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35 minutes ago, Kay said:

maybe Mark is completely lost without Tom as his main chemistry buddy, and that's why he's hiring in others to just do it for him. 

Mark had enough creativity and steam on his own to do +44 because he was in a dark place and had a lot of passion to get out.

yes and yes.

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3 hours ago, Kay said:

If that's the case, maybe Mark is completely lost without Tom as his main chemistry buddy, and that's why he's hiring in others to just do it for him. 

Mark had enough creativity and steam on his own to do +44 because he was in a dark place and had a lot of passion to get out. when blink returned with Matt we saw basically none of that, and we know we had barely anything from him on Neighborhoods either. 

I always thought +44 worked because Mark was pissed off, hurt, confused and sad all in one. This time I think Tom leaving was more of a shrug like, "Really, dude? Again?"

I mean No It Isn't is a fucking masterpiece compared to San Diego. To me that's all the proof I need, 2 songs on the same subject with vastly different results. 

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59 minutes ago, vic vinegar said:

I always thought +44 worked because Mark was pissed off, hurt, confused and sad all in one. This time I think Tom leaving was more of a shrug like, "Really, dude? Again?"

I mean No It Isn't is a fucking masterpiece compared to San Diego. To me that's all the proof I need, 2 songs on the same subject with vastly different results. 

Yeah, I love San Diego but it doesn't come close to No It Isn't & Heart's All Gone. It has a better bridge than Heart's All Gone though. Mark wrote those out of passion & anger. Mark didn't even wanna write San Diego in the first place. As much as I hated Feldman's songwriting methods, I'm actually glad he pushed Mark to write that one. It's one of the good songs from the Skiba era in my opinion. Mark will probably always be able to have good songs when it comes to Tom as the subject matter though.

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9 hours ago, Oliver>Skiba said:

I can't get inside any of Mark, Tom, or Travis' head but in retrospect my gut says Tom was just done with blink after the whole Boxcar dilemna, he was changing, he realized Mark and him would never be close again but he still had a little heart left for something that was so much a part of him for so long and gave it his one last all on Untitled, sort of like his love letter to blink 182.  Tom might be crazy, but he is pretty true to him self artistically, while Mark was always about the success, fortune, and fame experience.  Tom moved on, possibly not being financially aware of the difficulty of 'keeping' wealth versus making all that money at once.  Tom's ego got a little carried away but he couldn't go back, damage was done.  Neighborhoods, while it did age greatly, was clearly Tom at a bit rock bottom needing help, more than likely financially.  He 100% used the easiest answer to force a reunion he didn't want to do with blink.  The body language showed he could never fully commit back to it as it was in the past to him. 

I think this is a really interesting post, I think you're really onto something so it turns out I'm gonna write a giant spiel too for no reason haha.

In my opinion I don't think Tom was done with Blink after Box Car. I think it was more like he did Box Car obviously not thinking Mark would care or want to play music like that, and when he found out Mark was upset and wished he would have just used those songs for Blink he got super hyped and thought they were on the exact same page with where they wanted their music to go. You can tell from watching all the Cheetah videos and MTV Album Launch and stuff that Tom is fully committed, and not in a wistful "last ride with Blink" type of way. He truly thought Blink was about to evolve in a huge way and that they were just going to keep progressing on that track.

Mark spoke about it the same way and clearly gave it his all, his contributions to that album are incredible, but even at the time I remember thinking he took much more of a back seat in the music than usual. I think on the inside he was most likely pretty self conscious and anxious about making that type of a leap into the unknown and into darker subjects and sounds, but he clearly dived right in and they both trusted each other one last time on that album and it paid off in a huge way.

I think it was after they finished the recording process and were going through the touring and everything else that it started coming undone. Obviously this is all my opinion AKA fan fiction haha but based on everything that has happened since 04/05 I wouldn't be surprised at all if Mark started hinting about like "on the next album we should go back to some more simple fast catchy songs" or like "man it's kinda depressing playing all this new angry stuff every night let's throw in some more Enema/TOYPAJ at this show."

