The Rock Show
The Rock Show
What concert would be good enough to forget about your father's disappearance? Are you sure?
Father’s Day was this past Sunday. It can be a tough holiday for those with strained or complicated relationships with their father figures. Maybe their father passed away, and they feel a little extra pang of missing them.
Or maybe their fathers were missing in a submersible in the Atlantic Ocean, and the only thing that made them feel a little better was going to a Blink 182 show.
By now, you’ve probably heard about the sub full of uber-rich people who spent a quarter of a million dollars to go down and see the wreckage of the Titanic — another famous ill-fated voyage of the uber-rich — and lost communication with the surface. The authorities have confirmed what we all pretty much assumed from the beginning, but for a few days it was a matter of international intrigue. It sounds like something out of one of those currently-fashionable “eat the rich” movies like Triangle of Sadness or The Menu, where some super-wealthy people get their ironic comeuppance, but it was a real thing. And these people had families. Loved ones. Stepsons. And, as easy as it is to dunk on the 1%, it’s important to also think of them and their feelings.
I’m talking to you, Tom Delonge.
One of the guys on the sub was Hamish Harding, an extraordinarily wealthy guy who loved spending his fortune on adventuring. While no one heard from Harding since he got on the sub, we’ve unfortunately heard from his stepson, Brian Szazs, who took to Twitter to announce that his family, including his stepfather, would want him to be at the Blink 182 show in San Diego, and wanted the guys in the band to acknowledge his bravery.
It’s since emerged — shit, wait. Gonna rephrase that one.
Troubling stories about Szasz beyond just him attending a concert while his stepfather remained lost and possibly dead have since come out. Incidents of stalking and violence have come to light in the hours after his plea to Blink 182 to make sure he has a good time at their show.
It’s perfectly normal to turn to art and music that you enjoy for comfort in times of stress. If that music has a nostalgic quality to it, then it works even better. Blink 182 is about as nostalgic a band as you can get for people around my age, so I can fully see why someone going through a tough time would want to do something that, even just for a couple of hours, made them think about happier, more care-free times in their life, like before their stepdad got lost poking around at the site where the Titanic sank and 1,500 people died.
But Blink 182, anymore, is a pretty huge risk in this regard, you know?
What I mean is that Blink 182 put out some absolute stinkers of albums after their self-titled album (which I don’t even really like but I’ll cater to those that do by including it in the good). Also, they’re all a bit older now. You’re probably not getting Mark, Tom and Travis Show-quality stuff here. This is not a dig at Blink 182. I love Blink 182 and am glad they’re all back together and playing shows. But, time is undefeated.
After a certain point, a sideways hat looks more like an awkward costume than a natural wardrobe choice. Voices lose their youthful charm, and the potty humor has diminishing returns. (Travis Barker’s still got the juice though.)
There is a good chance that the show you go to to momentarily forget about your stepfather’s disappearance in Poseidon’s Kingdom absolutely sucks, or at least doesn’t do a good enough job of capturing what it once did to fully transport you out of that reality.
Setlist.fm is a website where you can look up setlists for just about any show you can think of, and it puts together a nifty little pie chart to show how a band’s different albums were represented at a show. Here’s the breakdown from the show in San Diego that Brian went to.
Not a bad mix, honestly. I understand they have to play some of the new stuff, even the things that they put out with Matt Skiba, and they kept that all fairly minimal. They leaned heavily on what I’d say are the two best albums, playing the most from what I’d say is my favorite Blink album (Take Off Your Pants and Jacket). They opened with “Anthem Part 2” and closed with “Dammit.” That’s one of the hallmarks of a pivot to “legacy band” status. You play the hits and new material gets a minimal, obligatory showing.
Pretty solid. If I just went to this under normal circumstances, I’d be reasonably happy!
But, is it good enough that I would be able to justify visiting this instead of something deemed more appropriate for someone whose stepfather is in Davy Jones’s Locker?
I don’t know.
That’s the thing with art. It’s subjective. Someone might’ve left that concert thinking it was the best show they’ve ever seen. Another might’ve left and thought, “Meh.” Maybe they didn’t think it was worth the money or the traffic. But, maybe their obscenely wealthy stepdad isn’t currently in a tin can 20,000 leagues under the damn sea, so it hits different for them.
Lower stakes.
We’ve all had those times where we look forward to something and when it happens it’s not quite like we imagined. That’s not always the fault of the event, either. Sometimes we just inflate something in our heads and make it impossible to live up to the standards we set.
This all begs the question: What event – a concert, a sporting event, what have you – would be good enough that it would be worth it for you to attend while your father figure was missing amidst the remains of the once-thought unsinkable ship?
It’s easy to take this thought experiment and choose a show that, in 2023, you know was good and has aged well, and you’d use some sort of hypothetical time machine to go back and see. Like, If my father was currently in a submersible that lost communication after diving down to gawk at the Titanic, I’d still go see The Band’s ‘Last Waltz’ or something. I posed the question on Twitter and got a few answers that included band reunions in specific venues, or bands promising to only play certain material. Makes sense. If you’re going to a show instead of laying low in this situation, it has to be absolutely tailored to be 100% worthwhile. No doubts.
It’s much ballsier to say “I will go in, sight unseen, and assume that Blink 182 in 2023 will sufficiently fill the hole in my heart that was left by my stepfather’s disappearance,” or even, “Sure, my stepfather is missing, but it’s the Super Bowl, and my team is the odds favorite to win!” Guess what. Teams lose. Beloved bands get older and rustier, and a buzzy band like Turnstile opening can’t keep the whole operation completely afloat.
Shit, bad choice of words again.
Happy Father’s Day.
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Hurry.
BONUS CONTENT:
I took last week off of the newsletter because more pressing matters (i.e. things that actually paid me) took precedence.
This includes my real job that I do for most of my day, as well as some freelance jobs. Some of which are still in the works, so I’m going to wait to talk about them a lot here, but I’m very excited about them.
One of them just dropped this week, though.
Earlier this year, I saw that the band Screaming Females was touring in Alaska. And it wasn’t just a one-off date somewhere like Anchorage or something, they were playing multiple shows. I remembered seeing that Frank Turner also fit in an Alaska date during his insane 50-states-in-50-days tour, so I pitched the idea of a story about the effort that goes into touring in Alaska to SPIN, and they were into it!
I love when interviews require almost no effort to set up. After sending a few out, I almost immediately heard back from Frank Turner, who was up for a Zoom call just days after the email. That conversation led to talking to the person who co-owned a venue in Anchorage and has booked shows up there. Then, after talking to Screaming Females, I got in touch with the person who basically helped them set up shows not only in bigger venues, but smaller DIY spaces in small towns that otherwise didn’t really get too many bands at all, let alone from the “Lower 48.”
The whole thing gave me a much greater appreciation for the effort that goes into these tours for no other reason than artists wanting to play for new people – because most of this was not profitable at all – and about a place so remote having its own scene even without bands making the trip.
You can read that whole story here, and you should, because it’s one of my favorite things I’ve written.
