(+44) @ The Roxy September 7, 2006
Tonight was the debut live performance from (+44), the new band featuring Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker of Blink 182. Mark and Travis have been pretty quiet since Blink announced their "indefinite hiatus" back in 2005. Apparently, they sat back and watched their former bandmate, Tom Delonge, fully develop his messiah complex with his band Angels and Airwaves. Now that AvA have released their new album, which, while a pretty decent album, pretty much came and went. It wasn't until last month that Mark and Travis started doing interviews about Blink's breakup and the eventual formation of +44. Now the word is out that Tom Delonge was solely responsible for breaking up Blink because his ego become huge. It's a pretty damn shame. But to be honest, I could kind of see it during the AvA show last May. He just looked like a he had this "Hey everybody, look at me!" attitude. I bet on paper (the record contract), AvA is really just Tom DeLonge and doesn't include Ryan, David or Atom at all. Ryan, David, and Atom are probably just session and touring musicians.
Anyway, back to (+44). (Unconfirmed) Setlist was as follows:
Lycanthrope
Baby, Come On
When Your Heart Stops Beating
Little Death
155
Lillian
Make You Smile
Interlude
Weather Man
No It Isn't
Cliff Diving (or is it "First Sighting"?)
Chapter 13
The show was pretty much a blind performance in that all except for three of the songs were unknown to the audience. No, It Isn't was leaked a year ago and has since been revealed as being about the breakup of Blink 182. It's lyrics include:
Please understand
This isn't just goodbye
This is I cant stand you
This is where the road crashed into the ocean...
...Lets slit our wrists and burn down something beautiful
Kiiick back angry Mark. Ha ha ha ha. Lycanthrope was leaked online at the beginning of the month. And When Your Heart Stops Beating was played on the radio (KROQ) at 3:40pm this afternoon and almost immediately leaked online afterwards. All the other songs were completely unheard of apart from references to them in the recent interviews.
The songs themselves sounded pretty good. The sound in The Roxy was pretty shit and it was kind of hard to make out what Mark or Craig (guitarist) were singing. On almost every song, Mark's mic was off at the beginning so we couldn't hear the first lines. I did catch a few lines here and there. I believe Little Death had the cool line of "The past is only the future with the lights on". On Make You Smile, Travis played some really cool breakbeat drum patterns which I was really impressed with. (I'm sure he's done stuff like that with The Transplants but I don't care for them so I don't know.) The fully arranged version of No It Isn't was pretty damn good too. Most of the songs had sort of an updated 80's new wavey feel to them. Travis played a lot of sixteenth note patterns on his hi-hat.
Mark was in good spirits the whole night. Twice during the show he introduced songs by saying, "This one's a downer. So don't say I didn't warn you." I'm glad he's vocal about all the stuff surrounding Blink unlike Tom, who keeps his mouth shut as if he did nothing wrong.
Overall, the show was really good. They handed out free shirts commemorating this first show to everybody in the club. The front print featured (what looks to be ) the +44 logo and inside the shirt had info about the show. I also picked up a sticker when I left The Roxy. I'd definitely like to see them after the album comes out. Hopefully they'll play a few more small shows before they start doing the obligatory enormo-dome tour.
But the true highlight of the night was seeing Ronnie James "Just a rainbow in the dark!" Dio leaving the Rainbow Bar and Grill. What a great end to the night!