And that combined with all of them getting drained by the "machine" and Tom slowly starting to lose his mind and get addicted to painkillers and whatever else was going on made the whole post-Box Car relationship they thought they had go up in flames. Tom realized Mark wasn't actually as convinced about using Untitled as a new jumping off point, Mark realized Tom wasn't interested in revisiting the Enema/TOYPAJ stuff they'd always been great at (and was going nuts), and they slowly started resenting each other until it all blew up.

That's how I feel it probably went down, which also makes sense with how AVA and +44 both turned out. AVA was partially Tom trying to prove to Mark that his grand ambitions were warranted and even with a newly enlightened new-agey vision he could progress rock music and bring back Jesus or some shit, and +44 was partially Mark trying to prove to Tom that he could write a whole album of badass angry progressive music, so fuck you.

Then with Neighborhoods/DED Mark was somewhat conceding the musical direction to Tom again for the sake of keeping Blink alive and hoping the relationships would mend and it would all start to come naturally again, but obviously it didn't go down like that. As of right now I don't buy the idea that Tom will ever come back, and I don't even really buy the idea that he even wants to, regardless of what he says in interviews when he's feeling self-conscious. Through all the ups and downs it seems like they've both kinda come to a sad peace about the fact that they'll never have that chemistry anymore so they'll just do what they actually want to do on their own and give each other a friendly wave whenever they cross online-paths haha.

And Travis was just down for whatever.

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1 hour ago, Nosferatu said:

Yeah, I love San Diego but it doesn't come close to No It Isn't & Heart's All Gone. It has a better bridge than Heart's All Gone though. Mark wrote those out of passion & anger. Mark didn't even wanna write San Diego in the first place. As much as I hated Feldman's songwriting methods, I'm actually glad he pushed Mark to write that one. It's one of the good songs from the Skiba era in my opinion. Mark will probably always be able to have good songs when it comes to Tom as the subject matter though.

What did I miss here?

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45 minutes ago, Rocky Braveheart said:

What did I miss here?

Tons of good inside info from Feldy here: https://www.fuse.tv/2016/06/blink-182-california-producer-john-feldmann-track-by-track

"Feldy: The history of the song [is about] growing up in San Diego, having so many of their work partners being from San Diego and having a member who lives in San Diego who is no longer in the band...it was a song that Mark didn't want to write. I brought up the idea that you have to write about shit you don't want to write about. You have to write about shit that's right there on the surface."

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1 hour ago, Champ182 said:

In my opinion I don't think Tom was done with Blink after Box Car. I think it was more like he did Box Car obviously not thinking Mark would care or want to play music like that, and when he found out Mark was upset and wished he would have just used those songs for Blink he got super hyped and thought they were on the exact same page with where they wanted their music to go. You can tell from watching all the Cheetah videos and MTV Album Launch and stuff that Tom is fully committed, and not in a wistful "last ride with Blink" type of way. He truly thought Blink was about to evolve in a huge way and that they were just going to keep progressing on that track.

Mark spoke about it the same way and clearly gave it his all, his contributions to that album are incredible, but even at the time I remember thinking he took much more of a back seat in the music than usual. I think on the inside he was most likely pretty self conscious and anxious about making that type of a leap into the unknown and into darker subjects and sounds, but he clearly dived right in and they both trusted each other one last time on that album and it paid off in a huge way.

I think it was after they finished the recording process and were going through the touring and everything else that it started coming undone. Obviously this is all my opinion AKA fan fiction haha but based on everything that has happened since 04/05 I wouldn't be surprised at all if Mark started hinting about like "on the next album we should go back to some more simple fast catchy songs" or like "man it's kinda depressing playing all this new angry stuff every night let's throw in some more Enema/TOYPAJ at this show.”

i think these are great insights... one need look no further than mark’s contributions on untitled to see he wasn’t pushing the envelope as much as tom was (go, here’s your letter). that’s not to say mark couldn’t or wasn’t interested, because he certainly leveled up as a songwriter on +44, but it’s clear now it seems out of his comfort zone. you’re 100% right that tom seems very committed throughout album launch and optimistic towards its conclusion. just seems like there were a lot of unresolved feelings from box car 

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I've always found Mark's insecurities about his songwriting silly in my opinion. Like yeah he's been honest and genuine about his insecurities but I listen to all the shit he wrote from 03 and onwards and I'm like seriously? His shit is SO good from 03-11. Here's Your Letter is arguably my favourite song from the smiley face. +44 blows AVA out the water IMO. He took charge over Pete fucking Wentz and wrote a raw gritty song called In Transit (which is a very good song IMO). Kaleidoscope, FTG and Heart's All Gone are all damn good songs too. MH is superb lyrically outside of that random helicopter line.

