blink-182 was a Southern-Californian pop-punk band that was formed in 1992 by Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Scott Raynor in the northern San Diego suburb of Poway, California.
The members of the band were Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and drummer Travis Barker. The group is known for playing catchy melodies, as well as their satirical toilet humour. Known as a band that plays up-tempo songs with prominent major-chord harmonies, often digitally mixed, to provide a much cleaner sound than typical punk/rock recordings generally employing distortion and ragged analogue mixes to achieve the opposite effect. The lyrical content of their songs, especially prior to their last album, is often humorous and uplifting. Although the band is labelled as Blink 182 on albums prior to Raynor’s departure, the specific syntax for the band’s current name is blink-182, as opposed to Blink-182 or their former name, blink. The numbers 182 were added to the band’s name to prevent a copyright conflict with another established, albeit lesser known, musical group of the same name.

Flyswatter / Buddha / Cheshire Cat

Towards May, 1993 blink realised that a demo tape known as Flyswatter , recorded using a boom box in Raynor’s bedroom, was quite shit, which explains the poor sound quality. In an interview, Hoppus said that around eighty copies had originally been produced. Before the end of the year, the band released another demo tape known as Buddha . Around 1,000 copies of this were produced by Kung Fu Records. In early 1994, blink released their first full-length album, Cheshire Cat , released on Grilled Cheese Records. The album contained many new versions of songs that had appeared on the Buddha demo. Shortly after the release of Cheshire Cat, blink was threatened with legal action by a techno band in Ireland of the same name. In order to avoid a lengthy lawsuit, blink added the numbers 182 to the end of their name. Although there are rumours as to why these numbers were chosen (for example, that it is the number of times Al Pacino utters the word “fuck” in Scarface , that they represent Hoppus’ ideal weight, or the position in the alphabet of the letters R and B, referring to the northern San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo, making the meaning blink [possibly, fuck ] RB.), all the band members but one have made it clear that the numbers were picked at random. In one interview, Travis stated that the “182″ was the U.S. radio codeword meaning ‘homicide’ (apparently confusing “182″, the radio codeword for conspiracy, for “187″). During the pop punk boom of the 1990s, blink-182 were signed by MCA which later became Geffen Records which they stayed with.

Dude Ranch

After moving to Encinitas, California, the band recorded the album Dude Ranch with producer Mark Trombino. The album was a hit, and two singles from it (”Josie” and “Dammit”) rose to the top of the U.S. airplay charts. In 1998, the band met a slight setback. Raynor, who had a serious drinking problem at the time, was reportedly asked to leave the band and go into rehab, although there are also reports that he decided to leave to go to college. Raynor claims he agreed to go into drug rehab, but the rest of the band kicked him out over the phone because they didn’t believe that he would do it. Whatever the explanation, he left midway through a U.S. tour. He was replaced by Travis Barker, who had been playing with support band The Aquabats. It is widely believed that the single “Man Overboard” on the band’s live album speaks directly to Raynor’s rift with Mark and Tom. Although Mark has stated, on the radio show “Loveline”, that the song had nothing to do with the break up between them.

Enema of the State and The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show: The Enema Strikes Back

In 1999 the album Enema of the State was released. On the album the band hired notorious Rancid and The Offspring producer Jerry Finn, who had produced every album since. The CD was successful, propelling the band to pop punk fame, and gaining a large amount of airtime on MTV and Total Request Live (TRL). This was largely due to the commercial success of the songs “What’s My Age Again?”,which was a song dedicated to the group’s very close friend Matthew Purcell, “Adam’s Song”, and “All the Small Things”; and particularly to the infamous music video for “What’s My Age Again” which featured the band streaking. They sold seven and a half million copies of the album worldwide, which made it their best-selling album up to that point. The sound on Enema of the State was rooted in the same genre as earlier punk-rock bands such as NOFX, Green Day, and The Offspring, but it was more accessible to the mainstream, with a punky-feel. Many original fans felt that the band had strayed from their punk rock roots.
blink-182’s only live album, The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show: The Enema Strikes Back was released in 2000. It is no longer in print, and it is sought after by collectors. The songs are from the group’s first three albums: Cheshire Cat, Dude Ranch, and Enema of the State. The album also includes one new song, “Man Overboard,” as well as a few joke songs.

Take off Your Pants and Jacket

2001 saw blink-182 continue their commercial success, recording Take off Your Pants and Jacket (the strange title was a punning reference to masturbation), which followed the same basic formula of “Enema of the State”. In 2001, blink-182 appeared on the cover of CosmoGirl , and won a Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award .
In 2002, bands such as Good Charlotte, New Found Glory, and Simple Plan began following the same route as blink-182, marking the expansion of the pop-punk genre. Mark Hoppus participated in the making of Simple Plan’s debut album, No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls .
When the CD first came out, there were several versions with different bonus tracks. There were three versions, “Take off,” “Pants,” and “Jacket,” each of which indicated by a different sticker on the CD. The actual CD had pictures of a red plane, yellow pants, or a green jacket. Each version had two different bonus tracks. The tracks were “Fuck a Dog”, “Mothers Day” and “When You Fucked Grandpa”, three joke songs, and the serious were “Time to Break Up”, “Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over” and “What Went Wrong”. Since there were only two bonus tracks on each of the three versions, some long term fans wanted every one. Those bonus tracks were only out for a limited time, about a month or so. After that month they only sold “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket: without any bonus tracks and with all three logos on the actual CD itself.

Untitled (blink-182)

After taking some time off in 2002, following the record tour, the band released their fifth blink-182 (album) on November 18, 2003. Described as a self-meditation on romantic decay, the album featured the hit singles “Feeling This” (previously named “Action”), “I Miss You”, “Down”, and the 1980s-influenced “Always”. Travis Barker has confirmed that the band left the album untitled (rather than self-titled) to represent a new blink-182. It showcased a style of music deeper than anything blink-182 had done previously, but still got a good deal of play on pop stations and MTV. Critics have deemed their sound similar to that of The Police and U2, although members of the band claim they took most of their influence from The Cure, whose front man Robert Smith had appeared on “All of This”. Listeners called the riffs heavier and the lyrics more profound. The lyrical content of their songs is often humorous and uplifting. A tour with No Doubt in the summer of 2004 was very successful. In many ways it also helped blink-182 break away from the common pop punk genre, dismissing predictable similarities that could be seen from band to band.

Greatest Hits

In the wake of the hiatus, Geffen Records released blink-182’s “Greatest Hits”. From Cheshire Cat to the untitled album, the album chronologically holds the band, most famous, and most important songs in their career, including the two previously unreleased tracks “Not Now” (from the European version of the untitled album) and “Another Girl Another Planet” (a cover song originally by The Only Ones, recorded for its use as the theme song to reality show Meet the Barkers). The album immediately climbed to the top of the chart and reached #6 on the United States top selling records.