Blink 182 – In session at The BBC – 2000 – BBC Radio 1 –
Jumping into Hump Day with a West Coast band doing a BBC session in 2000. Blink 182 are from Poway California, a little over 2 hour drive from L.A. to San Diego. They got started in 1992 and have been major influences in the Pop-Punk scene of the late 1990s. Originally called Blink, they had to add the 182 to prevent a lawsuit from an Irish band of the same name.
Blink-182 is considered a key group in the development of pop punk; the band’s combination of pop music melodies with fast-paced punk rock featured a more radio-friendly accessibility than prior bands. The trio has sold over thirteen million albums in the United States, and over 50 million albums worldwide. In 2011, The New York Times asserted, “no punk band of the 1990s has been more influential than Blink-182,” and even as the band receded after its 2005 split, “its sound and style could be heard in the muscular pop punk of Fall Out Boy or in the current wave of high-gloss Warped Tour punk bands, like All Time Low and The Maine.”
This session comes between the releases Enema Of The State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. Not exactly embraced by the press, Blink 182 have nonetheless been pivotal influences in 90s Punk, very much in the Green Day mould. The band never received particularly glowing reviews for its releases, with many reviewers dismissing them as a joke act based on the humorous slant of its music videos. British publication NME was particularly critical of the trio, begging them to “fuck right off,” and comparing them to “that sanitied, castrated, shrink-wrapped ‘new wave’ crap that the major US record companies pumped out circa 1981 in their belated attempt to jump on the ‘punk’ bandwagon.” Nevertheless, subsequent reviews of the band’s discography have been more positive. Andy Greenwald of Blender wrote, “the quick transformation from nudists to near geniuses is down-right astonishing.” James Montgomery of MTV called Blink-182 one of the “most influential bands of the past 20 years,” writing, “despite their maturation, Blink never took themselves particularly seriously, which was another reason they were so accessible.”
So if you’ve missed them the first time around (they called it quits in 2005 and then got back together in 2009), here’s a chance to hear with one of the pivotal 90s punk bands were doing at the time.
