Blink 182: Neighborhoods

Blink 182: Neighborhoods

2011

DGC/Interscope Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Ghost on the Dance Floor  2. Natives  3. Up All Night  4. After Midnight  5. Heart's All Gone   6. Wishing Well  7. Kaleidoscope  8. This Is Home  9. MH 4.18.2011  10. Love Is Dangerous


Blink 182's 2011 reunion album...Their first record since 2003's self-titled album... I really didn't follow the careers of Blink 182's members after the breakup...I heard Tom DeLonge's Angels and Airwaves once or twice...The only thing I remember about it was how U2 it sounded...



(I do like that album cover...It always made me laugh because it reminded me of the old Phantom Menace videotape I used to have...)

(Holy shit! I just googled it and found out the same guy did both...)



 I know Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker had a band called +44, but I still haven't heard it to this day...So I didn't really know what to expect with this record...

"Ghost on the Dance Floor" kicks off the record, and the first thing that strikes me is how much Tom's voice has changed...He just sounds really odd and overly affected now...Again, it was probably a gradual thing and I wasn't paying attention...

On the other hand, Mark sounds great, but unfortunately, he's doesn't do much of the vocals, for some reason...He co-sings some of them...

But really, there's bigger problems than the vocals... I've listened to this album about 20 times now and I just can't get the hang of it...There's really nothing great here, but there's not anything particularly bad either...Picking out high points or low points is really hard...Nothing seems to gel enough to stir any particular emotion...I can't hear anything except for big, blocks of processed sound...

I do enjoy "Heart's All Gone" it took a few listens but I finally learned to love that song....

If Blink 182 wasn't always overly insightful, at least they had their wit and sharp hooks to keep it interesting...But they seem to have lost both assets...I understand why the humor was downplayed, It sucks having to be the guy pushing 40 and having to continue to bust out the dick jokes...But oddly enough, they had a much larger emotional range when they seemed emotionally stunted...Listen to "Dammit" again...There's a few levels there...But everything on here, seems to be delivered in the same, straight manner...So, hooray...It's very easy to take it seriously, but I'm struggling to find a reason to listen to it in the first place..



They put out an ep called  "Dogs Eating Dogs" in 2012, but somehow I completely missed even hearing about...I'm hoping I'll enjoy that one a bit more...I'm still holding out that they'll be able to pull out some of the old magic and crank out another great record...

Let's check out "Heart's All Gone" by Blink 182...

Blink 182: Blink 182

Blink 182: Blink 182

2003

MCA Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Feeling This  2. Obvious  3. I Miss You  4.Violence  5. Stockholm Syndrome  6. Down  7. The Fallen Interlude  8. Go  9. Asthenia  10. Always  11. Easy Target  12. All of This  13. Here's Your Letter  14. I'm Lost Without You

Woah, you might want to sit down or hold onto your hat or something when I tell you this...but this is a Blink 182 album without a single joke on it... No farts, Ben Wah Balls, or dog-fucking...Not even in the bonus tracks...Just 14 tracks of lost love, loneliness and isolation...And what's even more surprising, it is the fact that the album doesn't fall flat on its face...For the most part it's pretty enjoyable...

It's very experimental for a pop-punk record...All kinds of crazy new sounds and song structures....Piano interludes...people reading letters...you name it...To be honest it takes me a bit to get into this though...To this day I still don't like album opener/first single "Feeling This." It sounds like the punk Blink 182 of yore, but for some reason there's a joylessness to it that's somewhat unappealing to me...Kind of like "Well, we have to do a pop-punk track, so let's get it out of the way..." I do have to hand it to the massed vocals on the accapella outro, though...That section is cool as hell...



Although, if I'm remembering things correctly. all music released in the immediate wake of 9/11 was similarly joyless...Even the pop music became robotic and android-like...It talked about fun and parties but any actual emotion was sucked out of it...I could hear the word "fun" being used but  it was hard to hear any actual fun being had...An affliction that still haunts the genre to this day...But the rock genre in particular, struggled with this...There was a pervasive feeling that if you were holding a guitar and standing in front of a microphone, you were going to get in trouble for using any emotional content that wasn't despair, quiet strength or just plain lack of emotion... And I guess that's right...How well would Blink 182 have fared if they faced this frightening new world of terror alerts armed only with their usual fart jokes and tales of careless teenage fun? They probably would have been seen as hopelessly trivial...

