The Beat Surrender

Lets get the basics out of the way first shall we, Blink 182 are a punk pop trio who have now sold well in excess of 16 million records (which is a hell of a lot by anyone’s standards), they’ve had countless top forty singles, produced some at times amusing videos if that’s your taste in humour (it’s not mine but more on that later) and have released five proper studio albums.

Taking a look at some of the album titles from those five releases may give you some idea as to why I don’t like Blink 182. Dude Ranch was the debut, Enema Of The State came out in 1999 and boy did we laugh when we saw that title. This was followed two years later by Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, it was only on their last album that they came close to arriving at anything bordering on a mature title…they went for the self titled option.

So this has shaped my image of the band, I’ve always looked at them as being the sort of band, that people who list the three American Pie films, Road Trip and Dumb And Dumber as their five favourite movies of all time would like. I’d accept that the first American Pie film had some moments (although that mainly centred around Shannon Elizabeth) and Dumb and Dumber was one of Jim Carreys better performances, but people who like those films tend to have a childish humour, still think its big and clever to wear their baseball cap backwards and think they are rebelling against society by wearing one of those stupid chains attached to their jeans.

Blink 182 soundtracks the lives of these people perfectly, along with people like Offspring and Wheatus. They are a non threatening type of punk (plastic punks you could say), they play the nerdy role and the ‘I’ve always failed with girls’ card and more than anything they want to stay aged 13 for ever. Well sorry but I just can’t associate with that.

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