If you were in middle/high school during the early aughts it was basically impossible to avoid Blink-182. They were the most influential pop punk band in history at a time when pop punk was absolutely everywhere, looked the part with the spiked blond hair and Venice Beach skater garb, and possessed a real talent for marketing that got them heavy rotation on MTV’s Total Request Live with Carson Daly off the back of classic music videos that featured them spoofing prominent boy bands of the era (“All The Small Things”) and humorously running around naked on the streets of Los Angeles (“What’s My Age Again?”). Anyone in my age group can vividly remember those scenes as if they were yesterday– they’re burned into our collective consciousness.
Blink was (still is) iconic and Enema of the State is the album that cemented them as such.
There’s a hundred reasons to love Blink-182, from their nursery-rhyme esque pop melodies to their snarky lyrics to their lead singing duo (“a pop punk Beatles!” obviously), but the two highlights from Enema of the State for me have always been the drumming of Travis Barker and the guitar/bass tones from Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus.
Barker goes without saying really. He’s the GOAT punk drummer and after his inclusion into Blink-182 following the success of Dude Ranch (shoutout to Scott Raynor) it put the band into a completely different stratosphere. You can hear his influence throughout the entire record in the different syncopation and grooves he brings to the band that changes relatively simple chord arrangements into something far greater than the sum of its collective parts. In other words, Blink-182 finally had a drummer who was a collaborator in the songwriting process vs. one who cranked out tempos in double time. His feel behind the kit is just unparalleled. One thing that blew my mind when reading about the making of Enema is that Barker (who technically was just a hired musician for this album as he hadn’t officially been brought into the band yet) finished recording the vast majority of his parts in eight hours. That shouldn’t be a thing, but it totally is.
One of my favorite examples of Barker’s brilliance is on “Dumpweed” (which on a related note is the best opening riff to a pop punk album of all-time). The way he builds into the first chorus from 0:38-0:48 (and finishes it with a f***ing ride cymbal ping no less) is a masterclass in building tension and energy before a massive chorus.
And then there are the guitar and bass tones. Enema of the State‘s guitar tones are world-class and much of it should be credited to the late producer Jerry Finn. Finn is basically the unsung hero of the late 90’s punk genre– he produced Green Day’s Dookie and Rancid’s ...And Out Come the Wolves— and is effectively the #1 reason those albums got so huge. The guitar tone on Dookie, while wildly different than Enema of the State, is similar in its influence– they’re considered the gold standard for punk rock. The punchiness and warmth and dynamics amidst all the distorted is simply timeless and sounds just as great today as it did 25 years ago. Finn was able to pull this tone out in a relatively unique way (at least at the time) by running the guitar through two pieces of hardware– a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier on the dirty channel for the fat low ends + midrange, and then a Marshall JCM900 on the clean channel to add clarity in the upper ends, playing a Gibson Les Paul with Invader pickups on the bridge pickup to give the whole thing a ton of bite. To put more simply, this is the reason why Tom’s tone sounds so damn massive throughout the album– he’s basically getting a ton of drive and clarity all at the same time. And a huge part of that is due to the late, great Jerry Finn.
A final note– tonight will be the first time in over 20 years I’ll be seeing Blink live, and doing it with two of my former band mates from my high school garage band The Days of Stillness, who definitely wanted to be Blink-182 at one point. All coming full circle.
Standout Songs: “Dumpweed”, “What’s My Age Again?”, “Wendy Clear”, “Mutt”
