The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

Posted: 18 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST

Blink-182 isn't afraid of dividing fans and startling critics as it enters a fresh stage.

FOR airplane-phobic drummer Travis Barker, the gig required a quick trip across town in a pimped-out low rider. Singer-bassist Mark Hoppus flew 5,400 miles from London. And with sky's-the-limit rock-star gusto, guitarist-vocalist Tom DeLonge bypassed traffic on the 405 and helicoptered in from San Diego.

With the sun high in the autumn sky, Blink-182 arrived at the Hollywood Palladium to find a punk-rock centipede, a line of heavily tattooed, extravagantly pierced and Mohawk-sporting fans waiting for the sold-out show.

The scene made Hoppus uncharacteristically wistful. "I was that dude!" he said. "I saw so many Palladium shows."

With two back-to-back Palladium performances selling out in 36 seconds (and three other quickly scheduled dates at L.A.'s Wiltern Theater sold out as well), Blink-182's pop-punk cultural output is still defined by arrested adolescence.

Blink rose from San Diego's suburban torpor to become perhaps the least likely alterna-rock band to conquer mainstream radio.

But that band of bros singing about burritos, prank calls and alien abduction? They lost that snot-nose spirit long ago.

Consider that Barker nearly died in a fiery 2008 private-jet crash that claimed the lives of four other people onboard. DeLonge battled back from skin cancer in 2010. And nearly three years ago, Hoppus moved to Europe.

For its November shows, the band turned away from its earliest material and spotlighted its underrated masterwork: the 2003 untitled album commonly known as Blink-182. The plan was to play it front-to-back for the first time at the Palladium, including six songs Blink had never performed live before an audience.

"That's by far my favourite album we did," said Barker, taking a break from pounding his practice pads in an upstairs dressing room. "It was groundbreaking for us."

Upon its release a decade ago thismonth, the self-titled CD arrived as a great leap forward for Blink. It drew in post-hard-core rock influences from DeLonge and Barker's critically hailed side band Boxcar Racer, and ultimately divided fans and startled critics.

While selling more than 2.2 million copies and spawning a No.1 hit (on the Billboard alternative chart) with the melancholy power ballad I Miss You, the album opened inter-personal fissures in the band and contributed to a hiatus that lasted from 2005 to 2008.

Intended as their boys-to-men moment, the self-titled CD provided a turning point for the group by dint of its experimental instrumentation, darker lyrics and total absence of toilet humour.

"We were the joke band. We were the dudes that ran naked in the video," said Hoppus, 41, flanked by his visiting parents and pre-teen son backstage. "We needed to prove that there was something deeper than that. We wanted to treat our music as a form of art and see what we could really do."

In 2002, they moved into a mansion in the San Diego luxury community of Rancho Santa Fe and recorded for nearly six months. Producer Jerry Finn procured some decidedly un-punk instruments, including Tubular bells, stand-up basses and a polyphonic tape replay keyboard, or Mellotron. The Cure's Robert Smith contributed vocals on the song All Of This.

"Mark was like, 'Who ... cares what anyone else thinks? This is for us,'" recalled DeLonge, 37, an alternately kinetic and pensive presence dressed in Johnny Cash black. "We wanted to see what we could be if the cage was opened up."

Rapier thin and laser-intense, Barker has been called "punk's first superstar drummer." But as Blink's least talkative member, when he speaks others take heed.

"I told the guys, 'Pretend this is our first album,'" said Barker, 37. "We weren't going to tour it or make videos; it was supposed to be this quiet little project."

Yet upon its 2003 release, Blink-182 landed at No.3 on the national album chart, spawned two hit singles and several videos.

But recognition came at a price. To hear it from the group now, Hoppus had difficulty accepting the group's new direction.

"It definitely caused some weirdness," said Barker.

After touring through 2004, the three essentially stopped communicating with one another. DeLonge bowed out of further touring, prioritising family before band.

Hoppus described Blink's period apart as an "acrimonious band split where people detest one another and say horrible things about one another in the press."

Barker's plane crash, which left him with third-degree burn scars, brought the three together again.

"We're in a good place," said Hoppus. "When the three of us are in the same room, everyone's focused and excited. Then everyone goes their separate ways and we drift apart. It takes something like this where everyone's like, 'Oh, yeah, this thing!' And we huddle together and get back to work."

After leaving longtime home Interscope Records, Blink is in talks for a new deal. It expects to record new material within the next 90 days. Nostalgia surrounding the 10th anniversary of Blink-182 notwithstanding, the idea is to channel the 2003 mojo into the new material.

Step 1: Shack up in some opulent SoCal spot for the duration of recording. This time, Hoppus said, they're thinking Malibu. – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Khamis, 19 Disember 2013

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

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