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I was a pretty aggro teenager. Despite my admitted obsession with sappy K-Ci and Jo-Jo-esque nonsense, I was super pissed about everything for no particular reason. I guess that's what being a teenage boy is all about: directionless aggression. Sure, I was a suburban kid with no real issues that crushed mad puss all the time (MOST OF THAT LAST SENTENCE IS TRUE AND DO NOT QUESTION IT), but the roiling mixture of hormones and adrenaline combined with the undignified pushing and prodding from all directions that comes part and parcel with being a teenager drove me to be part Johnny Knoxville and part fat kid from Varsity Blues. This is why I gravitated towards football and the watered-down, whiny ghost of 90's punk. While they seem diametrically opposed on at first glance, football and kid stuff punk were obvious outlets for my aggression in hindsight. Football was a basic, primal release. I wanted to hit stuff, and now I could hit as hard as possible in a controlled setting. Perfect. Whiny 90's punk worked on a mental level. 90's punk rock was just angry and generic enough to not scare me, but aggressive enough to effect my lizard brain into a 'Fuck Yeah' type response. I would obviously learn later that there was nothing aggressive about that music in the grand scheme of things, but it was a good enough placebo at the time to keep me from backyard wrestling or shadow boxing 8 hours a day. Long story short; it kept me from being a bigger twat than what I was.
Goldfinger - 'Mabel'. From the 1996 album 'Goldfinger'.
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Everyone has a first concert, unless you're weird and don't listen to music (which I still hear from people and it still blows my goddamn mind every time I hear it). Some people go to massive $200 arena shows, some go to dirt bag free shows at some youth center, and some still go to a House of Blues show to see a past-their-prime Goldfinger after getting free tickets from their friend Josh. I would be in that third camp.
I first became aware of Goldfinger the way most kids my age did: Tony Hawk Pro Skater. I got a PS1 sampler disc with a large pizza from Pizza Hut that included the first level of Tony Hawk. That demo only had one song, and that was 'Superman'. I must have heard the first 20 seconds of that song 1,000 times after hitting the reset button due to my bad heel flipping skills. This led to me Napstering the fuck out of every Goldfinger song I could find at the time. I was hooked hard, and 'Mabel' quickly became a favorite. It's your typical girl trouble, overly-goofy ska-pop-punk song of the era. If you've heard one you've pretty much heard them all, but that's being a teenage boy in the late 90's for you.
I was incredibly nervous about going to the show. These were PUNK KIDS. They're intense, angry people that would judge me for my lack of TRUE PUNK IDEALS. I was so afraid of what this group of strangers would think about me, that I hid my emergency family cell phone, lest they break it and start lecturing me about Kierkegaard. Obviously, that never happened. I didn't realize that the concert was full of kids like me that proudly pulled out their cell phones during the show. The concert was fine as first concerts go. Lots of fun, safe punk-ish activities: Oi-ing, the band shouting at the people sitting in the balcony, a drunk girl that looked like a low-rent version of Ari Up from The Slits hitting me in the face with her awful dreadlocks. They even did a circle pit, which was nerve racking as I attended with my friend who had cerebral palsy, and he got immediately swept up in it in a violent manner. Thankfully, he was fine and loved the chaos that was ensuing around us. And so did I. It was a really fun show. I'm past my Goldfinger phase in my life, but I still have fond memories of the band to this day. You could certainly do worse for a worse first concert.
BLITZ GIVES THIS VIDEO THREE FAT SUITS OUT OF FIVE.
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SR-71 - 'Right Now'. From the 2000 album 'Now You See Inside'.
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This is one of the most painful examples of how bad pop-ska-punk can really be. These guys are the end result of years of syphoning any and all edge, integrity, and meaning out of the desiccated corpse of punk rock. Their lead singer, Mitch Allan, has the chiseled features and toned physique of a Calvin Klein model, not one of an angsty dude that has it out for the world at large. The band is just a thin veneer of gloss over a big pit of vacuous, generic commercialism.
That all being said, I definitely owned this album, and listened to it quite often. It's like DC Pierson said, they replaced the political anger of punk with relationship anger. Thatcher doesn't suck anymore, Stephanie sucks, and that's a feeling I could get behind. Once again, this furthers my proof that 13 year old boys are the fucking worst.
For their part, SR-71 released two more albums, with one only being released in Japan before falling off, but on that last record was one last fuck you to the world of music. The band released a little song called '1985'. Figuring their time was over, Allan allowed his friends in another awful band, Bowling For Soup, to cover the song and ruin the summer of 2004 for me. Their version actually had Radio Disney edits to make the song appropriate for awful children, so that just shows how much integrity the song had. Allan eventually became a ghost writer for countless vapid musicians, and his legacy continues to blight the cultural landscape to this day. The term 'Gap Punk' has never been more appropriate.
