On this beautiful summer night, Blink 182 descended upon the Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham, accompanied by The Front Bottoms and Frank Turner.
Now I’ll say this I’ve not heard anything by The Front Bottoms, they’re a band I’ve not really listened to, like ever. I genuinely as they started singing was like are they scottish? For some reason my ears were hearing a scottish tinge to the singers voice, but no they’re from New Jersey. I’ll be honest didn’t enjoy them. Some of the crowd did. But they’re not for me. That lyric about taking steroids because some girl liked muscular guys made me do this face:
Next up was Mr Frank Turner, now I’m not a fan of Frank. Whenever I’ve heard his songs I’m like meh, bit indie… BUT the guy got the crowd going! On the third track he was joined by Matt Skiba to play harmonica which was rather glorious. Was pretty amazed to hear him telling the crowd to open it up and get a pit going. I also appreciated that in one song he had us all sit down declaring, “some people are still being dicks to women at punk rock shows. It pisses me off outside these walls let alone at a punk rock show”. So kudos Mr Turner you were a pretty nice dude who plays some folk songs, which aren’t for me but for that, and your all round great stage presence, I doth my cap. I was a little impressed.
And what we all came to witness Blink 182 or BlinkTrio. So think all us PPD lot went in with an air of skepticism. Because of the fact Tom has been replaced by Matt Skiba, Alkaline Trio. So the gigantic United Kingdom of BlinkTrio flag came down and they kicked off with a giant FUCK sign that was on fire, and were straight into Feeling This. Now from the get go at Tom’s part, I GOT TO REGRET ROIGHT NOW, ya’ll know, it was like woah, wait. Am I enjoying this or does it sound weird because Tom’s not singing it?
Now in the moment of Blink’s set tonight I had a really good time, lots of jumping, singing along, bit of shit dancing, screaming at Mark Hoppus… But when they got to I Miss You it really hit home that although Matt Skiba is a beautifully voiced musician, and I adore everything Alkaline Trio, it got me. Thats when it hit home. Now we know of late Tom hadn’t been enjoying playing, you could just see the absolute lack of interest (Reading & Leeds *cough*). Now when you’ve been in a band that long theres got to be a ton of crap that won’t feel good or you’ll disagree on etc etc etc. But I really missed the old Blink gig vibes, they just played songs, there wasn’t the same dick jokes and that fun aspect. I enjoyed the tracks from California, Sober in particular was glorious live. The crowd was pretty into everything it was a sweaty, glorious time during each track, old and new, Skiba-fied didn’t phase us. With the gig ending Travis’s son Landon tore up the drums for a post show jam, which was pretty beautiful to see, he’s such a talented kid, takes after his dad. Post gig I really just miss Tom… Can they stop having a conscious uncoupling as Gwenyth Paltrow would say, and just get back to playing beautiful crappy punk rock? *internal sobbing*
Have you guys caught Blink on their UK tour? Do you miss Tom too?
