September 18, 2009

• If I remember correctly, the last time I saw “Blink182” was seven years ago at the KROQ LA Invasion, and after they broke up a few years after that, I figured I would never see them in concert again. I’m also pretty sure that I’ve never seen “Weezer” in concert before either. Well September 17, 2009 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, CA, changed all that. Blink182 is on their reunion tour, and this particular stop had Weezer as the main opening act, plus “Taking Back Sunday” and “Asher Roth” as the openers.

  By the time me and my friend got to the venue, Asher Roth was finishing up their set… at least I’m sure that was the band that we could hear from the parking lot. While we were walking through the parking lot, we saw roughly about eight teenage boys and girls get busted by police officers for underage drinking and possible marijuana use. The kids seemed to at least be cooperative, admitting that they were 18 years old and all. Oh well, that was a nice brief distraction. We then went to stand in line to get in, got a drink ($13 beer! + $9 cocktail of Irish Whiskey with Coke), and by the time we got to our seats, Taking Back Sunday was finishing up their set with their last two songs.

  

  When Weezer was up on stage, they started things off with a short cover of “War Pigs” by “Black Sabbath” which was really nice. As soon as they started playing their own song, Rivers Cuomo was unfortunately having mic problems, and we couldn’t hear him. His mic was just cutting in and out on him, so I probably heard the crowd sing the song more than we could hear the band. The mic problem was thankfully solved sooner than later. One thing that I thought was pretty cool, is that it seemed like the whole audience knew all the words to their songs. My friend described it as being in a group karaoke session with Weezer just being the band playing the music. Some of the sing-a-longs with the audience was epic, like when they were singing “Perfect Situation” with a lot of the wwoooaahhhh ooohhhh, woooaaahhh ooohhh, woooooaaaaahhhhhhh, woooaaahhhh!

  What’s personally funny to me is that when Weezer started playing “Say it Ain’t So,” I couldn’t help but think of the resurgence in popularity for that song because of it’s inclusion to the video game “Rock Band” (I know I hear that song a lot in Rock Band parties). Speaking of that song, while I was recording it on video with my camera, my batteries died out before the song ended. Say it ain’t so indeed. Thankfully I had another spare set of batteries, that I could only guess whether that would last all the way through the end of Blink182′s set (they did).

  Weezer had a great set list, with I believe was about 15 songs, which includes two cover songs (“War Pig” and “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” by the Clash), and a new song called “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To.” Rivers Cuomo had a great stage presence and a playful personality, that included joking with the audience and even jumping on a trampoline. It was an awesome set, and I wish they could have played longer.

  Psycho Mike from KROQ made an appearance on stage while the crew was setting up Blink182′s stuff. It would have been funny if he actually did an impromptu performance, but all he did was say that Blink was coming up next. Ok.

  By 9:30PM, Blink182 took the stage and ruled the rest of the night. Their stage setup was mostly just some lighting stuff with not much flash; well except from the flashes coming from the strobe lights. Two guys with guitars and a drummer was all it was to get the crowd pumped up. As is the case with this band, along with the rock music, we also expect funny things being said, and we thankfully got that. This was the return of Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker, and Tom Delonge, back together again, the way we want it to be. Blink182 is back, woo hoo!

  

  The crowd consisted of teenagers to people twice that age, which shouldn’t be surprising due to Blink182′s popularity. What was a little bit of a surprise to me however was how much they mostly played their popular songs from their last two albums of the 2000s; with a heavy emphasis on their self-titled release. The crowd ate it up though and were very very enthusiastic to sing loudly along to those songs, seemingly more so than their “older” material. I’m guessing these kids who were ten or more years younger than me, relate to the Blink182 from the 00′s more than the previous decade; which is okay… I guess. How times have changed. They did play some of their popular songs from the ’90s, which even included the song “Carousel” from their first album and even ended their whole set with the song “Dammit” from my most favorite album of theirs; “Dude Ranch.” In the end, those of us who grew up with Blink from their first albums were also happy.
  
  At the encore of the show, Travis Barker did a nice drum solo performance that involved having him and his drum set platform elevated above stage. They raised his platform several feet up in the air, twisted it side to side, and even spun it around. Travis still continued to drum along with no problems. Did I mention Travis is freaking great on the drums? No. Well he is. Travis is incredible on drums.

  Despite some people in the audience clearly still holding a little bit of a grudge against Tom Delonge for breaking up the band in the first place, I think he pretty much won back the audience with his comedy. After being so serious when he was with “Angels & Airwaves,” he is now a funny guy again with the potty humor and the immaturity. He may still have that funny slow-mo walk that he does and his guitar stance is kinda… weird, but Welcome Back Tom! We missed the YOU from Blink182! Tom by the way has improved a lot on his guitar skills (probably due to his time on AVA), with some nice improvisations on the solos to the songs.

  This past night was the Mark, Tom and Travis show indeed. It was really great, was awesome, and was fun times all around. This performance proves that they are indeed legends of rock, and I’m look forward to the future of Blink182.

  * click here for the PHOTOS I took from the show *
  
  * click here for the VIDEOS I took from the show *

  

  • 6:53 am
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