If you’re a fan of seminal pop-punkers Blink-182, you’ll more than likely be aware of the near obsession former founding member Tom DeLonge has for all things extraterrestrial. From songs like Aliens Exist and his work on his own side project Angels And Airwaves touching on life outside of Earth to his own video blogs and books delving headfirst into the subject, you can tell DeLonge has done a whole lot of research on alien life and UFO’s.
The dude even left Blink so he could continue his UFO research and some more liberal-thinking conspiracy theorists have even postulated that the singer might have been abducted at one point.
But while it might be hard for most people to take seriously someone who once sang things like “Forgive our neighbour Bob, I think he humped the dog” on such an important and universe-altering subject as aliens, one company, Open Minds Productions, has named DeLonge its ‘UFO Researcher of the Year’ for 2016 just passed. You can watch a video of the organisation listing his accomplishments as well as an uh… interesting and somewhat ominous… acceptance speech from DeLonge himself below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxPx-BVN4yc
No idea what Tom is talking about with his ‘announcement’, could it have something to do with those mysterious WikiLeaks emails that found their way to the public last year? The ones between DeLonge and a government official talking about Roswell and meeting with other military officials and ‘important people’? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, Blink-182 are still terrible.
More Reading: Flashback Friday – Take Off Your Pants And Jacket
Image: Alternative Nation
It’s 1999.
System of a Down are already making serious waves with their ferocious debut album, but they’re on the cusp releasing Toxicity, which would catapult them to major international attention. Lead single Chop Suey thrust Serj Tankian and co into the global spotlight. The next few years would see them headline some of the world’s most important rock music festivals like Reading and Glastonbury, as well as receiving four Grammy nominations and a win, among other accolades.
Down the line they would break up, reform, play a couple shows, break up, work with other artists, reform, and break up again. According to Wikipedia, Serj Tankian would later relocate to a place called Warkworth, a “semi-rural town north of Auckland, New Zealand.”
Sum 41, meanwhile, have just signed to Island Records. It would be about two years before their debut album, but that was all they needed. All Killer No Filler immediately shot them up the charts, and they went platinum in the UK, USA and beyond. They played more than 300 shows in the next year, many of them with Blink 182 and The Offspring, after which they released sophomore record Does This Look Infected?, which was a similarly mammoth success. They went on to be nominated for a Grammy and several Juno Awards.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, they never technically broke up, but members came and went, many choosing to focus their attention on side projects instead, and their next few albums didn’t make much noise.
By 1999, Green Day have well and truly established themselves as the world’s foremost pop punk band. 1994’s Dookie sold more than ten million copies in the US alone. They would go on to win five Grammy Awards, release twelve albums and would even be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
It’s pretty great to be in 1999.
Oh wait.
It’s 2016.
It’s 2016 right now.
Green Day are currently on a world tour supporting their new album Revolution Radio, which came out last week. It’s their first album in seven years. They’ll be performing for most of the next twelve months, including stadium shows in Australia.
System of a Down have just announced tour dates for 2017, with a possible headline slot at Download and rumours of a new album. If true, it will be their first since 2005.
Sum 41 also just dropped their first record in years, 13 Voices, their first in five years. They’ve been touring ahead of the release and have just announced more dates for 2017.
Furthermore, Blink 182, who dropped their new album California back in July, earning them their first no. 1 record in 15 years. have recently revealed plans to drop an EP by the end of the year. They’re currently on tour with contemporaries including A Day to Remember, All Time Low, Simple Plan and The Used.
Even The Offspring are rumoured to be releasing a new album later this year.
I’ll let Blink do the talking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7l5ZeVVoCA
Image: Billboard
This is an opening line I can absolutely say we did not expect to be writing in 2016: After nine weeks at the top of the Billboard charts with his record-breaking album Views, Drake has lost the top spot to Blink 182 and their new album California.
In their first week of release, California debuted at no. 1 with an impressive 1860,000 sales and equivalents. Interestingly, 170,000 of that were traditional album sales, not streaming. In terms of first week sales, it’s the third highest selling rock record of 2016 after Radiohead (173,000) and David Bowie (174,000). It also marks the pop punk band’s first no. 1 in fifteen years, and only their second ever, the first being Take Off Your Pants and Jacket back in 2001. Take Off Your Pants held the top spot for one week, and it will be interesting to see if California can outlast it.
The album marks a massive return for the band, whose frontman Tom DeLonge left last year, and has now been (somewhat controversially) replaced by Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio.
Drake now sits at no. 2, followed by Maxwell‘s wonderful new album blackSUMMERS’night (which he will be showing off live in Australia next month), Beyoncé‘s Lemonade, Blurryface by Twenty One Pilots and Anti by Rihanna.
