+44 recalls Blink-182
Band will perform songs from its debut album at Rialto
By Kevin W. Smith
KSMITH@AZSTARNET.COM
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.07.2006
One thing the members of Blink-182 want you to know is that they're no longer the guys in Blink-182.
During the tumultuous two years since the immensely popular pop-punk trio, consisting of dual vocalists bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge and drummer Travis Barker, announced an "indefinite hiatus" there've been ugly public divorces (Barker), trash talk (DeLonge and Hoppus), reality shows (Barker) and new bands.
DeLonge struck first with his new act, Angels and Airwaves, releasing an album in May. In November, Barker and Hoppus ventured into the CD racks under the name +44 with guitarists Shane Gallagher and Craig Fairbaugh.
"Hopefully you know, at some point people will get all the Blink stuff out of their minds, and all the Tom stuff out of their minds, and realize none of that stuff has anything to do with this band," Fairbaugh, 28, said.
Efforts to speak with Barker and Hoppus were unsuccessful, but they've been talking to major music publications like Spin and basically echoing Fairbaugh's sentiment that +44 is for real.
Despite everyone's wanting to put the multiplatinum Blink out of sight, it's not that easy. When you look at the pictures of Barker and Hoppus in +44, you still automatically expect to see DeLonge lingering somewhere in the frame.
Fairbaugh said feelings like that are to be expected initially.
"Of course you want people to just . . . sit down and listen to this record that these four people made. Listen to the music," he said.
The band also doesn't make forgetting easy with the song "No It Isn't." The title is supposed to be a pre-emptive answer to questions of the song's content, with lyrics like "Please understand this isn't goodbye / This is I can't stand you" and "This desperation leaves me overjoyed / With fading lights that lead us past the lives that we destroyed." Hoppus has since acknowledged that the song is about the demise of Blink.
Still, for all the media surrounding +44, the debut album, "When Your Heart Stops Beating," doesn't deviate too much from the Blink sound, albeit with more grown-up subject matter than a band that titled one of its CDs "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket."
At the Rialto show, don't expect to hear any other material, including that of Fairbaugh and Barker's other band, the Transplants, than what's contained on +44's new album.
"This isn't Transplants, this isn't Blink. We just always felt it's kind of desperate when bands do that. Like their catalog isn't good enough. We love our songs and we love our record," Fairbaugh said.
Also, perhaps to prove +44 isn't just another throwaway side project, Barker will be playing drums on this tour one-handed after being diagnosed with five stress fractures in his right arm from playing too much.
"He taught his left arm everything his right arm would do," Fairbaugh said. "And then he taught his left foot everything his left arm would do. It's pretty nuts."
Pretty dedicated, too.
"This is our band," Fairbaugh said.
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