Janthony's Blog: Blink-182

Last night we headed over to Verizon Amphitheater in Irvine. After all these years, we're still going to Blink-182 shows. What's weird is that we're the same age as the band, so you'd expect to see a bunch of thirty-somethings in the audience. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of us there. But, there were so many teens as well. It must be nice for a band to go on hiatus for a few years. Then one of the members has a near death experience which brings them back together. They decide to go on tour without a new album, and still sell out every show. They still perform just as they did back in the day. Travis doesn't speak and the other two just make fun of each other. If you've never been to a Blink-182 show, there's something you need to understand. You can't go in there expecting them to sing anything like their recordings. They don't take singing very seriously. It's all about having a good time. Laughing at them change the lyrics every once in awhile and listening to them make fun of each other. One thing you should always expect is for Travis to have a huge drum solo. The last show we saw, he and his drum set were doing summersaults.

This go around, we went with Dom & Winde (another UCR couple) and Dom's cousins Anna & Steven.

We even ran into our old buddy (also from UCR) Dom with his new girlfriend Aileen.

We spent so much time catching up with Dom (the asian one), that we completely missed Chester French's set. But we managed to catch the end of All American Rejects set. For some reason I assumed their song "Gives You Hell" was done by someone like Jason Mraz. So, I at least knew one track in that set.

If you don't already know, if you're ever hanging out with Dom... you're gonna have to drink some firewater.

The next band had FOB on the stage. That could offend some people. Especially in Irvine. Fall Out Boy was cool. They even covered Journey's "Don't Stop."

Now for the main event. Blink pretty much played all their hits. It was just kind of weird for us to be in such a large venue to see them. The last time we saw them play was at the Avalon in Hollywood (formerly The Palace, for all of you kids who used to go to Legend Entertainment parties). So, we're used to small venues where its all standing room only and we're all jumping around during the entire show.

We tried to jump around in our row. But all the punk ass hipster kids sitting around us probably thought we were nuts. Whatever, they probably couldn't move around much in their tight jeans anyway.

Travis' drum solo was ridiculous. The platform carrying his drum set floated off the stage. It moved from side to side. Then stopped in the center with him hanging vertically. And then the whole thing rotated like a turntable.