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Blink 182 Show Review 8-21-09

By: Ashley Pagano

After a long and what seemed like a never ending hiatus, Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis Barker, have reunited to bring back the punk rock band we all know and love known as Blink 182. Now the group is back on the highly anticipated tour playing their music and making fans go crazy. I was lucky enough to get tickets to the show at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center where Blink 182 performed for the huge crowd of screaming fans who have missed them.

Chester French played a good show, but not many people in the audience were familiar with who they were or the music they played. I took a listen to some of their music before I went to the show, just to see what they were like, and I wasn’t too impressed, but they were much better live than I expected. They were pretty interesting to listen to, and it was unfortunate that they couldn’t hold everyone elses attention.

Panic At The Disco played next. The Panic fans attending the show were anxious to see how the band would be after the departure of Ryan Ross (guitar and vocals) and Jon Walker (bass). For those who liked Panic before Pretty Odd was released, they enjoyed this set. The band played many of their old songs and only played the singles off Pretty Odd. They played their new single “New Perspective”. Most notably from the performance is how well lead singer Brendon Urie presents himself.

The last band that played before the long awaited Blink-182 performance was Fall Out Boy. It was easy to tell who was there to see Fall Out Boy and who wasn’t, because people were either really into them and screaming over bassist Pete Wentz or ignoring the fact that they were playing completely. Then when they played a few familiar notes, everyone looked over, and they began to play Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and the crowd was all singing along.

After Panic At The Disco and Fall Out Boy left the stage, the impatient crowd screamed when Blink-182 came on stage opening with the song “Dumpweed” as everyone jumped and bobbed their heads to the beat. The audience really fed off of the bands energy, screaming and head banging to their favorite upbeat rock songs, and waving their lighters and cell phones in the air to the slower songs. They played everyone’s favorites like “Stay Together For The Kids”, “I Miss You”, “First Date”, and “Feeling This”.

Travis Barker blew everyone away when, the drumming god, played a complete song by himself with incredible drumming. As if that wasn’t jaw dropping enough, the crowd was astounded when the part of the stage that Travis was on arose into the air, and began rotating and turning in different directions, until he was almost playing upside down, and still continued to play difficult drum solos. I was amazed at the talent.

The band, after leaving the stage, came back for a much expected encore, closing their performance with “Dammit”, and older song that the dedicated fans knew word for word and left the stage leaving the crowd in awe.

Blink 182 put on an remarkable performance full of energy and excitement. Tom would continue to change the some of the lyrics in the songs spontaneously as he sang, making little dirty jokes, and amusing the audience. Travis announced “we used to play music together and we decided we’re going to play music together again,” that crowd was full of excitement. It’s only a matter of time before the band gives us more incredible music to listen to and we’ll be waiting.