And like "Feeling This" I have a hard time getting too excited over most of the first half of this album..."I Miss You" is alright, but it's a bit too VH-1 for me...And the verses of "Violence" are a complete waste of time....But once we get to the slamming and catchy "Go", things pick up for me..."Asthenia" manages to convey loneliness while keeping it melodic, and "Always" is a successful melding of Emo and 80's pop... And best of all "All of This" has Robert Smith of the Cure taking over on lead vocals...You successfully forget you're even listening to a Blink 182 CD until you get to the chorus...This was unthinkable just an album ago....



For how much I enjoy it while I'm playing it, I don't reach for it too often, really...If I'm in the mood for some Blink 182  I usually reach for "Cheshire Cat" or "Take Off your Pants and Jacket", but I don't think that diminishes their achievement at all...I think it was the right move at the time...They stretched themselves a bit and managed to get themselves taken seriously for a change...Although, I don't think they had to try so hard to prove it to us...Their hardcore fans always knew there was more to these guys than they often let on...Unfortunately, these guys went on an almost decade-long hiatus after this album, leaving the album feeling like an oddity in their discography...They did eventually get back together, but we'll get to that tomorrow...

So let's check out "Go" by Blink 182...

Blink 182: Take Off Your Pants and Jacket

Blink 182:  Take Off Your Pants and Jacket

2001

MCA Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Anthem Part Two  2. Online Songs  3. First Date  4. Happy Holidays, You Bastard  5. Story of a Lonely Guy  6. The Rock Show  7. Stay Together For the Kids  8. Roller Coaster  9. Reckless Abandon  10. Everytime I Look for You  11. Give Me One Good Reason  12. Shut Up  13. Please Take Me Home


This album is very similar to "Enema of the State"...Same producer, same slick pop-punk sound, same teenage subject matter,  but I like this one a little better...It has a bit of a harder feel...

I can remember cruising around, listening to this in the summer of 2001...It was the last summer I lived in Michigan and the term "Summer Record" still meant something to me...I now live in Arizona and it's always summer here...There's really only two seasons:  "Hot" and "Ball-Meltingly Hot." Right now we're in the Ball-Meltingly Hot season...

 Pictured above, is a good photo of an Arizona summer...

 Pictured above, is a good photo of an Arizona winter...

 But yea...It used to  be that my listening habits were partially influenced by the climate...For example, I'd spend the cold, grey, harsh Michigan winters driving through ice and blizzards blasting  Radiohead's "Kid A," but once the sun started to shine again and I could spend the days at the beach, that meant is was time to bust out "Rock Show."  I kind of wonder what my listening habits would be now if I still had seasons...I hadn't thought of that in a long time...I wonder what my winter record would be now...Hmmm...

All I know is that Blink gave me a lot of good tunes that summer..."Everytime I Look For You" , "Give Me One Good reason", "Reckless Abandon"...All great, hooky pop-punk... They also put in quite a bit of more serous material on the album this time around..."Stay Together For the Kids" takes on divorce, and "Anthem Part Two" actually sounds pissed -off about the state of the world...

One notable aspect of this album, is that on its original release, the CD had different bonus tracks...There was a color-coded sticker on the front cover, which was the only way of knowing which version you were getting before you opened the packaging...

 I apparently have the "Yellow Pants" version, which has ""What Went Wrong" and "Fuck a Dog" as the extra songs..."What Went wrong is a melancholy acoustic emo ballad that's pretty cool, and "Fuck a Dog" is a similarly acoustic track about...well..fucking a dog, I guess...The kind of thing that Blink normally tosses on as laugh at the end of their albums...I had never heard the other bonus tracks on the other versions, so I'm checking them out on youtube, to see which version is the winner...

 The "Red Take-off" version has "Time to Break Up" which is so cool I wish they would have just put it in the regular running order... I would have gladly traded "Take Me Home" for this...The other song on this version is "Mother's Day." I can only describe it as a foul-mouthed, acoustic metal song...Funnier than "Fuck a Dog" in my opinion...

The Green Jacket version has the pretty standard pop-punk "Don't Tell Me It's Over" as the straightforward bonus track and "When You Fucked Grandpa" as the ha-ha song.."When You Fucked Grandpa" is pretty gross, but the section Tom sings is so lilting and heartfelt sounding that I have to admit, I did laugh...

Alright...So Which version is the best? Oooo...This is a difficult choice...Ideally, if there was a version that had all the "straight" songs that would be the one I'd go for, but that doesn't exist, so...

I'm going with the "Red Take Off" version...I think "Time to Break Up" gives it the edge, and "Mother's Day" is somehow the least obnoxious of the joke songs...

So let's check out "Everytime I Look for You" by blink 182...

