Champ182

I just think of any riff/melodic guitar line as a "lead" part in my mind, I think that's part of the confusion haha

Yeah I think he just does both, I've never really thought of whether he was one or the other since they're a 3 piece haha.

I'm confused about this "lead guitar" thing, is it just about semantics? Because of course Tom played lead guitar parts. He had lead parts in almost every single song. Do you only consider someone to be playing lead guitar if there is another guitarist in the band playing rhythm underneath?

Not that I know of, but I'm not positive!

Anybody planning to go? I'm curious to see if they get a Blink Bump on this tour at all. Also the opener Together Pangea is rad.

hahah ohhhh shit, I should've included that in the poll! Use your admin powers to add it if you want

Looking back on the past 3 years with Skiba in the band, are you satisfied? If not, what realistic situation would you have preferred? I know some people are totally stoked with what we've gotten, and some people think the band should call it quits. I'm somewhere inbetween and I just thought it would be funny to think about some different possibilities or "fan fiction" as Ghent and Jar Jar like to say now haha. So do you think they've made the right moves, and if not what do you think would have or could have happened differently?

Whoa I just went back to the very beginning of my posting history and one of my first posts was a classic longwinded explanation of why I liked Up All Night when it had just come out, and you quoted me and said:

Just imagine, there might have been at least a small percentage chance of this being our reality in some other dimension......

Fair enough, I think you're definitely right about if they replaced Tom with someone with a big personality! I can't imagine if they would've brought in some hyper 2010s pop punk dude acting all phony haha that would've been wayyy worse than anything we've seen with this lineup FOR SURE. When Skiba joined I figured his quiet modest vibe would be a great way to contribute to the music while basically letting Mark be the main frontman and leader, I think that would've been a rad mixture even though I'm not a big fan of Skiba's past music.

You could be totally right. I don't know anyone in real life who likes California, but most of my friends who still like Blink are in bands or in the music scene so I think most of them come to it from a similar spot as me, being interested in the writing/production side of things. However, my wife is a huge Blink fan who doesn't care about the behind the scenes stuff as much, and she hates Cali even more than I do haha.

Skiba is the person they hired to re-establish blink with outside help, and to take the place of Tom's songwriting. Do you think that was a mistake since they decided not to use him for those things after all? Not trolling or anything I just think this is an interesting topic. Since Feldmann has basically taken over much of the role that Tom's actual replacement was supposed to have, they almost share that 3rd member of the band spot. Obviously you like the Feldy influence more than you would've liked Skiba's, do you wish they would've just hired Feldmann or someone else instead of Skiba in the first place?

I wonder if he even recorded the guitars, it's been assumed for years that Tom didn't record guitars on multiple Neighborhoods songs so it's not like it's a sacred duty anymore. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Feldmann recorded some or all of them while they were piecing the songs together.

Also "Fuck paradise, let's put up a parking lot" makes way more sense because it lets the Joni Mitchell reference be a Joni Mitchell reference, instead of removing the irony from it and saying "fuck this place, let's put up a parking lot" and making it weird. They probably thought teens wouldn't get the reference.

Those handwritten lyrics are awesome to see! Also I actually like those original Parking Lot lyric ideas more than what they used in the real song haha the theme of "parking lots were fun to hang out in back in the day, life was so simple back then" comes through a lot more clearly when it's simpler like that. I wonder if he made a demo version at all. I still think it would work better in past tense though, just a nitpick if I was in Feldmann's producer chair hahah.