I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the concept of childhood bands.
When I say childhood bands, I don’t mean a group like the Wiggles. I’m talking about bands that meant everything to us as children but dwindled from our favor as we grew up. It’s interesting to go back and check in with them when you’re an adult. For instance, I was around 9 when Stunt by the Barenaked Ladies hit big in 1998. You couldn’t ride in a car without hearing “One Week” or “It’s All Been Done.” I bought its vinyl remaster on impulse last year, and I’m delighted to tell you that it holds up.
I was also one of those melvins who always had a Beatles CD spinning in his Discman. I remember being in costume backstage at a north Georgia community theater production of My Fair Lady (one at a time, ladies) and getting in trouble for being so lost in “In My Life” that I missed a cue. Truth be told, even in the punk years, I never lost track of the Beatles. In fact, I’ve already watched the Get Back documentary twice, and that bastard is 10 hours long.
As a young music nerd, I always wanted to find a band who could belong to me. I wanted something I could love the most. The Beatles were never going to be that band, as I would be competing in that fandom with most of the civilized world. Nothing on the radio gave me the buzz I needed. So, for a while, I settled on bands I could share with my friends and generation.
One of those bands was Blink-182.
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The Review
Blink-182
ONE MORE TIME…
2024
ONE MORE TIME… feels like catching up with an old friend at a high school reunion.
That description by itself could be used as a pull quote and interpreted as high praise. Much like running into an old friend after many years, though, it’s vastly more complicated and nuanced than that. At first, it’s electric, magnetic, nostalgic. After a beat, you find that shifting back into your old skin isn’t as snug a fit as you had expected. Finally, there’s a crossroad. You either lock into a new dynamic or slowly peter out into an awkward waltz. For me, the Blink reunion is somewhere in the middle.
The magic of Blink-182, what I think we all loved about them originally, was that listening to their music provided the similar embrace of cracking an inside joke with your friends. Later Blink 182 records feel different, like being the odd man out at a party full of trust fund kids. They didn’t do anything wrong; they just grew up. So did we.
Now, here we all are, getting to know each other again.
At this moment, since I’m careening recklessly close to the edge of sounding like a bitter old person, I want to pause and give more context for my personal relationship with the music of Blink-182. I was born in 1989, which means my Blink era starts with Dude Ranch and crescendos with the self-titled record. I was around for their peak, the anthemic “What’s My Age Again,” “All The Small Things” years. When everyone was calling the self-titled album their best release yet, I remember thinking, “They already had a masterpiece, and it was called Take Off Your Pants And Jacket.”
I was proud of them for changing it up, taking the artistic leap forward, but the magic started to fade for me around that time. “Feeling This” sounded like a pop punk song designed by a committee. “I Miss You” was a banger, but maybe the only genuine one they had.
In the years that followed, I did my best to keep up with them. Neighborhoods didn’t blow my skirt up, but I gave it a few dutiful spins. I don’t know where everyone else falls on this spectrum, but I for one genuinely liked the Matt Skiba years. California and Nine weren’t perfect, but it was obvious they were reinvigorated. Sometimes a little new blood is all it takes to fire the old engine back up properly.
Then they announced the real reunion.
When that first single, “EDGING,” came out, I thought it was fine. I didn’t love it, but it was pretty good. I didn’t like the weird vocal effects, but c’est la vie. At least the boys were back together and having fun again, now that Tom was done chasing aliens for a while.
By the time ONE MORE TIME… was finally released in full, which I believe was a year later, I think I had lost my appetite for it. I remember when I put it on for the first time, I absentmindedly turned it off halfway through and put on Enema of the State instead. It was instinctual, auto-pilot. I wanted so badly to get into it, but I just couldn’t.
I don’t think, personally, that it’s a me problem or a Blink problem. I think we’ve just grown apart. It felt strangely akin to the 1991 film Hook. They came back to Neverland, but they had forgotten how to fly, fight, and crow. Only in our version, this Lost Boy had grown up too. They wrapped up this perfect present for a moment in time that had already passed.
Now allow me to say something frustratingly contradictory; I also think the record is objectively great.
ONE MORE TIME… is exceptionally well-produced and full of life. The album rocks where it should and pauses at appropriate times for introspection. Every chorus is catchy, and every riff is deliberate. After all these years, they’re still making masturbation jokes, which makes my eyes sweaty with respect. From a general record fandom perspective, it’s a triumph. It just didn’t do much for me, personally.
Still, “ANTHEM PART 3” is inarguably pretty great. I love to see Blink still putting pulsating rhythms behind uplifting lyrics. The title track seemed like a love song from the boys to each other, and I adored that. Honestly, two of my favorite moments were “TURN THIS OFF!” and “OTHER SIDE.” Those felt warm and familiar. If nothing else, there were tracks strong enough to warrant adding to my personal “Best Of” playlist, and isn’t that a win for something new from a legacy band?
