Blink-182 has always been one of those bands. It's a band you can keep coming back to, where you can straighten your hair, throw on a black T-shirt and something with spikes on it and jam out in your car to some whiny dudes singing about the perils of being or not being a teenager.
But Blink was that band in 1997. And in 2000. Again in 2003. When Blink returned to the stage with 2011's Neighborhoods, we bought it at first because we were aching for those hits. This year, Blink returned again, this time without frontman Tom DeLonge (replaced by Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba) and, despite a solid album release in California, the band's live presence felt somewhat lacking.
At Gexa Energy Pavilion Friday night, Blink was led in by pop rockers The All-American Rejects and harder-core rockers A Day To Remember. The crowd got pumped, of course, and for a packed crowd there's not much more you can ask for. Fans moshed, people in T-Rex costumes crowd-surfed and it was a good time.
But when Blink took the stage, the mood changed, and just before the band's curtain drop into "Feeling This," you could hear a pin drop. OK, maybe a really, really big pin.
Right away you could see lead Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker in comfort, each taking on the roles they know so well. As the band knocked hit after hit out of the park with "What's My Age Again?" "Family Reunion" and "The Rock Show," the crowd was satisfied. This was the Blink we missed. Then we got to see some of Skiba's chops as the band played "Cynical," the first track on California.
Then things changed. When you close your eyes and imagine "I Miss You," if you know the song, you can hear DeLonge's whine just in the back of your mind. (Wherrrreeeee arrreeee youuuu?)
Skiba, however, seemed to struggle to stand out, because he was on DeLonge duty. This, of course, broke the immersion on songs like "Dumpweed." But that was OK, because the band supplemented much of this DeLonge-mimicking with new songs like "Bored To Death" and "Kings of the Weekend," Mark-led tracks like "Stay Together For the Kids" or just plain classics like "Carousel."
Overall, the band's production matched a lot of what we've seen before. Streamers, pyrotechnics and more all made for an enjoyable experience. The lights and sounds were great, though after seeing Blink in 2009 and again in 2011, it still felt like something was missing. Heck, even the "dad banter" between Skiba and Hoppus lacked the tongue-in-cheekness that it had with DeLonge.
Though Friday's encore finished the show with the no-brainers "All The Small Things" and "Dammit," there was no Barker on a spinning roller coaster drum set for 30 minutes. Just some damn good music. And hey, that's OK.