Congratulations for the massive comeback Blink 182! It’s also nice to know that the band themselves have realised how strange the times are:
https://www.facebook.com/blink182/photos/a.178603648270.124099.30947528270/10153940918853271/?type=3&theater
Read our Flashback Friday feature on Blink 182’s Take Off Your Pants And Jacket
Image: Supplied
Tom DeLonge, one of the co-founders of punk group Blink-182, has told In a recent Rolling Stone that he never officially quit or had been fired from the beloved pop-punk band. In addition to this, he took to Facebook directly after the band announced their new album California to say that he had met up with Mark Hoppus and was in regular contact with drummer Travis Barker. There was even a hint at a possible reunion, “We DO have a future together if we want it, but for now we are busy doing separate things.”
Hoppus has refuted all this, however, in an interview on Kevin Klein Live. He stated “I haven’t even spoken to Tom in a year and a half.” On the subject of a possible reunion, Hoppus said:
“That is something so far down the road to even be a possibility… His post came as a surprise to me. I’ll never say never to anything, but this is what Blink-182 is right now, and we’re in a really good spot and really excited about things and this is what the band is.”
That makes sense, seeing as California will be the first album release since DeLonge parted ways with the band, and the first with Matt Skiba, formerly of Alkaline Trio. It seems unlikely that the band would drop Skiba and bring back DeLonge when they’re in such a good place. California was announced with the release of a new single, “Bored to Death,” and the band has announced a large summer tour across the US.
DeLonge (in addition to being a 40 year old man who still uses the word “bummed” to describe his feelings) meanwhile is working on an array of projects, including a book titled… *changes tab to check spelling* ahem… Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows, written with UNC Charlotte Shakespeare Professor A.J. Hartley. I would give my left arm to be a fly on the wall of those book writing sessions! The mix of Shakespeare and learned opinions with “duuuuuuuuuuuude” would be a comedy goldmine. The book, whilst fictional, apparently incorporates information DeLonge gained from “sources within the aerospace industry and the Department of Defence and NASA,” after which he added: “That sentence, specifically, was approved for me to say.”
Gawd. He sounds like that kid in 7th grade who wants to be all cool and mysterious, so he pretends his dad’s a spy and he know’s things you couldn’t even imagine, dude.
Image: Getty Images
The ill-mannered San Diego three-piece Blink-182 still remain the anthem to lost 90’s youth everywhere. Not only encapsulating the kind of lewd humour and sexualities of a whole generation of teenage boys, they also epitomise the golden era of pop punk. And they happen to boast one of the best drummers in Travis Barker. It may have been nearly fifteen years since Enema Of The States was released, but Blink-182 are still a force to be reckoned with as they announce a new album.
Last year saw the second sad departure of Tom DeLonge from the band, however his skate shoes and guitar duties have now been filled by Matt Skiba. The former Alkaline Trio member filled in for DeLonge in 2015, after DeLonge left to dedicate more time “non-musical activities”. Skiba also joined remaining members Mark Hoppus and Barker in the studio to record the band’s seventh album; California.
The first new music from Blink-182 since their 2011 release Neighbourhoods, this latest album will be available July 1 via Vagrant/BMG/Liberator Records. With sixteen tracks on the listing, the band have now released their first single from the record, Bored To Death. Produced by John Feldmann (Five Seconds Of Summer, All Time Low and more), the track may have a slightly despondent feel but doesn’t seem to feel the lack of DeLonge.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yGipyel-3I]
And despite the time elapsed between now and the days of All The Small Things and What’s My Age Again, Blink-182 prove themselves more than capable of continuing the legacy that they began. In a return to those old days, Bored To Death signals a touch of nostalgia as Hoppus mourns that “it’s a long way back from seventeen”. However this edge of regret is still accompanied by trademark pop punk riffs and hooks, and strikes the same vein as vintage tracks like Adam’s Song.
Blink-182 have also just announced a massive US tour, with support from A Day To Remember, All American Rejects and All Time Low. California is available to pre-order now through iTunes – pre-orders will also receive an instant download of Bored To Death. Check out the full track listing for California below.
1. Cynical
2. Bored to Death
3. She’s out of Her Mind
4. Los Angeles
5. Sober
6. Built This Pool
7. No Future
8. Home Is Such a Lonely Place
9. Kings of the Weekend
10. Teenage Satellites
11. Left Alone
12. Rabbit Hole
13. San Diego
14. The Only Thing That Matters
15. California
16. Brohemian Rhapsody
Image: Dying Trends
I can say without any hesitation that there is no better embodiment of my teenage years than the 2001 blink 182 release of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. From rambunctious rebellion, tales of first love to utter despair and depression, this is an album that so accurately depicts the emotional roller coaster that I was an unwilling passenger on for such a large period of my high schooling life.
