Sometime during the tour following the release of “Neighborhoods,” I found myself in the standing-room-only section of The Irvine Spectrum, watching a band that, only five years prior, I had shared regret of never getting to see live. Blink-182’s near-immediate reunion drew a lot of my generation into a frenzy, making this one of those moments you knew was going to be a big deal one day. To editorialize, it was one of the last times that I felt the pop-punk pioneers were vital.
Not knowing that at the time, I simply let the concert play out as a hallmark of where rock music was in the late 2000s. Asher Roth was fun. Weezer converted me as Rivers Cuomo bounced on a trampoline to a one-man band rendition of “Island in the Sun.” To put it succinctly, Blink-182 delivered what I wanted out of that show. Travis Barker was doing his 360° drum solo, which led to predictable banter on the way to the car about whether he was the best drummer, as actual percussionists argued, rather intellectually, that he was, at best, above the contemporaries in mainstream music. I listened to Mark Hoppus and Tom Delonge do stage banter and quote The Big Lebowski (1998) in between a setlist of mostly sincere, brooding hits.
To pull up accounts of the time, you’ll discover that my only review on that night reflected on their choice to play “Anthem Part 2.” Without further context, this statement doesn’t make sense beyond the idea that I like this one song a lot. They’ve had bigger songs. Driving home, there was more emphasis on “What’s My Age Again?,” and for good reason. The Millennial canon wouldn’t be the same without “Enema of the State,” which, on a track-by-track level, was still echoing down hallways. To this day, I still feel intimidated mentioning that it wasn’t my entry point. Neither was the even more ribald “Dude Ranch.” If you want to know why “Anthem Part 2” was the song I called out, it’s not because it was the closer. It was the first ever song by them I had heard.
Everyone has that one piece of media that comes early into their journey and accidentally defines their personality for the foreseeable future. “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket,” unironically, changed my life. It wasn’t the first record I owned - that would be The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” - but it was the first I bought with my own money from a strip mall outside Las Vegas along with Sugar Ray’s “14:59.” Whereas I’ve gone on a journey that I may discuss one day with the latter, Blink-182 was a band I never lost attachment to. It’s the type of record that carried me through the family road trip from Southern California to South Dakota, giving me time to familiarize myself with the first taste of radical art.
A lot of art at that time was defined by my parents’ CD collection. Whatever didn’t come from there was the predictable mix of Disney soundtracks and pop stars, notably N*SYNC and BBMak, that I had grown attached to on Radio Disney. There’s nothing wrong with these artists, but there came a point around 2001 when I needed that preteen rebellion warranted to every 12-year-old. The “glamour” wasn’t doing it for me, and my heart immediately fell in love with this one album cover sitting in the music section every time I visited Target. It was dark, mysterious, and I’d argue iconic despite being sidelined by the projects surrounding its release.
Blame the fine folks at MCA Records, but the marketing worked on this impressionable child. I didn’t even listen to the hot radio stations of the day. “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket” was a great mystery that I knew had to be mine. Along with the catch that it had to be the censored version, there were pathways to finally picking it up and putting it in my collection. Now and then, I’d stand in the store, looking at the back of the band in complete black with edgy t-shirt designs, and thought they embodied a level of cool I currently hadn’t obtained. I loved Barker’s baggy pants and Delonge’s shaggy hair. The song titles had that typical early 2000s transgressive overtone ("Reckless Abandon," "Give Me One Good Reason," "Shut Up") that made me think they were gateways to new worlds.
In hindsight, it might’ve mostly been that the record was effectively designed around the aesthetic. When you’re young, black is an amazing color that complements everything. Before I considered much else, I knew that I loved staring at it because of how well it worked with the minimalist color scheme of traffic lights, presenting symbols that evoked playfulness. Long before I figured out the title’s pun (which, tragically, took over 15 years), I saw the command and thought they were unique, telling me something I wasn’t going to get elsewhere.
Another thing that’s awesome about music when you’re 12 is that every last gimmick is exciting. Before you’ve been beaten down by “sales pitches to the target demographic,” you believe that something more will come from your investment. Blink-182, despite quickly becoming one of the most successful pop-punk bands of the era, was my version of counterculture. Any snide remark was invigorating. The crass jokes couldn’t have been more shocking and the heartache more brutal. If one were to apply a nuanced critique, Blink-182’s success was largely the result of a band that was edgy but never gross. Their version of horny was closer to safe arrested development than penetrative sex jams. It was self-deprecating without being hostile. They were, quite brilliantly, capable of pushing the joke too far without hurting the butts. Most of all, I just needed more music like this.
That is why I didn’t know what I was getting into when placing the disc into my Walkman in a dark motel room. As the world fell asleep, I pressed play and watched those numbers flash across the screen. “Anthem Part 2” rattled to life with those ferocious drums and jaunty guitars. By the time the bass came in, the countermelodies were coming together to present a rebellious, if somewhat straightforward, message for teenagers to rebel because, “If we’re —-ed up, you’re to blame.” Even if it wasn’t there, I knew what the word was. By the bridge, my heart was racing, asking what I had signed up for. This was the point of no return.
