Fans were excited to see Blink-182’s “One More Time…”, the name of the Californian punk trio’s latest tour.
And they were even happier that the group’s concert on Monday night, August 12, at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena was significantly different from last time.
In fact, it was just 15 months ago when Blink brought the 2023/2024 World Tour to the arena. On Monday, however, things were different: While last year’s performance celebrated the return of guitarist Tom DeLonge after a sometimes bitter absence of almost eight years, this time Blink is celebrating the new album that gives the tour its name and debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and many other charts last October.
Besides a number of new songs – the group had only debuted the One More Time… track “Edging” last year – the biggest difference was the staging. Blink played on a wraparound set that allowed for 360-degree viewing, including a standing area that surrounded it. Movable platforms rotated DeLonge and bassist Mark Hoppus’s equipment around the perimeter, changing the front of the stage several times during the 95-minute show. Travis Barker’s drum kit also rotated and was lifted into the air for three songs during the show.
The production also featured plenty of special effects: lavish displays of pyrotechnics, fire, smoke and lasers; a moving lighting rig, including three saucer-shaped capsules that appeared during “Aliens Exist”; and four large video screens that mixed live footage with their own palette of effects and animations.
At the heart of it all, though, was the trio’s unrepentant, irreverent attitude. It may not be as gleefully childish as it was when Blink broke through 25 years ago — DeLonge and Barker are now 48 and Hoppus, ??, has survived cancer — but the band is still far from stuffy. DeLonge and Hoppus in particular performed a good-cop/bad-cop number, with the latter apologizing for the former’s often inappropriate comments throughout the evening. When a joke didn’t land, Hoppus pointed out to his bandmate that “Detroit sets a high bar for what they think is… funny. It’s not St. Louis.”
And DeLonge had plenty of fresh, self-indulgent material to draw from on Monday. It was Blink’s first show since canceling two dates (including, ironically, one in St. Louis) due to a virus the guitarist caught. Wearing a San Diego Padres cap, he was clearly still suffering and mentioned his illness throughout the concert. “I caught the worst STD. I had to cancel shows a few days ago,” DeLonge joked at one point, telling the crowd of more than 18,000 that “you guys help me. When I say ‘Sing!’ it means I can’t… sing it.”
“I have so much snot!” he later explained. “I have tissues. I have gum. I have three drinks. I have this spray…” At one point, Hoppus pulled out a pack of Kleenex for DeLonge and told him, “You’re thinking about blowing your nose, I’m thinking about giving your father a blow job.”
There were other gags too. Hoppus rewarded a fan in the front row who had brought a small hobby horse to the show with one of his bass guitars. And there were moments of typical Blink swagger: “It’s a big responsibility to be so (expletive) good,” Hoppus explained at one point. He later described the group as “the greatest band that ever walked the earth!”
The music, mind you, was hardly an afterthought. The five-track set of the more mature and thoughtful “One More Time…” and the unreleased “Can’t Go Back” complemented the likes of “Feeling This,” “The Rock Show,” “What’s My Age Again?” and “All the Small Things” without making the older tracks sound dated. The group also touched on DeLonge’s solo project Box Car Racer (“There Is”) and “When Your Heart Stops Beating” by +44, a band Hoppus and Barker formed during one of Blink’s hiatuses. The trio added a bit of the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” on “First Date” and TLC’s “No Scrubs” on “Dammit,” and brought “M+M’s” back into the set for the first time in eight years.
Whether or not Hoppus’ assessment of Blink’s superiority is accurate is in the eye and ear of the beholder. But on Monday, as the confetti flew and the Fourth of July finale fireworks went off during “Dammit,” it seemed worthy of at least that consideration.
