The return of Blink 182

By MIKE HOULAHAN

Not that many multi-million album selling bands make the long trip to New Zealand during the course of a year, let alone make two visits.

However, American punk band Blink 182 is the kind of band which makes its name through clocking up the frequent flyer points. Since their first visit to New Zealand - in January for the Big Day Out - the trio has been around the United States and Europe twice and recorded a live album.

This next tour will wrap up the band's promoting of their most recent and easily most successful album, Enema Of The State.

It's a tour they feel they owed the Southern Hemisphere, which only got to see an hour or so of Blink-mania in Auckland in January. The length of a slot on the Big Day Out affords few bands the chance to play their full set - Blink 182 didn't even get to play all of their abbreviated set.

On the evidence of the sheer number of Blink 182 T-shirts worn, many in the audience had come to see them.

As soon as their heroes hit the stage they surged forward and, as the band struck up, began furiously slam dancing. The end result was chaos, with the show's security team dragging several people out of the front-row crush. Blink 182 had to stop their set and leave the stage so order could be restored.

"It was crazy," Mark Hoppus, one of Blink 182's two singer-songwriters, recalls.

"The kids were going off and going crazy, so we did have to stop it a couple of times. It will be good to have a show which will hopefully be a little less crazy and a lot safer for the kids.

"It's pretty much like that all the time. Kids do go crazy at shows, and sometimes people fall down and get hurt. For some reason we get a lot of people coming to our shows who haven't been to a show before, and they don't really know what to expect. Because of that they can sometimes make things worse than they really are."

The other overwhelming impression of that set was how young the fans were. Most Blink T-shirt-wearers were teenagers, and many looked even younger than that.

Hoppus is quick to agree his band has a young fan base, and is proud of the fact Blink 182 is a way to introduce people to music.

He's even prouder of the fact the band makes music with a message that their fans can relate to - Blink 182 is poppy punk, but they don't have a lot of time for pop music.

"It's a huge compliment for us that a lot of people have sent us letters and e-mails, saying, 'I was never into punk rock before and then I started listening to you guys and got into NO FX and Bad Religion and all those other bands'," Hoppus says.

"It's rad for us to play that sort of role in people's lives. We feel honoured.

"Everything goes in cycles. When we were growing up bands that had a really strong influence on us were bands like the Descendants. That was back in 82 to 89, or something like that. I think we're a doorway band for a lot of kids who are just starting to get into the punk rock scene. I mean, no one comes out of the womb with a mohawk and with a Crass T-shirt on."

They can be persuaded to start looking the part though, and the music video is one of the main methods Blink 182 have employed to catch their audience's attention.

For What's My Age Again?, the first single from Enema of the State, a carefully pixilated band ran naked through the streets of San Diego. They followed that tasteful effort with All The Small Things, the video for which was a send-up of various promo clips by pop superstars Backstreet Boys.

"We've been lucky to have quite a few good videos come out, and that has probably pushed us a lot further than anything else. Having a video on MTV is the equivalent of having a song played on the equivalent of one million radios simultaneously," says Hoppus.

So, have Backstreet Boys been on the phone? "No, not really," Hoppus answers coyly.

"Pop music was so popular then and still is right now. We just figured that it needed to be made fun of a little bit."

The band's latest single, Adam's Song, enters much graver territory. Despite the jokey videos, Blink 182's lyrics tend to deal with serious subjects. The Hoppus-penned song is a matter-of-fact retelling of an e-mail written by someone who committed suicide.

"The subject matter we write about is serious, but we take everything with a pinch of salt and a sense of humour, and I think the kids can appreciate that," Hoppus says.

The group's live album, featuring songs recorded at dates in Los Angeles and San Francisco earlier this year, is due for release soon. After taking Christmas off, Blink 182 are scheduled to head back into the studio in January.

When they do, Hoppus hopes the band won't feel any pressure to perform after the chart-topping Enema Of The State.

"When we recorded Enema people were asking us if we felt any pressure because [previous album] Dude Ranch had gone gold in the United States," he says.

"If the next record comes out and we only sell half as many copies, I'll still be stoked that I get to do what I do, and it will still be more records than I ever dreamed of selling. I'll just try to write the best songs I can, we'll tour as hard as we can and work as hard as we can, and if people like it, great, and if they don't, too bad."

* Blink 182 performs at Auckland's Mt Smart Supertop on November 4 with Zed and Tadpole.