele. That video played as a sort of clipshow of all the music videos the band had done up to that point. Some of them I hadn’t seen before. So I guess that stirred my curiosity and I went to check out the band’s older stuff.

Seeing the videos for ‘Dammit’ and ‘Josie’ I thought they were the most hilarious things I’d seen in my life. I was ten years old at the time. Even so, the humour in both clips hold up to this day. Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge ham up their acting performances just perfectly in the story aspects of the two promos. I’ve talked about ‘Dammit’ before though, so what about ‘Josie’?

Well, ‘Josie’ was released as a single from the band’s second album Dude Ranch in 1997. This was the last LP of the band’s featuring original drummer Scott Raynor, who was dismissed from the band the following years for reasons that no one knows for sure but is widely agreed that alcoholism was involved. The drumming on this particular track is just as frenetic and thunderous as the stuff Travis Barker would do from Enema onwards. Though Barker is definitely the better drummer, Raynor fills the role fine propelling the power-chord led track’s rhythm further and further with snare rolls and cymbal crashes.

The track is about having a girlfriend and the benefits that arise from the situation. Mark Hoppus wonders how he got this girl in the first place and how she hasn’t left him for another man already. But he takes great pleasure in the small things she does, and when he gets home late from work and she’s there – well, he’s happy to be alive. I do enjoy watching the video along with the music. It’s one of those that just makes the song sound better. Though it is a fantastic track by itself.