Blink-182
There is, of course, an innate element of irony to seeing a band largely viewed as a nostalgia act when its frontman (or in this case, one of its two frontmen) has been replaced. Call it the Journey Effect: The fans turn out to hear the songs regardless of whether it's the very same dudes playing them. In this instance, instead of Journey, we're talking about a pop-punk band known as much for boner jokes as for its handful of late-’90s and early-Aughts hits.
It was this sense of pop-punk authenticity (oxymoron?) that we pondered as the lights came down ahead of Blink-182's Monday night set at Ascend Amphitheater. While Blink founder Tom DeLonge is out chasing aliens — seriously — co-founder Mark Hoppus and longtime drummer Travis Barker are soldiering on with Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba in DeLonge's place. So would the band sound the same? Does it even matter?
Here are the answers to those questions, respectively: No, they don't really sound just the same, but also, hell no, of course it doesn’t matter. With a burst of pyro and the word "FUCK" lit up behind them in literal flames, Blink-182 — or, in their DeLonge-less state, perhaps we should call them Blink-181 — ripped into “Feeling This” from 2003’s Blink-182 as though there wasn't a completely different dude onstage. Then it was their 1999 breakthrough single “What’s My Age Again?” followed by “Family Reunion,” which is essentially a 30-second version of George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” bit — that is, the funniest shit in the world to a 14-year-old.
The trio was several songs in before switching from Hoppus-led tunes to Skiba-fronted ones like, for instance, “First Date” from 2001’s elegantly titled Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. Truthfully, the also-white, also-tatted, also-40-year-old, also-pitchily-tenored Skiba is as good or better at guitar and vocals as DeLonge ever was, and moreover, the crowd didn’t seem to care.
And that crowd. It was a full house, a mess of millennials with longshorts and shitty tattoos alongside aging mall punks, alt-rock rednecks and bros who were just happy to be there. We’d made our way into Ascend shortly after 7 p.m. to the sounds of openers The All-American Rejects, who — outside of making a couple of dated references and playing a couple of vaguely recognizable pop-rock songs — were largely negligible, both to The Spin and the seemingly underwhelmed audience.
The previously known-to-us-in-name-only A Day to Remember, on the other hand, went over with the younger members of the audience like gangbusters. With post-hardcore chug-along verses and sentimental emo-pop choruses, ADTR — from Central Florida, where else — issued a breed of punk-pop that alternates between aggro and saccharine and is in much shorter supply these days than it was a decade ago. Nevertheless, the lawn crowd ate it up, and gimmicks like a guy in a carrot outfit firing a T-shirt gun and young women throwing rolls of toilet paper from the stage were a big hit. As demonstrated by a song called “Paranoia” — which more or less sounded like a pop-punk version of “Ace of Spades” — A Day to Remember, all smiles and circle pits, could just as easily be called Safe Danger. It isn’t that they’re a dreadful band — they’re just a fun and charming band that very proficiently executes a dreadful style of music.
But back to the headliners, who make a debatably less-dreadful style of music. As Hoppus put it at one point, it’d been 15 years since Blink-182 last played Nashville, or as he called it, the “Big Windy Apple Country City.” While there was a little less banter on Monday night than there tended to be onstage during Blink’s heyday, most of the band’s calling cards were still there. A shirtless Barker still overplayed with athletic dexterity and marching-band precision while Hoppus bounded around the stage like he’s still 23. And they still played tunes with names like “Dysentery Gary” and “Dumpweed” alongside songs like (the admittedly “emo”) “Stay Together for the Kids” and what has to be the most confounding stinker in the band’s catalog, 2003’s “Miss You.”
Blink-182
There were of course new elements — including songs from July’s OK California, Blink’s first album written and recorded with Skiba. There were also skeletons and hotrods on a massive video screen, cascading sparks, leaping flames and a gargantuan, shifting overhead light rig. If Green Day is the Bruce Springsteen of pop punk, maybe, then you could say Blink is the Van Halen of pop punk, maybe. And at least The Spin saw the Van Hagar version of the band and not the Van Cherone one. (Who will take DeLonge’s spot in that version of the band? The Panic! At the Disco guy, maybe?)
After a pair of pleasant-surprise deep cuts from 1995’s Cheshire Cat — namely, “M+M’s” and “Carousel” — the trio left the stage, promising to return for a “contractually obligated” encore. That four-song encore included California’s “Los Angeles” and “Brohemian Rhapsody” (the latter a 30-second, return-to-idiotic-form joke song), as well as the band’s biggest hit, “All the Small Things,” and a show-closing rendition of “Dammit” from 1997’s Dude Ranch, complete with its chorus of “I guess this is growing up.”
It’s probably too on-the-nose to point out, but we’ll do it anyway: We guess this — nearly 7,000 fans, some who seemed too old to care about this band, some who seemed too young to know about them, scream-singing the lyric “Did you hear that he fucked her?” at 10:40 on a Monday night — is growing up.
Now check out some photos!
All-American RejectsPhoto: Angelina Castillo
All-American RejectsPhoto: Angelina Castillo
A Day to RememberPhoto: Angelina Castillo
A Day to RememberPhoto: Angelina Castillo
Blink-182Photo: Angelina Castillo
Blink-182Photo: Angelina Castillo
Blink-182Photo: Angelina Castillo
Blink-182Photo: Angelina Castillo
Photo: Angelina Castillo