I’m hard pressed to find another example of an album that can so effortlessly hop between immaturity and sorrow, but blink 182 pulls it off in a way that has kept my attention for over a decade. No matter where you are or how far between listens you may be, this is an album whose lyrics effortlessly lay at the heart of your subconscious. Even as I penned this piece, and refreshed my memory with a front to back listen, not one song had been lost on me.
As soon as Anthem Part Two exploded into a ballad of teenage angst upon my first listen, I knew I was hooked.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7rHJTHWNew]
“Young and hostile, but not stupid”
“If we’re fucked up, you’re to blame”
The opening track is a song solely about sticking it to the man, and letting the younger generations be heard; those who so often sit voiceless while their parents decide their fate. In an album of mixed messages, this one is extremely poignant. What teenager couldn’t get on board with that?
As my ears digested the album for the first time, I slowly learnt to take blink 182 with a grain of salt. For every sombre Adam’s Song that the band has produced, there’s a disgusting and profanity-riddled track like Happy Holidays, You Bastard that counteracts any seriousness that the band could possibly hope to portray:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPokCWPEoM0]
“I’ll never talk to you again, unless your dad will suck me off,
I’ll never talk to you again, unless your mum will touch my cock,
I’ll never talk to you again, ejaculate into a sock.”
Heck, the album title itself is a sexually charged double entendre; “Take off your pants and jack-it” (I have to admit, it took an absurdly long time until someone pointed this out to me ). I quickly fell in love with the band, and felt that as an awkward teenager, I could relate to their daily struggles; do I feel depressed today or in the mood to swear and tell dick jokes? Whether we like it or not, that immature teenager still lies dormant in all of us, and blink 182 are the masters of prying it out.
As the album rolls on, we are treated to a cringe-worthy collection of pubescent perils. We all have our own awkward teenage tales; we have all been gripped by anxiety as we struggle with even the simplest decisions as our first date draws nearer. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be from your teens, I have particularly fond memories of panicking over which porcupine-esque hairstyle and hawaiian shirt I should don for my Year 6 disco.
“Do you like my stupid hair? Would you guess that I didn’t know what to wear?”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVy9Lgpg1m8]
First Date is a musical rendition of awkwardness, plain and simple. The lyrics are a far too accurate depiction of my past fashion sense (why oh why did I straighten my hair?!) The subject matter is simple, but therein lies the strength of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket; a timeless piece of teenage relatability.
As 18 rolled around for me, I began to frequent more and more concerts and clubs that blasted out the pop punk tracks I had pounded my eardrums with for as long as I could remember. I’m ashamed to recount the amount of times I have seemingly fallen head over heels for a girl that stood in the same mosh as me, or on the same crowded dance floor, my awkwardness paralysing me from making any form of human interaction. The Rock Show is my own reassurance that perhaps I wasn’t alone in my failed endeavours to court the opposite sex.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7hhDINyBP0]
Awkwardness and insecurity aside, there are still moments on this album that tug at the heartstrings.
I’m not ashamed to say how many times Stay Together For the Kids has been the backing track to many late night crying sessions. I couldn’t personally relate to the struggles of a child whose parents are going through a divorce, but there were certainly countless times where I wish the words I put to paper could suddenly spring to life and be the sudden fix to life’s problems that I so often craved.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BFHYtZlAU]
“What stupid poem could fix this home? I’d read it every day.”
Shut Up just about reflects every relationship that littered my teenage years; petty arguments, screaming and shouting, and a blatant misunderstanding of the world around me. I think that’s what sums up teenage life; we simply don’t have a grip on the world yet. Everything is an experiment, everything is an exploration, and we are just along for the ride. Any band that can provide a soundtrack to such an unpredictable and tumultuous time clearly asserts themselves as an instant classic.
To me, the ability to craft such beautiful songs really garnered my respect and admiration for the band. Yes, there was plenty of time for mischievous lyrics and goofing off, but at the heart of everything, the band could so effortlessly translate my heartache and hardship into music.
As they took to the stage in Sydney in 2013, (for what would be the final time that Australia would witness Tom Delonge as part of the band), that immaturity was projected out amongst the crowd, and I witnessed the playful, witty youths who had so beautifully crafted this album, even as they fast approached 40 years of age. Even though things may not have been peachy behind the scenes, the back and forth banter and cheeky crowd interaction satisfied every 90’s baby in attendance.
