A New Hope

I won Blink 182's Dude Ranch in a game of poker when I was in 6th grade. It was the kind of poker game where the chips consisted of doritos, cereal, and anything else with value that we could find laying around. I went all in with my Sanyo calculator watch on a full house of aces over nines and my cousin called with this cd, which is still one of my favorite albums of all time.

Anyway, it's Sunday, so let's give a listen to "A New Hope," Blink's funny ode to Princess Leia.

	Blink 182 - A New Hope
	Found at skreemr.com

*By the way, have you seen the trailer for Sorority Row? What the hell happened to Carrie Fisher? She even sounds ugly.

Angels & Airwaves

Last Blink-themed post. I started with a thesis and now I'm just chronicling the lives of Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge for my own benefit. The latter of those two men seemed to go off the deep end after after Blink 182's original demise. He got a lot weirder, and I think that album cover explains it all. Keep in mind that album artwork is not supposed to be ironic or juvenile. His new band, Angels & Airwaves, has a website that actually requests that you pay for their content such as films and artwork, as if fans cared about anything other than the music. In other words, Tom's new work has been largely pretentious. In fact, when "AVA" debuted, Tom went on a PR blitz claiming his new band was revolutionary. Turns out Tom's idea of "groundbreaking" and "new" just includes some extra irrelevant tracks of noise and guitars with a delay effect. So ironically, groundbreaking to Tom just meant making his band sound like U2. I'm not sure whether or not they've sold well, but combine the current economy with the fact that Tom has lent his name to various business ventures like Macbeth shoes and Atticus clothing (while mark sold his stake in those same ventures) and I think Tom probably has the most to gain by reuniting the old Blink 182 name. As bad as they are, you've likely heard an Angels & Airwaves song, as one song, The Adventure, has been a lot of commercials in the past year. (Ford commercials I think):

	Angels And Airwaves - 05 The Adventure
	Found at skreemr.com

+44

When Your Heart Stops Beating +44 formed in the wake of Blink 182's "hiatus." This new band featured Mark Hoppus and Travis yet again on drums (he was in Boxcar Racer, too). Of the various Blink 182 offspring and side projects, +44 ended up sounding most like its predecessor. They also represent the only project to realize that moving on from their past work didn't mean they had to forget about it completely. Said Corey Apar of allmusic.com:

On their debut, When Your Heart Stops Beating, +44 has managed to balance out upbeat rockers and somber introspections to create a record that is thoughtful and composed, yet fun, and almost like the album blink could have made had they stuck together.

There are some electro-pop elements and softer songs here that prove Mark Hoppus' worth as a pop song writer, and validating in the process his newfound success as a producer for such bands as The Matches, Motion City Soundtrack, Socratic, and New Found Glory.
Here's a song from the album which actually attacks Tom, who at the time had finally formed his new band, our next subject, Angels & Airwaves:

	(+44) - No It Isn't
	Found at skreemr.com

Boxcar Racer

(Blink 182 + David Kennedy) - (Mark Hoppus + Pop Elements) = Boxcar Racer

Boxcar Racer was a side project put together by Blink 182's Tom Delonge between Blink's two final albums. He positioned it as an outlet for material he felt would have been unbecoming of a Blink 182 record. By saying this he was more or less admitting that Blink had become a cash cow that had gotten away from what had originally driven the band to make music. It was a more personal, much angrier, political record, as well as a continuation of Tom's lyrical theme in which he tries to tell teenage America to stop being so stupid and gullible and stand up for themselves, which we heard earlier on Anthem Pt.II.

For what it's worth, this was Tom's one and only actual punk effort, and in my opinion the greatest work he's ever done. Probably as a way of saying "hey, look, I can be punk," Rancid's Tim Armstrong appears on the track "Cat Like Thief." Needless to say he dismantled the band after this, their only release, saying it had served its purpose. Luckily I had a chance to see them headline with Sum 41 before the breakup. He then went back to (now that I think about it) purposefully make a really crappy Blink 182 record so he'd have an excuse to leave it for good.

	Boxcar Racer - Cat Like Thief
	Found at skreemr.com

My choice for the album's best song:

	Boxcar Racer - There Is
	Found at skreemr.com

Blink 182 - The End

I hope that by this point I've at least established an idea of what made Blink 182 successful. The fact is, though, that the band were all in their late 20s (Mark was 31) by the time Take Off Your Pants and Jacket came out, and everyone knows a punk can't be a punk forever. So, no doubt feeling swayed to achieve more artistry and depth in their musical endeavors by time and age, Blink put out their self titled record, which, while of course lauded by critics, was kind of a slap in the face to everyone who had been a longtime fan. Why did it suck? Well, being more serious and sonically advanced (they harmonize on this record!) would have been a great change of pace, and even appreciated by me. But what came out was more than just that. There's a track which devotes an entire minute to an old woman talking about a war, there's a two minute piano "interlude", and even a duet with The Cure's Robert Smith. I think the interlude speaks on behalf of the rest of the album, so have a listen and tell me where you can hear any influence from previous records at all:

	blink-182 - the fallen interlude
	Found at skreemr.com

It's not even that the record is horrible, because it's not. It's just that it shouldn't have been released under the Blink 182 name. At least when Paul McCartney decides to change it up and take an audio shit he has the decency to call it The Fireman. But, alas, this is where they were headed, and you can hear the direct influence of whatever was pulling Tom and Mark apart on tracks of this album. The tracks that still held an influence of pop punk were clearly Mark's. And the track's that were spacey and weird were Tom's. It was obvious.

Mark:

	Blink 182 - Feeling This
	Found at skreemr.com

Tom:

	blink-182 - all of this (feat robert smith)
	Found at skreemr.com

And someone in the band must have felt the same way because they broke up shortly after this record, and they should have. I'm not saying they had to hate each other like they did, but if your influences have changed so differently, start a side project. Everyone starts a side project.

Blink 182 - The Middle Passage (Cont'd)

Take Off Your Pants and Jacket...in which Blink 182 finds the perfect blend of maturity and the humor that brought their style to the forefront of the Warped Tour generation. It's really sort of summed up by the album artwork. There's overt sophomoric humor in an otherwise more mature graphic, and Blink was one of the first bands of their era to use the more green-friendly recycled cardboard packaging with this album, so maybe that meant something too. There was really only one ridiculously immature song on this album called "Happy Holidays, You Bastard," but it was only :42 in length. Much of the rest was that blend of maturity and their tried and true pop punk formula. For example, here's a song called "Stay Together for the Kids" that isn't meant to be funny at all:

	Blink 182 - Stay Together for the Kids
	Found at skreemr.com

They also get a bit political (by their standards, anyway) on "Anthem Pt.II":

	Blink-182 - Anthem, Pt. 2
	Found at skreemr.com

And then they just get vulgar and angry, which was different for them at the time.

	Blink 182 - Shut Up
	Found at skreemr.com