The Brickbat

Hi, Blink-182! Damn glad to see you again…

Posted on 28. Aug, 2009 by Sean.

I went to see Blink-182 on Wed night at PNC in Holmdel and it was an amazing show.  I missed out seeing the fat slobs in Taking Back Sunday who I haven’t cared about since their first album came out and I got there too late for Weezer as well.  Weezer isn’t a band I give a shit about anymore, either.  Maladroit, started me down that road and the topper was the song “Beverly Hills” which I consider a horrific pox on music that I will never forgive them for.  But I digress… I ended up arriving right as Blink was taking the stage and I could feel myself getting giddy.  Let me say, I am not ashamed at all to admit that I LOVE Blink-182.  I love their songs, I love their goofy onstage antics, and I love that they make me feel like I’m 21 again.  They played all of their hits incredibly well and they had the crowd squealing with delight.  In fact, the only blemish to me was “Adam’s Song.”  Mark was straining to hit those high notes like he was passing a golf ball-sized kidney stone.  But even that song wasn’t terrible and all in all – It was just good to have Blink-182 back. 

When they broke up a few years ago and each member went and did their own thing, it really bummed me out.  Not only because it was the end of an era, but also because each new band they left us with was horrible – Angels and Airwaves?  + 44?  The Transplants?  Ugh, are you kidding me?  They all came prepackaged with so much hype and did not come anywhere close to measuring up to their combined efforts in Blink-182.  That, plus the fact that I had listened to Blink through some of the most fun, yet transitional periods of my life made me miss them in a deeper sense than some random band breaking up.  To me, it felt more like I had lost a friend. 

Blink has always represented pure joy to me.  The way Mark, Tom and Travis interacted with each other and their audience was so sincere and unique to bands of their stature.  Most bands have an air of superiority they carry onstage.  Blink never did.  They made you feel like you could jump up on stage and become a part of their group in a heartbeat.  Whether I saw them at the Trocadero, opening for Less Than Jake, in front of a couple hundred kids or playing in front of thousands at a huge venue like PNC or Tweeter, they welcomed you to their shows like normal, yet super lucky  dudes who were completely thankful for the opportunity they received and the success they achieved.  I loved that about them because it’s easy to get jaded in the music business and they seemed to be above all that.

Alas, it turns out they weren’t above all that.  Towards the end of their first run together, we started seeing some changes.  Tom seemed to be getting a little full of himself and wanting to evolve Blink into this more sophisticated and progressive rock machine.  To be honest, I hated Blink’s last studio album and I began drifting away from the unwavering devotion I had always had for them.  They got outside of what they were, which was a mistake.  Don’t get me wrong, I know bands want to evolve, but Blink didn’t need to evolve for the sake of evolving.  All of their prior efforts to their last album had a small, but logical progression from the previous one.  But the last album went way too far into left field.  The Cure-like atmosphere on a lot of songs just wasn’t Blink.  Side projects could have achieved that goal of creating something off the band’s beaten path and left Blink for their fans.  You can see what I mean in the videos for the album.  “Feeling This” an homage to Pink Floyd’s The Wall tried way too hard , “Down” was too preachy and “Miss You” and “Always” were stupid glammed up videos that should have been used by “serious” bands like Coldplay or The Killers.  Blink got away from what had made them great – those incredibly hilarious, pop culture-skewing videos and the fun loving, sometimes teen-angsty songs that were their staple for so long – and it really sucked. 

But even though I wasn’t a fan of the new stuff, Blink was still a band I liked just knowing were there.  It was comforting in a “musical security blanket” kind of way.  Even if I forgot about them for a while or didn’t listen to their albums for a few months, when I did re-connect with them, they would always bring me back to an amazingly fun time in my life.  Dude Ranch and Enema of the State remind me of bright summer days, driving around with the windows down, talking with my pals about girls and life and where we were gonna get drunk that weekend.  A carefree time that you miss when faced with the mundanity and daily responsibilities  of adulthood.  Blink is an emotional fountain of youth.  They make you giggle at low brow, toilet humor that you’ve grown (ahem) far too sophisticated to appreciate in your old age.  They make you nod your head to 3 chords of simplistic brilliance which always made me wonder why I couldn’t write something similar (oh, right – that whole lack of talent thing).  But the point is Blink-182 is all the fun times you had as a kid that you sometimes forget you’re capable of.  They make me want to pick up my guitar and play along to their records while drinking beers with my friends and talking about stuff that is spectacularly unimportant in the grand scheme of our overall lives. 

On Wednesday I had a smile on my face for an hour and half and just remembered all the great firsts I shared with that band:  The first time I saw and heard “Dammit” on 120 Minutes and was blown away by the lyrics and the sing-along-ability of that song.  Or the first time I saw the outrageous videos for “What’s My Age Again” and “All the Small Things” and couldn’t believe how brilliant and ballsy they were.  Or how I thought “Carousel” was the best song ever for, like, 3 minutes until I heard “M&Ms.”  Or how I always wished I would one day get a girlfriend like “Josie” (which I did).   Blink are the soundtrack to an endless amount of my life’s snapshots, forever stashed away in my memory.  And I’m so thankful for that. 

The wonderful thing about Blink is their blissful minimalism.  They don’t try to be anything they’re not.  They’re a bunch of SoCal kids who loved to skateboard, go to the beach and play punk rock.  And a few years ago they made it big and brought joy to millions of kids the world over.  Now, a few slight detours aside, they’ve returned to recapture all their former glory.  It’s a shame it took a near tragic plane crash to provide the impetus for the 3 former friends to reunite, but I’m glad they did.  The world seems like a better place with them back together.

