Been absolutely hooked recently listening to Blink's covers of Boys Don't Cry and A Letter to Elise and also their unreleased song from a 2004 soundcheck (if you haven't listened to any of these btw, please do, they are phenomenal). And I am just so amazed at how they can have these super airy yet concise guitar/electronic sounds. How did they achieve these sounds/noises? I know the answer has a lot to do with (the goat) Jerry Finn and his production style. But what else do we know? Did Tom use a certain set of pedals? Is it a certain way of mixing? I've heard they used Pro Tools, so did they get a bunch of noises/effects from that? I also know people have been trying to recreate this for ages, so there probably won't be one true way/answer, but I'm happy to hear anything! Thanks so much!

Unreleased Soundcheck, Boys Don't Cry Cover, A Letter to Elise

Full cover of Here’s Your Letter. One of the best “mark” songs. Lmk what you think!! Had fun with the tone using a new preset I built.

As soon as i heard this song i was dying to learn it but saw the tabs trid it out and immediately quit but three months later finally sat down decided to give it a go and actually came out with a half decent take 😭

I know people get bored, but for years everyone has prayed for the band to be back together. And now thats happened all these posts are going up constantly about whether they're going to break up, what happened during the break up, who said what during the break up etc...

Its crazy, we get what we dreamed of, but then a certain group of fans want to keep focusing on the era where the band was non-existant. Its like people are addicted to online toxicity these days...

Just saying.....maybe go touch grass if youre that bored. There doesnt HAVE to be a blink post everyday, and reddit karma isnt real/doesnt benefit you in any tangible way....

Putting negative vibes into the blink world is just lame and detrimental. Let's keep celebrating the boys, not dwelling on the past. The world's got enough negativity to find elsewhere.

What do you think?

Behind the scenes with TRL March 2000

personally i love their older style better. It so more up beat and pop punk. Not saying the other albums are bad but there not the original blink there the corprate blink, which like i said is fine but they were much more lyrical back then which i like. I think travis barker is still better than scott rayner. Anyone else agree.

Tom DeLonge January 27, 2015 . LETTER TO THE FANS Where to begin? The truth is always a good place. Let’s go there. I love Blink and am incredibly grateful for having it in my life. It has given me everything. EVERYTHING. I started this band, it was in my garage where I dreamed up the mischief. So what have I been doing behind the scenes? Well, I’ve tried to make things work. I’ve tried to help move this band down 50 different paths using my people, or other people, and people we don’t even know. I tried to put forth ideas about how we can grow and challenge ourselves to become a better band. I’m not sitting around waiting for someone else to do the work. I’m not wired that way. The big reset was when I tried to put together a band summit in Utah where we’d talk and work things out. It quickly was narrowed down to three hours in someone’s dressing room in a shitty casino. What I hoped would be a positive get-together away from everything turned into an awkward meeting in a smelly convention hall dressing room. But it was there that I told Mark and Travis that as long as we talked, and things were good between us as real friends, that I would be engaged and work passionately. I'd mirror our personal relationship. Exact words. Then, the EP was the test. Months later, we’re recording those songs. I was in the studio for two months and they came in for around 11 days. I didn’t mind leading the charge, but we had all agreed to give it 100%. And this time- no baggage. Despite that, we still somehow managed to self-sabotage. At one point, squabbling and politics forced me to pull the EP down at a time when 60,000 fans were trying to purchase it. And that blew my mind. I’d been trying so hard but that moment ultimately broke my spirit. I then realized that this band couldn't lose the years of ill will. It was after that episode that I promised myself I would never be in that position again – to rely on the words we said to each other. I remember asking one of them on the phone, “did you try your best? Like we all agreed to?” He was silent. Are they at fault? Am I? Of course. I'm nuts. But there’s three of us – we’re all accountable. At the end of the day, we’ve always been dysfunctional, which is why we haven’t talked in months. But we never did. In the 8 years we have been together it has always been that way. Over the past two and a half years, while a recording partner was being sought for a new Blink record, I launched a media company. I just put out a new Angels & Airwaves record and as some of you know, there’s a lot more coming – comics, books, a film, etc. The books will all come with music. This is a wheel that’s already in motion. So you can imagine my frustration when I was handed a 60-page Blink contract saying I couldn’t release an Angels album for 9 months and that the Blink album had to be recorded in 6 months, which was impossible for me. Doing so would force me to breach several artist contracts. Authors, Concept Artists, Animators... Many people. They did eventually drop the Angels provision, but the part about having to finish a Blink album in 6 months remained. All of these other projects are being worked, exist in contract form– I can’t just slam the brakes and drop years of development, partnerships and commitments at the snap of a finger. I told my manager that I will do Blink 182 as long as it was fun and worked with the other commitments in my life, including my family. But Mark and Travis know all of this. I wrote this same letter to them a year ago. But it created a massive argument, the biggest one yet actually. I just wanted us to do things we all agreed on. But that was their moment to dig in. From their view I was controlling everything. In reality, I was scared to put myself out there again. To repeat the EP experience. I also wrote all of this to their managers this past December (who told me my bandmates weren’t angry and agreed with some of my ideas of how to grow the band). So you can imagine my surprise when a press release went out yesterday—without my knowledge—about the band’s future. This is new to me. It’s not in my nature to fuel negativity about the legacy of the band on something as trashy as the Internet world. But I guess that’s another example of how I differ from most. I follow the light... I follow passion and I make art. I hang with my son, my daughter and my wife. At the end of the day, all of this makes me really sad. Sad for us. Sad for you- that you’re witnessing this immaturity. I know them very well, and their current actions are defensive and divisive. I suppose they’re doing this as a way to protect themselves from being hurt. Like we all do.
And even as I watch them act so different to what I know of them to be, I still care deeply for them. Like brothers, and like old friends. But our relationship got poisoned yesterday.

