'The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show' at 20
Celebrating and shaking my head at an album that has aged but has not matured
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When you look at the all-time best live albums, the general consensus are things like The Last Waltz, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, The Who’s ‘Live at Leeds’ and Nirvana’s Unplugged. Curiously, Blink 182’s The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back) is conspicuously missing from most lists I’ve seen.
I get it. It doesn’t hold the cultural significance of something like Sam Cooke’s Live at the Harlem Square Club, and hasn’t had the staying power of something like Stop Making Sense. But it’s an undeniable fact that Enema of the State, the studio album that preceded the live one, is on the Mt. Rushmuhhhh shit not that.
Take two.
It’s an undeniable fact that Enema of the State, the studio album that preceded the live one, is not only one of the most revered and influential pop punk albums of the 00s, a time when the genre ruled spring breaks and teen movie soundtracks. It’s one of the most revered and influential pop punk albums ever.
No one is going to stand there with a straight face say that The Mark, Tom and Travis Show is going to live on as a masterful performance, but it still has a place in the modern world, partially thanks to its recent addition to Spotify.
Since that world is in a place where time doesn’t exist as it usually does on our mortal plane and the writing game is weird right now, I don’t really want to wait until later this year to pitch or write anniversary pieces for albums. I need to beat people to the punch. And the only way to do that is to celebrate an anniversary months too early. So, I think I’m going to make this an ongoing series. Maybe I’ll call it Early Birthdays.
Happy early birthday to The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back) by Blink 182 - an album that has aged, but has not matured in the least.
The thing about this album is that it is about as true a representation of the U.S. culture of the time, or at least a specific part of U.S. culture, as it could be. It’s a time capsule of sorts, more than I think a lot of other albums of its day could be. The live element added more evidence of that (if you can call dick jokes evidence). It showed the sense of humor youth culture wanted at the time (mostly gross-out, homophobic, shock humor).
Tom: Hey, how come every time we tell a joke it has to be about fucking sex, masturbation, incest, or anything gross like that, you know?
Mark: Is there anything else in the world?
Tom: There’s nothing else to talk about!
Before I go on, it’s funny to me personally that this album came back to streaming platforms when it did, because it directly coincides with another piece of my childhood coming back, which usually went hand in hand with this album. My immediate sense memories of listening to this album, aside from the purple disc with the band’s cartoon faces on it, is that I’m immediately transported to my childhood home, playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater for N64. Yes, the video game whose soundtracks I spoke with my childhood and adult hero about, I sometimes scored to something else. Fuckin’ sue me.
Anywho, the first two Tony Hawk games are getting remastered for modern consoles, and I’m counting down the days until I can play it on PS4.
But within the wider culture, an album that includes songs firmly planted in the (*extremely college graduate voice*) ZEITGEIST of 2000 and the childish humor that Blink was known for at the time represents a lot. It was a time where everyone was doing their best to be the class clown characters they saw on TV, learning all kinds of new profanity from South Park and older brothers and then trying it out at school the next day. Kids were jumping off of stuff like they saw Johnny Knoxville do on Jackass, which debuted a few weeks prior. They were daring each other to eat vile concoctions of cafeteria food and garbage for pocket change. Everyone had frosted tips and Hurley shirts were the be-all-end-all of fashion. It was a time we now refer to as the peak of the “slacker” generation.
It was a stupid time in America. And we’re a nation made up of a long history of stupid times. But, being pre-9/11, this was maybe an innocently stupid time. And Enema of the State was playing in the background for most of it. (This song was, too, but that’s a blog for another day.)
By extension, Blink’s subsequent live act in Mark, Tom, and Travis took on a life of its own, roping in songs from the previous few albums and adding the polish and production value of a band now on a major label and playing stadiums. It lost Tom DeLonge’s early-album rasp, and brought in one of the genre’s all time best drummers in Travis Barker to punch up old and already great songs. It still sounds great, and I think might’ve proved a lot of people wrong that the pop punk band playing naked on TV could actually be a very tight live band.
It was the band in its early 20s on its first arena tour, riding a high it probably never thought it would get to. They were one of the biggest bands on the planet, and they were telling “weiner” jokes. It also included “Man Overboard” as a studio B-side of sorts, which I’d argue is a top-tier Blink song and a precursor to everything the band would do next. This song’s inclusion shows what the band had been working on at the time, or what songs they were capable of making but didn’t feel right for Enema. It sure as shit would’ve belonged on the next album.
In the early 2000s, this album solidified the lore that Blink 182 had built around itself through its music videos and album titles. They were the kids in detention who your parents don’t want you to hang out with but you do anyway because they’re funny and probably smarter than they let on. Every single song on The Mark, Tom, and Travis show includes some jokes either woven into the lyrics or as stage banter before/after the song. For me, personally, I still hear some of these ad-libs when I listen to the studio versions.
For example, whenever I hear the end of the Enema version of “Aliens Exist,” my brain completes the line with Mark Hoppus’ addition of “Tom has sex with guys.”
And this is where I have to look at the album with the perspective of a 28 year old in 2020. That joke isn’t quite as funny as it used to be, or at least I’m aware of why it’s not as acceptable. (Yes, for those of you keeping score at home, I had this album at a truly young age. My parents let me get it not knowing what was on it, and by the time they figured it out the damage was done. Whoopsies!)
