blink-182 Band • Page 1501

Flew through it in 24 hrs... almost wished he would have stopped at tom leaving 2nd time and wrote a part 2 for the rest, or added about 250 pages to the current book. Last 12 years felt a bit rushed compared to the rest, but overall I DEVOURED this book. So good.

After this and Walking Disaster, I want more... anyone have any other recs on similar bios from our "scene"?

 

I'm a Tom purist but even I can't defend his attitude, demeanor, lack of care and general vagueness during the first blink reunion.

Obviously there's sides to every story, but it's pretty clear Mark and Travis were very open, lenient and accommodating as much as possible. Even in the book Mark writes that he and Travis encouraged Tom to continue with AVA when Tom felt overwhelmed with commitments, so he had an outlet for his more out there ideas.

The only defense I have of Tom during that time was that he was clearly in an identity crisis.

 

Got my tickets today for Darien for the second section/about 15 rows back for 200 each after fees. So I’m really poor but also really happy!

 

Anyone go to the first date of the book tour? I'm going on Saturday and I'm super excited

 

I think one thing Mark doesn’t address in the book is how he wanted things to “remain Blink” after Enema. Tom has spoken about how TOYPAJ was a struggle because Mark wanted Enema part 2 and Tom had been listening to Fugazi and wanted to do that instead.

Mark talks about how TOYPAJ has all these hardcore influences but not really. And that’s part of the reason that led to BoxCar, even if obviously Tom handled it pretty terribly.

The same happened after the untitled with the U2 inspired songs that they rejected.

Overall I really would have liked more about the creative process and these struggles and while I think Tom handled everything pretty poorly I also think Mark creatively is sometimes to stuck into what blink is or isn’t.

 

Yeah I was surprised to read that Tom wanted to retire AVA and Mark and Travis told him not to. Then they kept rejecting his songs for Neighborhoods because they sounded too much like AVA and then Tom got frustrated and checked out.

 

I guess the box office double booked my seat so I got moved five or six rows from the front.

The bit is the original part of the book was going to talk about how grandparents and Dan Ozzi told him no one gives a fuck about that lol.

Interesting tidbit from the show, I never knew Mark suffered from OCD, so he went into great detail how the pandemic reallly fucked with him and how it went straight from that to the cancer diagnosis and then the full circle moment of getting the call from Coachella.

 

I'll be at Saturday's date with a couple people. One from Mark's discord and one person from the Rabbit Hole collectors group.

 

I have to imagined you've read Can I Say already.

I really enjoyed Sellout by Dan Ozzi and Where Are Your Boys Tonight? by Chris Payne. Not quite bios but close enough.

I've had these on my TBR list for a few years but either haven't gotten to them yet or waiting on copies from the library:
- From the Basement: A History of Emo Music and How It Changed Society by Taylor Markarian
- Tranny by Laura Jane Grace
- Do What You Want: The Story of Bad Religion by Jim Ruland
- Nothing Feels Good by Andy Greenwald
- Meet Me in the Bathroom by Lizzy Goodman (kind of scene adjacent but have heard good things about this one)

 

Where Are Your Boys Tonight was one of my favorite reads of the past few years. Start wwith that. Sellout was great too.
I also read Tranny and Meet Me in the Bathroom a few years ago, both were great, but the latter is about the NYC indie scene if that was also your thing.

 

Ha! Ive read Where AND Sellouts. Didnt realize that Dan did Mark and Sellout until yesterday actually. And yeah, I haveTravis' book too. Guess I'm pretty well covered from the sounds of it. We need more books in this space!

 

Pit tickets seem to have been added for NH this morning.

 

Ticketmaster fuckery afoot, as always

 

$293 is insane

 

Yeah, I can kind of understand both sides there - the epitome of creative differences.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I also suspect the whole "sounds too much like AvA and not enough like blink" thing that he said is a half-truth and more of a euphemism for not liking Tom's stuff lol. It's more constructive and respectful to say "Hey, this needs to sound a little more like blink..... so maybe lose the boring 5-minute ambient intro?" than it is to say "this shit sucks. no."

The reason I think this is because according to the book, Tom seemed to see right through that and knew that they really just didn't like his ideas in general (he said "If you don't like my ideas, why am I even here?")

I feel like in the book, Mark was trying to get across the idea that they didn't like the songwriter Tom had become (he was AvA at that point) but phrased it as delicately as he could. And I think encouraging him to continue AvA was their optimistic hope that maybe he would get that out of his system and be able to write a bit differently with them.

 

Listened to Nine at the gym today. Still a great album. Forgot how fun Darkside is.

 

Picked up this “vintage” tee recently

 

Travis’s book was full of so much salacious war stories and “nobody cares go harder” macho influencer language. lol it was hard to get through for me. Travis the person from interviews and pods and Travis the personification in that book seem like different dudes. I liked Marks book significantly more personally.

 

The NOFX book is good, but also a heavy read at times.

 

I don't think Tom would have the money to fund his various projects if they went the Fugazi route.

 

should have been as big a hit as Bored to Death

 

Definitely the strongest and catchiest song on Nine (maybe in the whole Skiba era). I wonder if Mark didn't want to make it a lead single because it was too "skiba forward"? Probably a dumb take, but I really am baffled that they went with BIOMY and IRWIHY as singles vs the rest of the bangers on that album.

I did a listen of Nine a couple months back after not having listened to it in probably a year and it was insane how good it still is.

 

I think Blink Wave might be one of my favorite Blink songs of all time.

 

Whenever I listen to Blink Wave, all I can think about is them redoing Automatic. You can practically hear Mark singing, “She’s on automatic.” It’d be so money.