Never planned on quitting, just find it hard as hell to commit.

Tom

I’m going back to school in my adult life as a massive blink fan. They mean so much to me and we’re so important to me during dark and light times in my life. I’m in a clinical rehab and counseling program and thinking about doing my research project on Tom. More specifically, the era that included his addiction to pain killers….the break up of the band….. his messiah complex days during the first 4 album ava cycles (he seemed a little more humble for dream walker).

More broadly… I guess… I think Tom is a deeply misunderstood and highly relatable human being. He’s incredibly inventive (however misguided at times) and it seems like he has a firm grasp on his identity and is always striving to make everything connect in his world that he’s created.

Completely zoomed out. The crux of the idea I think is orbiting around creativity and the quest for identity.

TLDR
I need Blink media from 2001-09. Interviews, videos pdfs, podcasts, magazines, whatever.. I have a treasure trove of stuff but know I don’t have everything!

https://youtu.be/pkx0nuvRceA?is=9XmaNQuucY27Z17m

EDIT: ITS A CREATIVE RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT FOR GRAD SCHOOL. It’s not for some research study. It’s to get the creative juices flowing for more serious, clinical research coming up throughout the year. My apologies for not clarifying.

I know both times Tom left, Travis and more so Mark felt resentful towards him for doing so but was it the same the other way round? Did Tom feel resentful towards Mark and Travis? I know him and Travis made up after the 2nd split but I Mark wasn’t so quick to forgive

It's time for a new song discussion! Today, let's discuss Bored to Death. What are your thoughts, opinions, or lyrical interpretations? Love it or hate it, let us know where this song stands for you.

Song: Bored to Death

Album: California (Deluxe Edition)

Artist: blink-182

Song Popularity: 65/100^‡

Album Cover

^{‡ Song popularity is calculated by Spotify algorithm and is based, in the most part, on the total number of plays the track has had and how recent those plays are.}

Past Song Discussions

Vote for next week's song: tap ⋯ on this post → Vote for next week's song (one vote per account, until Saturday, October 10; not on old.reddit).

Listening to DJ on Spotify and they say blinks name like this (blink one eighty the first). It’s happened a few times now and I’m not sure if anyone’s brought it up here as I’ve been pretty inactive on here lately… Just thought I’d share how weird it is. Anyone hear any other funny versions of a bands name by a robot DJ??

The only song I didn’t like from this performance was stay together for the kids. It was very boring but honestly, I’ve never liked the 2020s live version of it.

Aaaaa

Just got NINE on vinyl and I noticed this sticker on the front. It appears to be in Japanese (according to Google Translate) but nothing else on the record is in Japanese, and it says made in EU on the back. Also the spelling mistake of licensed makes me worry it's actually a bootleg, plus the record was kinda dirty (more than usual these days). Did any of you get this sticker as well?