Always wondered why he felt insecure about his own shit from the 03-11 period when literally all of his shit in that period is so damn good.

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I once had dinner with a woman who said her friend helped edit the MTV Making Of for untitled. She stated he had said they fought A LOT and had trouble editing around it. No clue what about exactly, but apparently the band was on ice then. Take it as hearsay, but I found it interesting.

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1 minute ago, _Kyle_ said:

I once had dinner with a woman who said her friend helped edit the MTV Making Of for untitled. She stated he had said they fought A LOT and had trouble editing around it. No clue what about exactly, but apparently the band was on ice then. Take it as hearsay, but I found it interesting.

Recording is stressful ... I would imagine they fought a lot on a lot of their records. Think about it: its mentally challenging and exhausting, you're locked in with the same people for 12+ hours a day, everyone has an opinion on what things should sound like or be, there's a lot of waiting around, frustration in not getting things right or not being able to finish a lyric or song or in someone else fucking up.

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1 minute ago, WimpyDrivesThroughHarlem said:

Recording is stressful ... I would imagine they fought a lot on a lot of their records. Think about it: its mentally challenging and exhausting, you're locked in with the same people for 12+ hours a day, everyone has an opinion on what things should sound like or be, there's a lot of waiting around, frustration in not getting things right or not being able to finish a lyric or song or in someone else fucking up.

Oh I know, but also they also had a whole house to live and work in, plenty of time to fuck around to experiment (since MCA was gone, Geffen gave them a lot of room to do this), etc. It's fairly different than most bands operate when making a record. We can only speculate what was argued about

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1 minute ago, _Kyle_ said:

Oh I know, but also they also had a whole house to live and work in, plenty of time to fuck around to experiment (since MCA was gone, Geffen gave them a lot of room to do this), etc. It's fairly different than most bands operate when making a record. We can only speculate what was argued about

Mark pissy about BCR and acting like a girl about it.

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4 hours ago, Nosferatu said:

He took charge over Pete fucking Wentz and wrote a raw gritty song called In Transit (which is a very good song IMO).

i listened to in transit for the first time in -- well, maybe since 2010 -- the other day and was blown away. it feels a little undercooked, but it's really pretty good. mark's lyrics are great, his melodic choices interesting. when i see this era of seven songwriters for a 50-second song, i gotta wonder what went wrong.

pretty weird when a forgotten mark b-side is better than all of what he's contributed for the past three years

 

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16 minutes ago, boxelder said:

i listened to in transit for the first time in -- well, maybe since 2010 -- the other day and was blown away. it feels a little undercooked, but it's really pretty good. mark's lyrics are great, his melodic choices interesting. when i see this era of seven songwriters for a 50-second song, i gotta wonder what went wrong.

pretty weird when a forgotten mark b-side is better than all of what he's contributed for the past three years

 

Yeah definitely. it does have a demo feel to it. Never understood why it hasn't been a popular song amongst these boards. I'm a huge fan of his +44 style shit.

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10 hours ago, boxelder said:

i listened to in transit for the first time in -- well, maybe since 2010 -- the other day and was blown away. it feels a little undercooked, but it's really pretty good. mark's lyrics are great, his melodic choices interesting. when i see this era of seven songwriters for a 50-second song, i gotta wonder what went wrong.

pretty weird when a forgotten mark b-side is better than all of what he's contributed for the past three years

 

yeah it was super panned when it came out if I recall, I actually liked it. I don't think it's on par with his untitled work or +44 but it knocks the shit out of California. it's not brilliant lyrically though. 

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