Friday Dreadfleet: Bonesheads

Did me a Bone Hydra.

No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.3.2 - "Anthem Part 2 " (Blink-182)

Things get weird after you make it big.

Blink-182's second album Dude Ranch didn't exactly fail to sell - it was nearing platinum status while the group recorded Enema Of The State. It was ...State that sent them stratospheric, though. By the time the trio were in the studio putting together their fourth album, ...State had reached quintuple platinum in the US alone. Them's crazy figures.

As is so often the case, the sudden colossal increase of attention, adoration, and account digits brought about - or perhaps here simply exacerbated - an identity crisis. Tom Delonge wanted to expand the group's sound beyond unusually polished, unusually puerile pop-punk. Mark Hoppus wanted to tap deeper into the vein.

The result was Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, a collection which felt for the first time like it was written by two distinct voices, rather than simply sung by them. You can hear the strain at the centre of the band, as DeLonge tries to escape the gravity well of the simplistic shtick that nevertheless made them famous, only to see Hoppus pull them back time and again.

Just seconds into "Anthem Part 2" the first song on Take Off... and released as a single in the summer of 2021, it becomes clear Tom had it right*. A glorious building rush of overlapping guitar parts sweeps us into a summary the American teenage nation. And OK, its really, really fucking stupid summary, but there's a universality in the banality. An awareness that people are listening, which people in particular will mistake directionless punk energy for guiding wisdom, and providing comfort in stating the bleedin' obvious: pretty much none of this is teenagers' fault. "If we're fucked up, you're to blame". A ludicrous statement when sung by a man twenty-five years old when he wrote it, but which holds real power when screamed out by a million teenagers, stagger-drunk on watery beer in the garden of the friend whose parents are out of town. This is political songwriting not as lecture, but as gift.

DeLonge directly addresses that fizzing mass of confused anger that's trapped within every teenager being forced to twist themselves to fit the bizarre, arbitrary rules society relies on to avoid having to actually fucking change anything. There are any number of smarter ways to summarise that all-consuming blaze than "Young and hostile, but not stupid", but there's not necessarily many better. This isn't a manifesto. It's an anthem. Teenagers don't need smarter slogans, because Gods know they're not losing the argument because the previous generations have more brains. What they need is power, and if anger is an energy, then music that channels anger is a power source.

For one glorious summer, before two men fell out and two towers went down, Blink were a battery for a generation. Not bad for the dudes who gave us "Dick Lips".

B-side: I couldn't find any particularly interesting versions of this song, so instead I present the second piece of evidence which conclusively proves Tom the victor in the 2001 Creative Visions war that almost tore the band apart. Because Jesus Christ, Mr Hoppus. The fuck you call this?

Friday 40K: Heating Up

Done two of 'em now innit.

I think I'm proud of these? Broadly speaking. Keep trying not to notice the bone armour is a slightly different shade on each of them. Stupid drybrushing.

Friday Talisman: My Spy

 

Did myself a Talisman spy, lads. Mine's a bit more colourful than the official art - I figured being extremely dressed up and all in black wasn't actually all that subtle. Just feels too try-hard, you know? Like, you've brought along your lorgnettes, mate. You ain't blendin' in to shit.