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The Tom Delonge Thread


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1 minute ago, Kevin. said:

yeah, that's why i asked in the first place. 

I also would love to hear what Tom has pioneered... Only reason I can see a documentary from Ernie ball is because he's used their strings for years.. I'm a 30yr old man with 2 kids and a wife. We both have decent jobs and a house and enjoy life to the fullest...  I've played guitar for years never went big obviously.. But I can HONESTLY say I know for a fact that I can not only play better guitar but NOW days even come up with more original shit then he does. If they're going to do a documentary on tom or even blink itself it should be about how they released a certain style of music/mtv era shit that blew them into starlight.

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7 minutes ago, BlinkAngels182 said:

I also would love to hear what Tom has pioneered... Only reason I can see a documentary from Ernie ball is because he's used their strings for years.. I'm a 30yr old man with 2 kids and a wife. We both have decent jobs and a house and enjoy life to the fullest...  I've played guitar for years never went big obviously.. But I can HONESTLY say I know for a fact that I can not only play better guitar but NOW days even come up with more original shit then he does. If they're going to do a documentary on tom or even blink itself it should be about how they released a certain style of music/mtv era shit that blew them into starlight.

exactly. there has never been a moment during any tom delonge song when i have said "wow, this changed everything. guitar tone never sounded the same after this." even his most experimental work on the Untitled album was just crafted after what Robert Smith was using in the 80s. and everything he did with AVA is just dog shit.

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7 minutes ago, Kevin. said:

exactly. there has never been a moment during any tom delonge song when i have said "wow, this changed everything. guitar tone never sounded the same after this." even his most experimental work on the Untitled album was just crafted after what Robert Smith was using in the 80s. and everything he did with AVA is just dog shit.

AVA is king.

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10 minutes ago, Kevin. said:

exactly. there has never been a moment during any tom delonge song when i have said "wow, this changed everything. guitar tone never sounded the same after this." even his most experimental work on the Untitled album was just crafted after what Robert Smith was using in the 80s. and everything he did with AVA is just dog shit.

Agree. Accept my wife did insist we after our kiss and our ceremony that we walk back down in the church infront of everyone while "the gift" played.. Which to me is the only AVA song with any significant meaning to me now days simply because of that lol.

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7 minutes ago, BlinkAngels182 said:

Agree. Accept my wife did insist we after our kiss and our ceremony that we walk back down in the church infront of everyone while "the gift" played.. Which to me is the only AVA song with any significant meaning to me now days simply because of that lol.

no offense, but i would have been like

giphy.gif

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I think Tom was a pretty influential guitarist, at least for certain players.

He had a distinct style: punchy, warm bar chords; simple, memorable riffs that carried songs - some of which he didn't even sing (like "What's My Age Again?" or "Adam's Song"); consistent high-note melodies with ascending/descending bass notes (all over the place, including the aforementioned two songs, and to this day, a staple of the majority of his songs - that's honestly his major trick if there is one, and I think it works brilliantly); the propensity to hang on a single note/octave while Mark's bass notes moved around ("Every Time I Look For You," for instance). It all had the effect of being much dronier, catchier and prettier than many other punk guitarists - especially in the mainstream/radio world. A lot of his tricks he built upon from the influence of Bad Religion, Dag Nasty and others, to be fair. But he wrapped every stylistic thing he liked into a stew of key elements that really made his playing stick with you. And it stood out from Green Day, No Doubt, or other popular punkish bands of the day. You could always tell it was Tom playing, and that's half the battle.

While less important, at least for some, his aesthetic was influential too. He had bright, surfy, fun greens, blues and yellows and sparkly pearloid pickguards. A whole lot of young pop-punk people growing up in that time period wanted their guitars to look and sound just like Tom's.

Also, just having a Stratocaster with a lone humbucker and one single volume knob (no tone knobs) was a new thing at the time - again, at least in the mainstream world. Jerry Cantrell did something sort of similar but he didn't popularize or flaunt it nearly as much. And Cantrell used other guitars too. Tom's axe was absurdly simple: you plugged in and played. No one had really seen anything quite like it.

No matter what you think of the playing, he had a distinct, recognizable and influential style. No doubt about it.

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2 minutes ago, Kevin. said:

no offense, but i would have been like

giphy.gif

The gift is like the worst AVA song to me. Honestly I don't want anything from ava or blink near my wedding, that music just doesn't fit the atmosphere in my eyes. But as long as you two enjoyed it because that's all that matters on someone's wedding day.

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9 minutes ago, Kevin. said:

no offense, but i would have been like

giphy.gif

LOL!!! I was..I hate to be that guy... But she's been a dam good woman she's my high school sweet heart.. And to be completely honest I mainly just wanted to get the day over with hahaha! But on a better note she like myself has always been big into blink and we both did jump on the Ava band wagon..  But I'm proud to say she herself even thinks tom is a disrepecf lying prick.. Also she uses my iPad on these boards.. Never posts but lurks.. And I've been saying for a couple years I want to put her perfect breast in the NSFW forum.... 

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1 hour ago, Clarke said:

 

Quote

To start off with what he has pioneered the most, Tom found a way early on to "fill out" the trio aspect of blink-182. Many of his guitar riffs have a catchy part that repeats, with usually one root note that typically changes (acting as a chord of some sort). Examples: Dammit, Going Away to College, What's My Age Again, Touchdown Boy, Always, Everything's Magic, you get the idea. Tom has openly said that this is the secret to pop. Often times the album track will have a rhythm guitar that goes with the root note of these riffs. Study how Tom is able to convert the album versions to live performances. His ability to have a punchy riff with the illusion of another guitar is phenomenal.

