Blink-182 Brings Sophomoric Sonnets To Indiana

The California pop-punkers returned to Indy with support from Alkaline Trio and Drug Church at Ruoff Music Center on Wednesday September 17th. Read more about the big rock show with review and photos from shop co-owner Andy Skinner.

Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 performing live at Ruoff Music Center on the Missionary Impossible Tour.

Blink-182 are just... dumb. I mean it in the best way possible, because perhaps the punkest thing anyone could be is just unapologetically themselves. They know they are dumb, in a sophomoric and immature way, and they have zero desire to come off as anything other than exactly that. Hilariously so. In spite of these antics and dick and fart jokes to 20,000 people at a time they always will be the smartest ones in the room, because their brand of lyrical humor and between-song banter about the futility of trying to cause a female orgasm is simply a 30-year-old running gag pointing out the absurdity of the human condition. So what if Blink-182 are immature? Their point is basically, who cares / this is fun / everything is absurd / let's pile on the absurdity.

And that basically brings us to Wednesday night in Indiana on their 'Missionary Impossible Tour' with support from brothers-in-arms Alkaline Trio and post-hardcore diehards Drug Church. Most importantly, if there is one thing to take away from this review it would be this band is reliable. A ton of people showed up to hear the hits, laugh at the jokes, and not take any of it too seriously and these three dudes delivered. There is no reason to overthink it, because they sure didn't.

Albany, New York's Drug Church opened the concert with 30 minutes of the sardonic almost-hardcore they are known for (these guys have five full-length LPs and and a handful of EPs since 2011, they aren't new here) for an appreciative audience. It was ...weird... to see them playing in such a massive venue after only seeing them play at small all-ages rooms like The Hoosier Dome and The Hi-Fi, but I was there for it. I'm happy for the crowd that they were possibly hearing music like that for the first time, and I'm happy for Drug Church to get the recognition and co-sign of being picked to open this tour for such a popular headliner.

Drug Church

I can't say anything on behalf of the folks in the back, but up in the photo pit these guys ripped. They gave the crowd their 30 minutes of music and were truly pumped about the way more than a few in the audience that were also stoked they were in Noblesville. Also, contrary to a long historical evidence that headliners normally only give the openers a small percentage of the master volume, my 12-year-old out in the lawn will be the first to tell you they were freaking loud. My dude apparently had just sat down on a lawn blanket and found a good YouTube video to zone out with when the first note from Drug Church ripped out and pretty much the entire section watched his soul leave his body at that very moment. So, yeah, great pick to open the show. They were great, and nobody ever came through to turn them down.

Sandwiched between an East Coast hardcore band and a West Coast pop-punk band was Chicago's Alkaline Trio to fill out the bill. One time I heard them described as a band that sings "love-fueled drinking songs and drinking-fueled love songs," and I must agree that their brand of pop-punk and alternative rock is 3-chord-punk similar to Blink-182, just without as much poop and boobie jokes. Maybe all that booze makes these three take themselves a bit more seriously than the headliner, but I also have to admit, all these decades of boozing has not been kind to the voices of Alkaline Trio's Matt & Dan. Same songs, same love and drunks, but shoot - their voices were pretty rough.

Alkaline Trio

The stage set up was neat - I would have been hard to improve the lighting and equipment on a band playing first-support, so kudos to the set designer for making sure that they looked killer as the sun set on Ruoff Music Center. Interestingly enough for those not up on your Blink drama, over the past many years Alkaline Trio and Blink-182 and their side projects have shared members, most recently Matt Skiba of Alk3 filling in for Blink's Tom DeLonge from 2015-2020, and the newest drummer of Alk3 Atom Willard coming from DeLonge's side project Angels & Airwaves. Let's just say these two bands know each other quite well.

In any case, their 45-minute set was heavy on the lights and fog, a killer lineup of songs (most impressive being 'Blue Carolina' sung by Dan Andriano), but unfortunately they just never seemed able to shake off the raspiness singers get from not being warmed up. A minor disappointment of an otherwise perfect rock event.

Blink 182

Speaking of set design, Blink 182's pro deserves a major award. How do you make a giant amphitheater stage at one of the world's biggest outdoor fixed venues feel intimate? They absolutely nailed it with an angled triptych backdrop set built to make it look like they were in a fabulously graffiti'd basement, alleyway, or at a gentrified CBGB's without making it look like a cheap do-up. The low-slung canned lights over the stage setup really brought the feeling of being in a small room with the band come to life, which was a strange feeling because you KNOW you're there with tens of thousands of fans, but it felt intimate. Well done people.

Blink ripped through 21 songs over the next hour-and-a-half, across their entire career and including a brilliant cover of Descendents' 'Hope' thrown in for good measure. Once again, sure, these guys are dumb. But reliably so - the neverending jokes about sexuality, pooping, drugs, prank calls were plentiful (and these are just the song lyrics, the monologues between hits were even more cringe) and everyone was happy for it. The band is absurd, and that's why they are loved, because not everything needs to be taken seriously, and they are dependably unserious. What a fun night.

You can find music by Blink-182 for sale from Indy CD & Vinyl HERE.

You can find music by Alkaline Trio for sale from Indy CD & Vinyl HERE.

You can find music by Drug Church for sale from Indy CD & Vinyl HERE.

Blink-182 Brings Sophomoric Sonnets To Indiana by Andy Skinner.

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