It’s Been Three Years Since Tom DeLonge Was The Least Bit Tolerable

kater | February 22, 2008 3:30 am
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Three years ago today Blink 182 officially announced their indefinite hiatus, thus ending a golden era of genuinely fun pop music. Commercial rock has been tragically devoid of dick jokes and scatological humor since their departure, and the new wave of punky pop bands (aka emo aka Those Dudes) just doesn’t have the same kind of sarcastic swagger that Blink 182 possessed in such abundance. They were by no means great musicians, but if you were 13 years old in 2000 and too misanthropic for boy bands, yet still immature enough to enjoy sodomy jokes, they were pitch perfect. Let’s examine some of their finer moments.

This song was on their 1994 EP Cheshire Cat . It’s not a bad little song, and was always one of those “this is for the people who knew us before Enema of the State” moments at concerts.

In my early teen days I always thought this song was really romantic. I still kind of think so! And Tom DeLonge’s ratty voice in the chorus is a brilliant addition to the song.

Probably the best single they ever put out, if not their best song ever. You better believe it was exciting at concerts when the drums kicked in after the opening guitar riff. Right at that moment in the song on their live album Tom DeLonge screams “Take your pants off!” My best friend and I still say it every time we listen to the song.

People talk a big game about Nickelback’s alleged “sense of humor” with that “Rockstar” song, but it’s just not good enough for me. I want nudity and black dress socks. Now that’s commitment.

What on earth can compete with this song? It’s like Cheap Trick and The Monkees had a baby and it fell in a barrel of nuclear waste to become the ultimate mutant-powerful pop song.

And then they started taking themselves too seriously and things went steadily downhill…

I hear shades of Angels and Airwaves in the leaden chorus.

And then they started hanging out with Robert Smith and writing lyrics like “Hello there the angel from my nightmare, the shadow in the background of the morgue.”

And since you can’t sink any further than that, they had to call it quits. But where are they now? We all know what horror Tom DeLonge moved on to. Travis Barker now plays drums in his closet. And Mark Hoppus has a blog. I would say that it’s sad they’re not together anymore, but considering that they reached their peak in about 1999 with three chords and a handful of fart jokes, it’s probably best to just leave the past behind us in this case.