Welcome back, Blink-182.  I missed you homos. 

(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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Why The Gaslight Anthem is the Best Band in the World

Posted on 23. Jul, 2009 by Sean.

I saw Gaslight Anthem three times on their last tour.  I normally would never, EVER do that for a band, but this band is different for me.  Rare is the band that inspires a near cult like loyalty on my part.  And rarer still is the band that I will go see in concert SIX times in an eight month span.  Concert tickets aren’t free, you know and in this economy we’re all trying to spend wiser.  But still…it’s Gaslight Anthem.  And they’re the greatest band in the world.

Breakthrough bands are not just great musicians or great songwriters.  They aren’t just great at marketing themselves.  They aren’t just lucky in the timeliness with which they burst onto the scene.  Truly great bands incorporate all of these factors into making them the biggest bands in the world.

The Beatles came along when rock and roll was in its infancy and they turned music and the entire industry itself on its ear.  They progressed and reinvented themselves so many times that their forward thinking inspired millions of copycats.  They changed the course of rock and roll forever.

Nirvana came along at the end of a horrible recession, in the post Reagan/Bush I years that were filled with cynicism and anger and frustration.  They came along as the perfect mouthpiece to articulate all those feelings and they blew the doors off of pop music and even pop culture.  So apropos to the time, they even knocked Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off its Number 1 perch on the Billboard charts.

Now these are just two examples of bands that I love and band that I feel exploded in a manner unique to music and radically shifted the direction rock was going in by spawning hundreds or even thousands of bands that were influenced by this radical departure from the mainstream.   Arguments can be made for countless other bands from Led Zeppelin to the Stones to The Clash to U2, etc., etc..  I’m not comparing Gaslight Anthem with any of those world-changing, history making bands but I see in this band something powerful forming and people are beginning to take notice.  I won’t go so far as to say it’s a movement, but it’s a unity, a purpose in their fans to advance the music and to celebrate the greatness that they emit in every one of their songs and every one of their live performances.

It was only a matter of time, but the celebrity obsession had to start backfiring eventually, didn’t it?  In these economic times how much can we really relate to a ballplayer making $20 million a year or the movie star making that much per movie?  Who can afford to jet to the Riviera like these insipid socialites you see on TV?  Do we give two shits about Heidi and Spencer anymore?  Or the fat cats in their ivory towers sucking the blood out of the less fortunate so they can show their shareholders a one point gain on their company’s stock are hardly role models.  Whereas,  the blue collar, hardworking everyman has become the person we are slowly regressing to and choosing to emulate.  At least I hope that’s the way we’re heading.  These are the people that built and sacrificed for this country and it’s about time they get the same respect and appreciation vapid celebrities have been monopolizing the past few years.  There is a nobility in working hard and providing for your family without any fanfare or accolades; in remaining loyal to your home and your friends.  Gaslight Anthem are proponents of these simple, yet seemingly long lost ideals.  They are cut from that same working class hero cloth that bore us Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp and their red blooded, wholly American, ilk.

The thing that distinguishes Gaslight from the baby boomer rock and roll artists, for me, is the tone and content of their songs.  Sure, they sometimes have that unquestionably sorrowful awareness that things can be bleak and your hard work can last a lifetime with little to no reward, but there’s also a sense of optimism and wistful nostalgia that harkens you back to a simpler time with blissful memories.  I know Brian Fallon wasn’t going to sock hops and drinking malted milk shakes with his best gal back in the 50’s, but he knows what that time was like in our country – the ending of a miserable world war, full of sacrifice and despair and the bursting forth into a whole new era of exuberance, and optimism.  It’s been a while since we’ve had that kind of pure, unabashed hopefulness without a slight dollop of the pessimism that had permeated our daily lives in the Dubya era.  It’s like turning a huge ship, as far as the speed in which things can change, but the point is that hope is not lost and the winds of change will blow if you’re determined enough.

The best bands come along at a time when the world is really ready to listen to what they have to say and their message is both intelligent and poignant.  Gaslight have arrived at a time of great fear in our country, but also of great hope.  The election of a black President - with the crumbling of our world standing, as well as our economic superiority – has both given us cause for panic as well as a sense that we can be the first generation since our grandparents to bring about a real change to our planet.  We are aware that Reagan-esque consumer spending sprees are no longer a viable option.  We know that the world’s climate is a serious problem that must be addressed through cutting back on fossil fuels and finding new ways to create energy.  We know that in order to truly move forward as a society we have to start taking better care of our sick, our children, our elderly, our neighbors.  We’re all in this together and Gaslight Anthem is the soundtrack to those feelings.  I listen to The ’59 Sound and I feel proud to be an American and I feel like there isn’t anything we can’t do.  The older generations they sing about, our parents, their parents – they laid the groundwork and we can carry on that torch they’ve passed on to us.  The world is changing radically, but some of our base ideals and traditions should not.

A particular quote from Stephen Chbosky’s coming of age classic, Perks of Being a Wallflower springs to mind when I listen to The ’59 Sound – “I feel infinite.”  It’s been a while since music made me feel that way.  Thanks, Gaslight Anthem for renewing the faith.

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Welcome to Thebrickbat.com

Posted on 28. Jan, 2009 by Dan.

Hello and Welcome to the Brickbat. If you are reading this its because there is nothing more to read, or because I deleted the site…again.

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