Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Throw My Hands Up at the World Sometimes

When blink-182 got back together in 2009, it seemed like the biggest deal in the world to me. A big enough deal that I watched the Grammys live that year. When they confirmed that they were going to be a band again at the awards show, I got up grabbed my hair in disbelief. I'm not entirely sure why one of the biggest bands in recent history reforming after being broken up for only 4 years seemed like such a monumental thing, but it completely did.

I think this is due to my naivety about the music business at the time. Since I was only in second year university, I didn't have a very big world view and most of what I thought about boiled down to which bar in downtown Guelph I was going to that Thursday and why I didn't have a girlfriend. Odd as it may sound, I was really sad about a break-up and blink-182 reforming counted as a MAJOR victory for me in my mind. I may have been single and sad, but a pop band had gotten back together and that somehow negated the former. I was all-in on believing that blink-182 would be back to the way they were before Self-Titled came out and their career from 2003-2009, experimental pop-punk albums, Angels and Airwaves, +44, reality shows, had all been some weird detour on what they were supposed to do: play generic, immature pop-punk songs sloppily. The idea of blink getting back together because they realized that this is how they make money and that there was a ton of money in it for them never entered my head.

This is of course because the version of blink-182 that I loved was the one I grew up with. I took the version of themselves that showed in Urethra Chronicles II or MTV Cribs to be completely factual it was such a huge interest of mine that I thought I needed. It was also a time when I was so into pop-punk that I would put bands on a pedestal. For some reason, I thought that every punk band was formed in the interest of doing things with your friends and was without reproach for that reason. I thought that deep down, blink just wanted to play pop-punk songs and be a band together. The idea of "blink-182" was this perfect thing in my mind.

The funny part is that, in hindsight, it was obviously a huge cash grab by the band. Like how could I not see that as a 19 year-old?

When I saw blink on tour that summer, they did their best to play blink's prankster reputation by telling nonstop dick and fart jokes on stage and taking lengthy breaks in between songs. But man, they were like almost 40 while doing this. When I saw it live, I convinced myself that this was the "true blink" coming back and being a band again, but obviously it was the band playing up their image for the sake of raking in ticket sales on nostalgia.

I mean, while Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker gave up on the tire fire that was +44 pretty quickly, Tom kept making Angels and Airwaves records the whole time he was back in blink. He clearly didn't give a shit about being in the band.

The story fed to fans was that Tom Delonge (of course pronounced Day-longe-ay, like on The Mark, Tom and Travis Show) had visited Travis Barker in the hospital after he survived a plane crash. The two agreed that they should be friends and that reunion grew out of this meeting. I mean, there might be some truth to that, but Tom just quit/got kicked out of the band again in 2015, so this couldn't have been a complete reconciliation.

Something that sticks out oddly in my mind is a tweet from after the reunion was announced. Mark tweeted something like "U2 is on Letterman tonight. Tom is going to love this!" A lot of people made fun of Angels and Airwaves sounding like a terrible version of U2, because that's basically what they were. BUT, this tweet had to have been their label saying "Okay Mark, you need to make the kids believe you're friends again", right? That's the way it seems to me, at least.

I guess the main thing for me here is looking back on something that was once everything for me and a huge deal and realizing it was just a hunk of BS. Maybe that's how everything in life works though.

Fuck the world and listen to Dillinger Four, one of the only real bands in the entire world.



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