The intro riffs were a staple of pop punk WEEEEELLLL before Tom broke the scene ... bands like Screeching Weasel, The Queers, Mr. T Experience, Operation Ivy, Vindictives, Angry Samoans .... etc. were doing it way before and better than Tom ever did.

1 hour ago, Clarke said:
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Next (on a lighter note), he has made use of letting notes ring out while only changing one or a few notes typically. Take a look at "There Is". He's basically playing the B power chord over the course of verses and choruses, while only changing one note. It sounds as if two guitarists are playing at the same time. Another version of this is how he lets a string ring out while playing octaves on top of it. For example, in the chorus and intro of "Not Now", he lets the D-string ring while playing octaves. In "All of This", he lets the A-string ring out while playing octaves. "And I" is another. Letting a note ring out (that is the key note of the song) does wonders when you are the only guitarist.

Again, other bands ... NoFX, Lagwagon, Ten Foot Pole ... etc, did it first and better.

1 hour ago, Clarke said:
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I can go into more detail regarding guitar really. But why bother. If you're not convinced at this point, you're probably never going to be able to.

 

Looking at this from a pop perspective also, Enema of the State changed the game for pop rock, especially in the alternative pop world of music. Songs just didn't sound like All the Small Things, and I'm talking about both content and sound. Jerry Fin also played a role in this as well. Bands in blink's scene at the time typically didn't have that polished mainstream sound that the album thrived on. Enema was one of Tom's most iconic pieces of work, followed by self-titled of course.

 

 

I can agree with this but I would argue that it changed the game for worse, not better ... Blink pulled this sound off ... the multitude of bands that followed didn't and it effectively killed the scene.

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24 minutes ago, Clarke said:

 

 

I agree with this last part.

 

I also have had a rant built up about "pop punk". This, in my opinion, is about to piss off a lot of people, but here we go:

 

Blink came about and many people in the music world deemed this new sound to be "pop punk". Okay, cool right? It's pretty awesome to be credited with influencing a genre. BUT then New Found Glory and other bands came about, and they openly labeled themselves as "pop punk" too. And then a wave of bands followed these New Found Glory bands and labeled themselves as "pop punk" as well. Weird, especially since they don't sound like blink it all. Reality shows that the bands that copy New Found Glory just absolutely suck. They're terrible.

 

The worst part about it, is that blink doesn't even sound like New Found Glory or those other bands. Those bands in a sense stole "pop punk" and then killed the scene. This is why I don't consider blink to be "pop punk". I mean if Man Overboard (the band) is pop punk, no way in hell is blink pop punk. This is mostly the reason why I hate New Found Glory. They took something great and then killed it. If NFG didn't market themselves as blink's genre, I wouldn't hate them so much.

 

I honestly now would just consider blink to be pop songs disguised as alternative/punk rock songs. It's pretty obvious that when these songs are broken down to their acoustic roots, they aren't punk at all.

I agree with you haha.

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Interesting. I honestly think of NFG and blink as being the same type of music. I favor blink, obviously, but I consider both pop-punk. I think NFG's self-titled record and Enema of the state are definitely in the same ballpark. Once again, I favor Enema, but I still think of them as the same kind of music.

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Clarke. goddammit Clarke. the levels of wrong you are... jesus christ Clarke...

Basically, all of those elements you are claiming Tom 'pioneered' / 'brought to the table' are like Speedo said, done previously and better by actual punk bands. Tom didn't pioneer shit, but he got famous from it and thats why its so influential. Blink managed to make their approach of pop punk (which again did exist before blink) more on the pop side, making it more marketable. That is why blink blew up, that is why so many people were inspired to play guitar because of Tom. it has literally nothing to do with him being a particularly capable or inventive guitarist in any way whatsoever - His simple approach made their music easy to appeal to the masses, making them a goldmine in the eyes of a record company. Cute boys with a snotty sense of humour and a catchy chorus?! damn thats the perfect package to sell to teenage girls!

I love blink but that is why they got where they got. Having someone like Finn on board to make the music even more polished and perfect and the right amount of label know-how is ultimately why blink got mainstream. It's the business side that got them where they are, not their raw talent or songwriting. I love the dudes I really do and always have but the bits that made them stand out aren't their musical capabilities (except for Travis, obviously) it was their humour, their friendship, and their goddamn marketing team. Up until that point though, their success was a mixture of good songs and hard work, and ironically it was also when Tom's parts were technically at their most complex and interesting from a guitar perspective. 

Hell his signature one volume knob guitar that you're so fond of? that is literally because he's too ignorant of his instrument to fully understand what the goddamn tone knobs even do! its a great simple design for 'get up and go' but its purely out of laziness, not some kind of revolutionary thinking. 

There is a drastic difference between influencing people and actually being the 'pioneer' of something. 

 

Also no one take this as me smashing Tom unnecessarily, Mark is a goddamn awful bassist, always has been, but at least he's never pretended to be anything but that. 

 

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1 hour ago, GrimCityGirl said:

 It's the business side that got them where they are, not their raw talent or songwriting. 

 

The levels of wrong you are. 

Edit. Sorry for the lazy comment. Im just way too hungover to write down a decent one. 

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14 minutes ago, RAX said:

The levels of wrong you are. 

Edit. Sorry for the lazy comment. Im just way too hungover to write down a decent one. 

I would say it's both, it's always both.. It doesn't matter how good of a songwriter you are if no one hears it, that's where the business side comes in to play!

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