I would also like to mention that this discovery wasn’t in one fell swoop. Over the course of the next 39 minutes, I discovered the 13 tracks that made up the “front-facing” portion of this album. One of the underrated things about CD releases is that the disc within itself was just as much of an art form as the jacket. Sometimes you got “enhanced” CDs (as their self-titled follow-up would be), but now and then the artist would be playful with the potential for recorded space. There were hidden tracks, both found in rewinding and fast forwarding, that I rarely saw press for. Once I realized this, every CD I bought had to be tested out, leaving me ecstatic when something came up (New Found Glory were the masters of the hidden track). In the case of “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket,” it took several years until I realized there was a 14th song, “What Went Wrong,” which had to be equivalent to how Delonge felt about the slightest evidence that aliens existed. How had this been under my nose this whole time? Along with not hearing the lyrics to “Happy Holidays, You Bastard” until high school, this album had a strange way of continually peeling back layers.
Anyone who has peeped the 25th anniversary edition will know that the expanded version didn’t stop at 14. Yes, every version came with those songs. However, there was a bigger world beyond the censored version that I had yet to discover. Because of where pop culture was in 2001, it was impossible to discover “Fuck a Dog” or “When You Fucked Grandpa” without ripping certain copies of the album. The exclusivity may drive you mad, but it also built a desire for crate digging that I don’t know exists anymore. You were elated when you got to hear those songs, even though they were the most juvenile, borderline shitposts imaginable whose existence was never directly addressed. As it stands, I’m not sure how genuine reports of their next album having the song “I Want a Horse’s Penis Up My Butt” on it were, but I read that in Rolling Stone and thought of this alternate world where they never matured enough to court Robert Smith’s attention.
Ultimately, Blink-182 probably worked best for me because they spoke to the anxiety of youth without being pretentious. Sure, the hooks were eccentric and burrowed themselves into your head, but there was something relatable to “Take Off Your Pants And Jacket.” They sang of heartbreak through chat messages. They met people at concerts and created a rich interior for “First Date.” These were songs of being children of divorce and feeling isolated. It’s an erratic experience that’s not afraid to jump between both poles, but it’s maybe what I needed most at the time. These worlds could coexist peacefully.
I accept that “Enema of the State” is a more concerted achievement. However, the 2001 album will likely always top it because of everything that followed. There would be no Blink-182 fandom without it. I got to see “First Date” playing on Total Request Live in real time. I read every interview and, when it came time to record their follow-up, I would tune in and watch their live feed. What it lacked in audio, it more than made up for with people wandering around a room, doing nondescript things. They became the band I most wanted to see, and when they guest starred on The Simpsons, I swung from excited to baffled at their limited work. If there was any more reason to like American Pie (1999) beyond it being filmed at my high school, they were there yelling, “Go, trig boy!” They were the epitome of the early 2000s misspent youth. Many have done it more to my liking, but they brought the most people together.
Maybe that is why they will continue to age well. Whereas Green Day was graduating into statesmen by the time I was a Freshman, Blink-182 was capable of mixing sentimentalism with humor. Even if “Blink-182” as an album was jokeless, it felt like their antagonism went more towards stylistic decisions that pushed them into a new sphere for the genre that, quite frankly, they would never match again. Even so, you’d hear Hoppus in interviews and realize that he was still your cool, talented pal who wasn’t ashamed of writing an album called “Take Off Your Pants And Jacket.” You were always going to have a good time when they were around.
It could also be that Blink-182, to me, has now become inseparable from my youth. It’s the cliché sepia-toned photograph where you hear this album, and you’re transported to middle school and watching them perform “Rock Show” during New Year’s Eve. Before I began attending concerts, I had these allusions being sold to me of a world that was thrilling. Even if I only had one day with The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show™, it was enough to prove that I wasn’t the only one. Others had bought those records and memorized the lyrics. Even as I recognize that part of youth is being messy and embarrassing, I notice that the flaws are perfectly symbolized on their albums, which gave you the freedom of explicit curiosities and a world that didn’t belong to your parents. This was a new generation’s anthem.
Deep down, I wish I liked Blink-182 as much as I did on the day I saw them in concert. The hits are still exciting, capable of transporting me back. However, I think their biggest irony is that they may have triumphant songs full of emotion, but their maturity has been lacking. I’m sure, like Green Day, they can rediscover that passion one day, but for now, it feels like their status as immortal teenagers is failing. At best, they are a legacy act, relying on the past to remind fans why they matter. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but given their ubiquity in my music journey, I wonder if my response has anything to do with their regression to the mean or that they were a starting point that I long dashed past. Whatever it is, I won’t deny that those songs take me back, making me grateful for them being there as the gateway and introducing hundreds of talented musicians to a new way of doing things. They still rock, but I’m not sure if that’s just nostalgia talking.
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