Take a step back. I warn you this post is not about new indie bands, not about post-rock, not about student radio shows and not even about the state of youth-directed TV. In all honesty, It's just not cool...
Most of you at some point this week probably read it, heard it, possibly even tasted it, that yes, Blink 182 are back. Whether they’ll be better than ever remains to be seen, and that point itself is determined by whether you thought them to be any good the first time round. As a totally random twelve year old dude, who could only seem to wear clothes four sizes too big for him, I admit here and now that I was a fan of Blink. I laughed as much as the next way-cool, pop-punk loving teen with a “if we’re fucked up you’re to blame” attitude, at the way-cool naked adventures of the trio in What’s My Age Again? and at Delonge’s, Hoppus’ and Barker’s mockery of the so-not-cool pop scene of the time in All the Small Things. But in fairness I was twelve, and as I grew up I began to get a feeling that perhaps there was more to this whole music thing than merely the genre of pop-punk. I did infact, grow up... I started wearing clothes that fit me, I started reading literature for fun and not just at school, I began to understand things in a way that meant pop-punk needed to be forgotten and left in late nineties/early naughties California, and allow me to get on with my life. Thankfully the break up of Blink allowed me to forget. Because it seemed that this was the nail in the coffin of Pop-punk. And until this week in my life, and the music world, it has been the forgotten genre, it’s seemed as though anyone who wants to look like they have a vaguely respectable music taste tries to acknowledge the genre being more dead than Myspace. But now that they’ve reformed, the ghosts of my music taste past have returned to haunt me. No doubt the mass fan base they acquired originally, most of them young teens such as myself at the time, will for the most part return to listening to them, seeing as the return of this band will probably also be the return of a little piece of many people’s childhood. And heck, even for those such as me who see themselves as having a taste above the genre and the music produced by the band all those years ago, we’ll probably return to listening out of curiosity. Who knows, pop-punk could truly be forgotten and they may be reforming as a post-rock act.
Most of you at some point this week probably read it, heard it, possibly even tasted it, that yes, Blink 182 are back. Whether they’ll be better than ever remains to be seen, and that point itself is determined by whether you thought them to be any good the first time round. As a totally random twelve year old dude, who could only seem to wear clothes four sizes too big for him, I admit here and now that I was a fan of Blink. I laughed as much as the next way-cool, pop-punk loving teen with a “if we’re fucked up you’re to blame” attitude, at the way-cool naked adventures of the trio in What’s My Age Again? and at Delonge’s, Hoppus’ and Barker’s mockery of the so-not-cool pop scene of the time in All the Small Things. But in fairness I was twelve, and as I grew up I began to get a feeling that perhaps there was more to this whole music thing than merely the genre of pop-punk. I did infact, grow up... I started wearing clothes that fit me, I started reading literature for fun and not just at school, I began to understand things in a way that meant pop-punk needed to be forgotten and left in late nineties/early naughties California, and allow me to get on with my life. Thankfully the break up of Blink allowed me to forget. Because it seemed that this was the nail in the coffin of Pop-punk. And until this week in my life, and the music world, it has been the forgotten genre, it’s seemed as though anyone who wants to look like they have a vaguely respectable music taste tries to acknowledge the genre being more dead than Myspace. But now that they’ve reformed, the ghosts of my music taste past have returned to haunt me. No doubt the mass fan base they acquired originally, most of them young teens such as myself at the time, will for the most part return to listening to them, seeing as the return of this band will probably also be the return of a little piece of many people’s childhood. And heck, even for those such as me who see themselves as having a taste above the genre and the music produced by the band all those years ago, we’ll probably return to listening out of curiosity. Who knows, pop-punk could truly be forgotten and they may be reforming as a post-rock act.
Unbelievably, it seems another significant band to the same years of my childhood and to anyone who was a fan of wrestling have made their own comeback, Limp Bizkit. This combined with the rumours of a return to BBC prime-time for Noel’s House Party and the fact that a close friend of mine today actually exclaimed “TMI!” at me, make me feel like I’m in a really shit time machine that’s content on making me relive the childhood bands I’m most embarrassed about having ever listened to and annoying nineties catchphrases. I can only take solace in the fact that maybe, just maybe Noel will finally be back where he belongs.
It does however, seem hard to know what to say about Blink though. I’d love to launch a scathing attack on the genre, and I’m sure it would probably be the cool thing to do to rant about how it’s clearly just a big money-grab and that the friendships aren’t really repaired or make up some conspiracy theory about how they were never even truly on negative terms as it was, or state that the majority of their fanbase probably no longer lives at home with their parents so no longer feels the need to vent their misplaced juvenile rage, or that this will most likely tarnish my memories of them... but I can’t. I can’t bring myself the energy or the will to do anything but say hell, they were fun before I'd started growing pubes so now let’s wait and see what they do. Because for me they are a band that I did enjoy growing up, albeit from the ages of ten to thirteen, and as un-cool a band they are to admit you loved in the modern age, they were certainly a part of my childhood. And heck, concerning the majority of the music produced on their final unititled album, if you just gave them northern or cockney English accents you could quite easily pass them off as indie. And I mean c’mon, whose going to be forgetting in a hurry those such monumentally inspirational words, those words that got me through such hard times in my youth, those never to be forgotten words... “we started making out, and she took off my pants, but then I turned on the TV”... genius.
Oh guys, you're just TOO wacky
Here’s a track to remember just what blink brought to the table. A track I was no doubt singing along to whilst sitting alone in my room playing on Tony Hawks Skateboarding...
Graeme x
Anthem Part Two – Blink 182
Graeme x
Anthem Part Two – Blink 182
1 comments:
oh my, them back? that's gonna make things even worse, after all my old music obsessions have been coming back, why else would I listen to the bloodhound gang and sing along?
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