Blink 182: Enema of the State

Blink 182:  Enema of the State

1999

MCA Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Dumpweed  2. Don't Leave Me  3. Aliens Exist  4. Going Away to College  5. What's My Age Again?  6. Dysentery Gary  7. Adam's Song  8. All the Small Things  9. The Party Song  10. Mutt  11. Wendy Clear  12. Anthem


I'm going to have to skip "Dude Ranch" for now, since my copy has a big crack in it...Oh well...Was looking forward to listening to it too...

 It's actually my favorite Blink 182 album...So  I guess I'll get back to it at a later date...

So onto Blink's 1999 release "Enema of the State"...

 I thought "Dude Ranch" was a big, slick punk album, but this one is even bigger and slicker...Huge, candy coated pop-punk...And they have the songs to back it up too...While I don't always enjoy this one as much as the previous two albums, I think it's more of a personal preference type of thing...I don't view this a a misstep or anything...I think it might have just been a bit too over-played at the time for my liking...So I don't quite get the same thrill hearing "All the Small Things" or "What's My Age Again" as I do from "Strings" or "Pathetic."



If you're of a certain age, the mere mention of Blink 182 will bring the indelible image of Mark, Tom and new drummer Travis Barker streaking across your television screen daily on TRL...Nestled snugly in-between videos by The Backstreet Boys and Eminem...

 "Enema of the State" ended up providing the soundtrack to those  heady, pre-9/11, pie-fucking times...

 So when they did that Backstreet Boys parody video it didn't feel like the expected punk evisceration of the subject matter...Instead it felt like the kind of careful, gentle ribbing of your co-workers the paid speaker gives at a corporate getaway....So it kind of turns into the kind of record that's really hard to divorce from its era...

It'd be easy to toss this in the bargain bin of history, as a relic from the Class of 99  Smashmouth/Lit/Len era, if the rest of the album wasn't so strong...Those of us paying attention,  knew that Blink 182 were ridiculously reliable in delivering the hooks on their albums...You could almost randomly choose any track form their album and it would work perfectly fine as a hit single...They were that on the top of their game during this time...

Listening to this again, I think  songs like  "Dumpweed', "Dysentery Gary", and "Wendy Clear" still provide the high velocity thrills...And I think they earned those white Backstreet Boys suits with the pop-tastic "Mutt."

Their more serious side is represented by the heartfelt  "Going Away to College" and the Emo powerhouse "Adam's Song" which tackles the surprisingly serious topic of suicide...and I'm also pretty sure it's a Mr. Show Reference...So they get extra points there...

"Try try try again
Head first this time
Dive right in..."

Alright, that actually inspires me to stop writing about Blink 182 and watch some Mr. Show instead...But before we do, let's check out "Wendy Clear" by Blink 182...Enjoy...

Blink 182: Cheshire Cat

Blink 182: Cheshire Cat

1994

Cargo Music / Grilled Cheese Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Carousel  2. M+M's  3. Fentoozler  4. Touchdown Boy  5. Strings  6. Peggy Sue  7. Sometimes  8. Does My Breath Smell?  9. Cacophony  10. TV  11. Toast and Bananas  12. Wasting Time  13. Romeo and Rebecca  14. Ben Wah Balls  15. Just About Done  16. Depends


I usually don't go around telling people I listen to Blink 182, y'know...It's more of a guilty secret...But the Friday Night Record Party blog pretty much means, when it comes to my music collection, there are no more secrets...I'm coming out of the closet, people! I love Blink 182!!

Is it the most intellectually stimulating music ever released? Well, no...Is it partially responsible for how mind-numbingly awful punk music is these days? Well, yea...Doesn't matter...They were an utterly unknown band at the time, who went into a studio and banged out a couple of the catchiest, speed-ball,  pop-punk albums of the 90's...These guys seemed to have an unerring melodic sense..No matter how dumb or sophomoric the joke ("Ben Wah Balls" fer example...) they always have a sharp, spirited hook to back it up....The only time I feel they get the balance wrong is the incredibly moronic  album-closer "Depends."....God, that song is so unbelievably dumb...Although, I've always got the impression that the last three tracks were intentional throwaways or bonus tracks or something.,..They're all so overly jokey and their titles are printed in a different color on the back cover...

I actually think that later in their career, when they started to drop the jokes,  is when they lost their charm... Lines like "A tank of gas is a treasure to me...I know now that nothing is free..." and "There's only so many ways I can make love with my hand..." are sacred texts in the eyes of the Ramen Noodle crowd...

(So many choices...)

So many great songs here...I'll always be partial to the opener "Carousel" and its introductory bass intro...I also love Mark's "Strings" which shows the more straight-faced "emo" element that was always an important element to their sound...But they do it best here, I think....It's really hard to single out high points...The whole thing is so fast and fun, let's just hang out and listen to "Strings" by Blink 182...Enjoy...