BLITZ GIVES THIS VIDEO ONE GOOFY LOOKING SCOOTER OUT OF FIVE.
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The Offspring - 'Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)'. From the 1998 album 'Americana'.
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One of the most culturally impactful videos of the 90's, 'Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)' was a perfect cultural storm. You had a punk band purposefully appropriating the signifiers of rap culture in a silly way, all in a moderately proven musical commodity backed by a flashy McG video. America was ready for it. I was ready for it. I saw this video everyday 5 times for a year, and I was down. Sexy 'punk rock' and 'rap video' girls dancing over a goofy song? You bet I loved it.
I was the ideal mark for this album, and I listened to it probably 500 times in my life. It was my favorite album for a long time. Looking back, it's hard to see why. I relistened to 'Americana' and there's a lot of filler on that record, even for a goddamn Offspring album. I still kind of like some of those songs. 'Staring at the Sun' is pretty enjoyable, and the album's centerpiece 'Americana' is dumb, but still alright. But, 'Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)' is just not good. The song is just wrong. No one loves a fucking wannabe. Wannabes are fucking annoying assholes who intrude on people's passions and good times. Wannabes are dudes that wear Offspring shirts to an M.D.C. show and complain when they get decked in the mouth. Jesus, these articles are making me hate myself more and more.
Oh, I almost forgot. Fuck McG.
BLITZ GIVES THIS VIDEO ONE LOWRIDE OUT OF FIVE.
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Millencolin - 'Penguins and Polar Bears'. From the 2000 album 'Pennybridge Pioneers'.
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Ok, enough self-loathing for now. Let's focus on something fun. Millencolin were a poppy skate-punk outfit from Sweden. They weren't overly silly and goofy like a Blink 182, they weren't baselessly self-righteous like Green Day would soon become, and most of all they didn't have that whiny tattle-tale vocal style all those fucking awful bands did. This is probably why they hold up the best more than a decade later. I don't think I actually have anything bad to say about Millencolin. They're fun. Wow, it's kind of weird to not bag on one of these songs. So... Umm... Yeah, moving on.
BLITZ GIVES THIS VIDEO FIVE ELEMENTAL POWERS OUT OF FIVE.
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Blink 182 - 'All the Small Things'. From the 1999 album 'Enema of the State'.
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Everyone has a first concert, unless you're weird and don't listen to music (which I still hear from people and it still blows my goddamn mind every time I hear it). Some people go to massive $200 arena shows, some go to dirt bag free shows at some youth center, and some still go to a House of Blues show to see a past-their-prime Goldfinger after getting free tickets from their friend Josh. I would be in that third camp.
I first became aware of Goldfinger the way most kids my age did: Tony Hawk Pro Skater. I got a PS1 sampler disc with a large pizza from Pizza Hut that included the first level of Tony Hawk. That demo only had one song, and that was 'Superman'. I must have heard the first 20 seconds of that song 1,000 times after hitting the reset button due to my bad heel flipping skills. This led to me Napstering the fuck out of every Goldfinger song I could find at the time. I was hooked hard, and 'Mabel' quickly became a favorite. It's your typical girl trouble, overly-goofy ska-pop-punk song of the era. If you've heard one you've pretty much heard them all, but that's being a teenage boy in the late 90's for you.
I was incredibly nervous about going to the show. These were PUNK KIDS. They're intense, angry people that would judge me for my lack of TRUE PUNK IDEALS. I was so afraid of what this group of strangers would think about me, that I hid my emergency family cell phone, lest they break it and start lecturing me about Kierkegaard. Obviously, that never happened. I didn't realize that the concert was full of kids like me that proudly pulled out their cell phones during the show. The concert was fine as first concerts go. Lots of fun, safe punk-ish activities: Oi-ing, the band shouting at the people sitting in the balcony, a drunk girl that looked like a low-rent version of Ari Up from The Slits hitting me in the face with her awful dreadlocks. They even did a circle pit, which was nerve racking as I attended with my friend who had cerebral palsy, and he got immediately swept up in it in a violent manner. Thankfully, he was fine and loved the chaos that was ensuing around us. And so did I. It was a really fun show. I'm past my Goldfinger phase in my life, but I still have fond memories of the band to this day. You could certainly do worse for a worse first concert.
BLITZ GIVES THIS VIDEO THREE FAT SUITS OUT OF FIVE.
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SR-71 - 'Right Now'. From the 2000 album 'Now You See Inside'.