Some of the jokes (the ones I understood at the time, at least) and ad libs have not aged well at all. Moments like Tom DeLonge pointing out a fan who will be the first one he thinks about when he’s alone in side his bunk, Mark Hoppus telling someone to “put those 13-year-old boobs away,” and more homophobic jokes aplenty. Some are still funny even when viewed through the lens of being an adult in 2020 who has thankfully worked to eschew making jokes at other peoples’ expenses. But some have not held up and (*Desus and Mero Mike Francesa soundbite voice*) aren’t even clever or funny, like yelling “Where’s my Asian friend?” at the end of “What’s My Age Again?”
There’s also this. This should go without saying, but strong profanity warning here.
It’s juvenile, but to expect anything less from Blink 182 at the time would be just as dumb. This was their brand, and baby was it ever working. And to judge it against current norms or hold them to some sort of accountability for their actions 20 years ago would also be mostly unfair. (“We made those jokes as different people at a different time,” etc.)
In retrospect, though, looking at where the band went, I could argue that it was the turning point for the band to “get serious.” Someone is probably thinking, “But, Brendan. The next album is called Take Off Your Pants and Jacket and has songs like “Fuck a Dog” and “Happy Holidays, You Bastard.”
Yes, I know. But it was also when Tom DeLonge turned 25, traded in his Volcom shirts for an all black getup and his frosted tips for the swoopy bangs reminiscent of when Toby Maguire’s Peter Parker was like...possessed or something? And they had to prove he was evil cause he started doing coke or whatever?
That album also started tackling more “mature” themes the band had toyed with before. “Adam’s Song” was an outlier on Enema, but Take Off had more songs in that vein than it did jokes and levity. From there, the band’s self-titled album went about as far as DeLonge-era (aka true) Blink got.
And just two years after Mark, Tom, and Travis, DeLonge (and Barker) did the Boxcar Racer project, which veered even further in that direction.
DeLonge to Kerrang earlier this year:
When I did Box Car Racer, that was the first big challenge to myself – can I make a great post-hardcore punk record that’s totally different to what I’ve been doing when I don’t have my entire band or another songwriter to rely on and fall back on? Can I do this on my own? Can I accept this challenge?’ And I proved to myself that I did pretty good and that I can do more of that.
But at the time of Mark, Tom, and Travis, the serious subject matter had to come with a disclaimer. Before “Going Away to College,” Hoppus tells everyone that the song is about love (albeit the love of a college student dating a high school student) and has to throw in a few more sex jokes lest anyone think they were getting too earnest. And “Adam’s Song” comes with the preface of “You better wipe that shit eating grin off your face cause this next one’s a sad one.”
And it’s entirely possibly I’m projecting what I know now about the band and its evolution onto this album and creating a narrative where there isn’t one. It would probably be wrong if I said that Tom DeLonge was on a conscious victory lap for his immature musical tendencies and was planning to settle down, putting the majority-immaturity style of Enema behind them after this. Hearing some of his jokes on this album, you’d hardly think, “Yeah, he’s gonna be the guy to go the more serious route and tackle more mature subject matter.”
But then some of the first lines on the next album only a year later are “young and hostile, but not stupid.” Yes, he still sees himself as one of “the kids,” but he’s also looking at making a change.
This isn’t to say that Take Off is some quarter life crisis album, or that Mark, Tom, and Travis was some premeditated decision for the band to do one last vulgar display before settling down and getting serious.
But DeLonge, now as a man in his 40s who has, no joke, helped government evidence of UFOs to the public eye and helmed more serious-minded pop punk projects (while still picking some of the best pop punk drumming talent in Atom Willard for Angels and Airwaves), is a far cry from the 24 year old warning a stadium full of people of the dangers of eating dog semen.
Hoppus, who enlisted Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba to replace DeLonge, has kept things mostly as poppy as possible and crystalized at a certain ambiguously youthful age, and is still throwing around plenty of the jokes and brevity into albums. (See: “Built this Pool” from the band’s most recent release.) Maybe that’s some sort of attempt to cling onto the 2000s and youth on its own. Probably not, though. It’s probably just silly.
I was excited to see Mark, Tom, and Travis on Spotify, where I could listen to it whenever I wanted just like I did with my little portable CD player. I’m excited as shit to play the new Tony Hawk remaster and I’ll probably listen to this while I do it because nostalgia is a hell of a drug when you’re approaching 30. I’ll probably find myself cringing at some jokes that haven’t aged well, laughing at others that have, and appreciating Barker’s drumming on older songs like “Carousel” and “Pathetic.” It feels like watching a home movie you and your friends made as kids. Some of the stuff still holds up, some makes you marvel at your own creativity as a bored kid, and other parts make you feel pretty ashamed.
The bottom line is that musically, this album 100 percent stands the test of time for the same reason you’d still hear “All the Small Things” on the radio. The songs are good, the production is good. But it’s a product of its oughts environment in a lot of ways, too, which renders it sorely outdated for a lot of listeners who have reconsidered the things they used to think were funny. Is it this great marker that separates Silly Blink and Serious Blink? I think it might be, but not purposely.
And, before I give another thousand words of analysis to an album that maybe shouldn’t be analyzed to this extent and start explaining jokes to the point they lose their humor, I’m going to end this the same way the album ends—after about 10 minutes of banter, modulated voices pretending to be Satan and crowd work.
Quote Tom Delonge:
Alright. I’m out of jokes. And out of songs. I think we’re done.
Today’s Snakes & Sparklers musical guest is Oceanator.