Blink-182 don’t need my approval. ONE MORE TIME… went to number-one in the U.S. Several tracks got massive airplay. The record also launched a couple massively successful and lucrative arena tours. There is no metric by which it doesn’t equal a victory.
Years earlier, my own dalliance with the music of Blink-182 would lead to humiliating failure.
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The Tale
My sophomore year in high school was a wild time.
It was like living inside a Christopher Guest movie. Our football team never won a game. One of our cafeteria ladies got busted for selling drugs to students. In the first half of that year, I had a brief showmance with a senior named Maria who would ultimately break up with me for a pot-smoking ginger.
I was just coming off a suspension for laughing uncontrollably during a presentation led by a guest speaker from the local police department who kept punctuating his points with the phrase “crack baby.” In that same class we had watched a video of a live birth. When the teacher opened the floor to questions, a girl raised her hand and asked why the woman in the video hadn’t shaved if she knew she was going to be on camera. We were immediately dismissed to go play basketball.
Ah, public school.
This was also a transitionary time for me, musically speaking. My tastes weren’t shifting; I was still egregiously into punk, but I found myself without a band. The Clamjousters had broken up, One Sided Society was a distant memory, and I was still about a year away from my stint playing bass for a power pop band called the Stabs. Playing shows had always been like escaping into a secret world. It was something created by the kids, for the kids. We had our own private sanctuary away from the rest of the high school rabble, never the twain shall meet. That is, until it came time for a talent show or a battle of the bands.
I’ve never loved mixing worlds like that. I liked to keep school at school, music at shows, family stuff at home. I loved punk with every cell of my body, but I couldn’t guarantee the rest of the student body would get it. Having it mocked would have pissed me off, of course, but privately, it would have also been devastating.
Performing live music, especially to an enthusiastic crowd, becomes like a drug. When the withdrawals get bad enough, you could talk yourself into sitting in with a Hoobastank cover band just to feel something. That’s why, when the next battle of the bands rolled around, I signed up.
The first objective should have been putting a band together, but I wasn’t too worried about that. Almost all my friends were musicians, and looking cool at my school was a low bar anyway. I knew it wouldn’t take long to collect a scrappy rag-tag team. Instead, what I concentrated on the most was the song choice.
We had to have something fun and punchy, a real crowd pleaser. I wasn’t clever enough to rework a pop hit, or talented enough for anything too complicated. I also wanted it to be punk enough to satisfy my interest but mainstream enough to satisfy everyone watching. Back then it felt like there were a select few radio-friendly pop punk bands you could enjoy with abandon without losing your punk rock credibility. For the generation before us, it was Green Day. For the generation after us, it was Paramore. For us, it was Blink-182. (We also all enjoyed Sum 41, but you know, rule of threes…)
Almost anything from the ‘90’s Blink catalogue would have worked, but to me, there was no choice that could outshine “Dammit.”
“Dammit” is one of those pitch perfect pop punk songs. It’s short, impactful and has several perfect spots for group singalongs. It’s meant to be played as loud and passionately as possible, while still being ultimately meaningless. It’s junk food. I don’t mean that Blink-182 are idiots, or their songs are insipid. Anyone my age who hasn’t shed a tear to “Adam’s Song” is a sociopath. I just mean that several selections of their catalogue are meant for pleasure, not business, and that’s part of what makes them so appealing.
After choosing that song, I had to get it approved by the school. This entailed printing off the lyrics and having the assistant principal look them over. I, believing my cleverness unparalleled, changed “Did you hear, he fucked her?” to “Did you know, I loved her?” I don’t know why she didn’t just Google it, but in the end, that’s all it took to get the song cleared.
The events that followed were so traumatic that there’s a blank void where some of the more specific details should live in my memory. I can’t remember who all specifically played alongside me, or what clever little name we performed under. I want to say it was the Prancing Nancies, but that doesn’t feel quite right. I’m sure it was a mix of the usual suspects from past Tales adventures, probably at least Brad and Matt. I believe my friend Ivan was on bass. I used to give Ivan rides home after school because his mom always had huevos rancheros with homemade tortillas waiting for us when we came through the door.
At any rate, what I can remember clearly is that we didn’t practice enough.
The guys I was playing with were so nonchalant about the whole thing that I overcompensated by veering into full blown panic. Looking back, they were right, and I was wrong. This was meant to be fun; no need to stress over it. We would play; people would applaud, and we would live the rest of our lives. The more relaxed we were going into it, the better we would ultimately be.
Unless you’re a textbook over-thinker who tends to manifest his own nightmare scenarios, that is. For example, maybe the day of the big battle of the bands, you start to convince yourself that you’re going to forget the words to the song. Even though it’s a song you’ve been listening to for years and know by heart, maybe there are lines you’ve always misheard. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to print them out. But you can’t have printed lyrics on hand; you’ll look like an idiot! Although, if you—
All these thoughts were racing through my brain as the assembly time grew closer and closer with every tick of every passing minute.