-
-
This is one of the most painful examples of how bad pop-ska-punk can really be. These guys are the end result of years of syphoning any and all edge, integrity, and meaning out of the desiccated corpse of punk rock. Their lead singer, Mitch Allan, has the chiseled features and toned physique of a Calvin Klein model, not one of an angsty dude that has it out for the world at large. The band is just a thin veneer of gloss over a big pit of vacuous, generic commercialism.
That all being said, I definitely owned this album, and listened to it quite often. It's like DC Pierson said, they replaced the political anger of punk with relationship anger. Thatcher doesn't suck anymore, Stephanie sucks, and that's a feeling I could get behind. Once again, this furthers my proof that 13 year old boys are the fucking worst.
For their part, SR-71 released two more albums, with one only being released in Japan before falling off, but on that last record was one last fuck you to the world of music. The band released a little song called '1985'. Figuring their time was over, Allan allowed his friends in another awful band, Bowling For Soup, to cover the song and ruin the summer of 2004 for me. Their version actually had Radio Disney edits to make the song appropriate for awful children, so that just shows how much integrity the song had. Allan eventually became a ghost writer for countless vapid musicians, and his legacy continues to blight the cultural landscape to this day. The term 'Gap Punk' has never been more appropriate.
BLITZ GIVES THIS VIDEO ONE GOOFY LOOKING SCOOTER OUT OF FIVE.
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The Offspring - 'Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)'. From the 1998 album 'Americana'.
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-
One of the most culturally impactful videos of the 90's, 'Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)' was a perfect cultural storm. You had a punk band purposefully appropriating the signifiers of rap culture in a silly way, all in a moderately proven musical commodity backed by a flashy McG video. America was ready for it. I was ready for it. I saw this video everyday 5 times for a year, and I was down. Sexy 'punk rock' and 'rap video' girls dancing over a goofy song? You bet I loved it.
I was the ideal mark for this album, and I listened to it probably 500 times in my life. It was my favorite album for a long time. Looking back, it's hard to see why. I relistened to 'Americana' and there's a lot of filler on that record, even for a goddamn Offspring album. I still kind of like some of those songs. 'Staring at the Sun' is pretty enjoyable, and the album's centerpiece 'Americana' is dumb, but still alright. But, 'Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)' is just not good. The song is just wrong. No one loves a fucking wannabe. Wannabes are fucking annoying assholes who intrude on people's passions and good times. Wannabes are dudes that wear Offspring shirts to an M.D.C. show and complain when they get decked in the mouth. Jesus, these articles are making me hate myself more and more.
Oh, I almost forgot. Fuck McG.
BLITZ GIVES THIS VIDEO ONE LOWRIDE OUT OF FIVE.
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Millencolin - 'Penguins and Polar Bears'. From the 2000 album 'Pennybridge Pioneers'.
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Ok, enough self-loathing for now. Let's focus on something fun. Millencolin were a poppy skate-punk outfit from Sweden. They weren't overly silly and goofy like a Blink 182, they weren't baselessly self-righteous like Green Day would soon become, and most of all they didn't have that whiny tattle-tale vocal style all those fucking awful bands did. This is probably why they hold up the best more than a decade later. I don't think I actually have anything bad to say about Millencolin. They're fun. Wow, it's kind of weird to not bag on one of these songs. So... Umm... Yeah, moving on.
BLITZ GIVES THIS VIDEO FIVE ELEMENTAL POWERS OUT OF FIVE.
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Blink 182 - 'All the Small Things'. From the 1999 album 'Enema of the State'.
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Back to the self-loathing. Blink 182 are in the running for the worst band I loved with a passion. So much has rightly been said about how terrible this band is, and their irrevocable damage to the cultural landscape. The dearth of shitty bands that were birthed from their rise to glory is staggering. The awful side-projects the band members started were equally as unlistenable. There's nothing redeemable about this band, and I think most of the blame for that falls squarely on Tom DeLonge.
DeLonge was the guitarist and split-duty lead vocalist of the band, and was the singer for most of their most famous hits. This is the problem. His voice is the worst kind of petulant whine so common amongst these bands. Mark Hoppus, the other vocalist, has a much less grating voice. I mean, Blink 182 was never going to put out 'Exile on Main Street', no matter the singer. But, GODDAMN. The video also shows a clear lack of self-awareness on their part. These dudes are the Backstreet Boys with more tattoos and a basic concept of musical construction. This video isn't a parody, it's the eventual end result.
The dudes eventually split up to form +44 and Angels & Airwaves. Both were terrible, but Angels & Airwaves (DeLonge's band) claimed that it would be "the best music in generations". It should come as no surprise that this hubris was fueled by an unchecked ego and massive amounts of painkillers. Obviously, the band was trash but the audacity of it all is still unbelievable to this day.
BLITZ GIVES THIS VIDEO ONE LIP RING OUT OF FIVE.
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