I remember manically marching into the sterilely lit cafeteria, which always smelled like pink cleaning solution and mashed potatoes, and asking a lunch lady for a pen and paper. I explained to her my brilliant plan, the details for which she had not asked. I was going to write the first word of each line of each verse and have them handy as a cheat sheet. Her eyes were quizzical, but she nodded in support as I jotted away.
And then, it was showtime.
Unlike most famous battles in history, this one took place in a high school gym. It had stadium seating, meaning it could pack in every available student and teacher who wanted to attend, not to mention proud parents and siblings. The bands were performing on the gym floor, where you could almost hear the faint squeak from decades of basketball sneakers.
It was on that gym floor, with its dome light fixtures and clocks in cages, that I found myself taping my makeshift lyric sheet to the floor. I had Chuck Taylor’s that kept coming unlaced, straight-legged jeans bought smaller to fit tighter, and a jean jacket I bought from Full Breach Kicks. I don’t know if I was trying to be a rock star or a greaser, but either way, it had to be done on a duplex budget.
In my adolescent brain, it made heaps more sense to have the lyrics on the ground than in my hand. If my eye line were at the floor, it would look natural, I rationalized. There was no time for logic anyway, because I had to tape paper and skedaddle before the flood of onlookers were let loose into the room. I finished moments before several hundred bodies filled either side of those ascending bleachers, leaving room for the band in the middle, like Moses and the Red Sea.
Before I knew it, we had counted off, and that beautifully distorted opening riff was ripping its way through the air.
I stepped up to the mic, and was suddenly so confident that I didn’t even look at my makeshift cue cards. That first verse wailed out of me like this was my one and only chance to make everyone in that room remember my name. I was so cocky, in fact, that I improvised a little joke. In the second verse, I quipped:
“The steps that, I retrace/ The sad look, on your face/ The timing, and structure/ AND I LOVE MATT’S MOTHER!”
But then I went totally and completely blank.
Perhaps it was the rock gods themselves punishing me for being underprepared. Maybe it was Karma for my implying carnal relations with Matt’s mom, the lovely Zelda. It could have been the aspartame in all the Diet Coke I was drinking back then finally pickling my brain like my doctor had warned. Whatever the reason, I froze.
The rest of the verse went by without my uttering a single word. The chorus came and went. This was a high school battle of the bands, not an arena show, so I couldn’t fake my way through it by having the crowd sing it for me. Instead, there were waves of unamused teenage faces who, regardless of clique or social hierarchy, could unite in their understanding that I was blowing it.
About 20 feet away I found the eyes of my friend Ashley Jones, who looked at me as if to say “Oh, buddy …” It was at that moment I knew the ship was sinking, and we couldn’t un-hit that iceberg. I gave her an unconvincing smile, shrugged my shoulders, and waited for the next chorus to come back around.
Remembering most of those words, I sang it with the tiny tatters of conviction I had left and closed out the proceedings with some truly bellowing rounds of “Well, I guess this is growing up!” When it was all over, we didn’t have the thunderous reception of my dreams. I’m sure there was some cursory clapping, but in my exaggerated memory it was so quiet that I heard someone cough.
When it was all over I walked out into the blinding spring sun, my champaign-colored Taurus waiting for me on the hot asphalt. I sat on its hood and stared out at the football field, breathing a heavy sigh. I was defeated, but in that defeat ultimately came the beginnings of a glorious baptism.
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The Aftermath
A serious man once told me that sometimes it’s important to get stung. That was a throwaway line for him, almost certainly not the extent of the wisdom he was dutifully attempting to impart, but that phrase always stuck with me.
It’s hard when you’re young to understand empathy or perspective in any significant way because you’ve always been the Ferris Bueller of your own story. Life is a movie,; you’re the main character; everyone and everything else exists only to further your narrative. It’s an explosive recipe for full-blown narcissism if you’re not careful.
Add any amount of popularity or notoriety to the equation, and it’s easy to lose yourself. It’s why beautiful people are usually so vapid, because they haven’t had to endure many character building hardships. Those of us who aren’t naturally gifted might try to develop caustic wit as a defense mechanism. Throw all of it together in a gumbo pot, and it’s likely to boil over and destroy the whole town.
Which is why, occasionally, it’s important to get stung.
While this harrowing tale of humiliation was an important step in me finally becoming a three-dimensional human being, I’m happy to report that there is also a happy ending. Not only would I perform in front of the entire school again, but I would even get most of the words right. That must have been what Bob Marley was talking about when he wrote “Redemption Song.”
I hosted the Senior Talent Show in 2008 with my morning announcement cohost, Nick. Like always, we didn’t prepare anything and decided to surf through the entire event on vibes alone. What we had prepared, for weeks, was a song.
Borrowing the name Here Comes Treble from the Office, we closed out the show with a cover of “California Sun” by the Ramones. I don’t know if it was the thrill of pulling it off, or if we nailed it, but we were riding so high that we played an encore. I remember the thrill of all of us on that stage giving each other the knowing nod, ready to blow the roof off the place with the secret song we had hiding in the chamber.
“Dammit” brought the house down.