At the end of the day I think that’s what has prolonged the world’s love affair with blink; they were just a bunch of rambunctious, rebellious teenagers who had no problem running naked down the street or penning a song about anal sex with a pirate. We could live vicariously through the vitriolic and vile nature of some of their songs, but if we were ever gripped by sadness or sorrow we could easily find a serious and introspective record to sooth our souls.
Today in nostalgic pop punk news, the now sans-Tom DeLonge version of Blink-182 are reportedly working on material for a new album with their newest member, Alkaline Trio frontman Matt Skiba. While the prospect of new Blink makes me more than a little hot under the collar, is it really new Blink when it’s going to be lacking that familiar angsty, nasally whine of DeLonge’s that made every Blink-182 song so instantly recognisable?
To be honest, this is really just going to feel more like Box Car Racer feat. Matt Skiba than anything else I’m predicting. Or it could be worse. Or maybe it’ll be amazing. Music history shows that either outcome is more than a possibility. Just a few of the bands who’ve tagged out their original frontman for another:
5: Stone Temple Pilots – with Chester Bennington
If you’re a fan of 90s grunge, there weren’t many names bigger than Stone Temple Pilots. Responsible for some of the hardest rocking sounds of that decade with hits like Plush, Interstate Love Song, Big Empty and Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjJL9DGU7Gg
Frontman Scott Weiland has battled his fair share of demons throughout, the band going on more than a few breaks and hiatuses throughout their three decades. The final straw came in 2013, after months of speculation that Weiland was hoping to return to Velvet Revolver, the bizarro world incarnate of Guns N’ Roses. With plenty of names in the mix for the new frontman role, the rest of STP decided they really didn’t give two shits and hired this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qlCC1GOwFw
Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, the less terrible Limp Bizkit. Uh… sure I guess. Their first single as Stone Temple Pilots was this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogv_-D8cwAU
Connect-the-dots, paint-by-numbers, whatever you want to call it, this is the worst kind of derivative hard rock out there. Stone Temple should really have just called it a day and moved on. An EP that was received pretty ordinarily soon followed and they’re apparently still a band, despite all the evidence suggesting that they shouldn’t be.
4. Joy Division to New Order
Here’s an example of a switch in frontmen that worked amazingly well. After the devastating loss of original Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis in 1980, a history of depression and mental illness bringing his life to a tragic end shortly before the release of their second album and first ever American tour, the other members of the group decided to keep going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuuObGsB0No
Bernard Sumner, the guitarist for Joy Division, took over the vocal duties and the band changed their name to New Order. From there they became one of the forerunners at the head of the New Wave movement, creating synth-pop sounds that were miles ahead of the game and writing massive hits like Blue Monday and Bizarre Love Triangle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uEBuqkkQRk
It worked, in my opinion, because of the name change. The Joy Division name was rightfully associated with the haunting, gothic baritone of Ian Curtis and to have kept that name while now using the vocals of Brian Sumner simply for the sake of a credible and recognisable moniker would have been something that may have alienated fans of the original band. By changing the name and the sound, New Order were able to forge a brand new path to continue on, one that was so successful in its own right that they’re still around today.
3. Mötley Crüe – with John Corabi
Mötley Crüe are what would happen if four sexually transmittable diseases came to life and picked up guitars. They were hedonistic, lewd, crude and just the wildest band going for the majority of the 1980s. They played a brand of heavy metal that was dirty enough to distance itself from the saccharine pile of hair metal bands at the top of the charts at the time while still incorporating a lot of the style and the pop elements that made those bands so successful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WU6DpFFWTM
Then just about every rock and roll cliche imaginable happened to them. Most of them ended up in rehab, bassist Nikki Sixx even died for a couple of minutes. They cleaned up and released Dr. Feelgood in 1989 but then the 90s rolled around and grunge happened. All of a sudden nobody gave a shit about hair metal, the Crüe included.
Singer Vince Neil either was fired or just up and quit (they still all can’t agree on it) and the band decided to carry on with one John Corabi of little known LA hard rock group The Scream on the microphone. What followed was uh… awful. In an attempt to stay relevant, they went all over the shop. They tried to sound like Nine Inch Nails and adopt a more contemporary industrial sound. Crickets. They also tried to go grunge as well, see if you can listen to all six and a half minutes of this horror:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gASy4hRFJkA
None of the young crowd took their new sound seriously because they were fossils trying to make music well out of their depth, and they couldn’t sell tickets to the nostalgia crowd either because they all wanted the familiar voice of Vince Neil out front. The rest of the band also (according to Corabi himself in their amazing autobiography The Dirt) treated their new frontman with nothing short of contempt while he was part of the band. And so after just one album, the band fired Corabi (at his suggestion no less) and replaced him with old mate Vince, still releasing albums that were never anywhere near as good as their 80s work but at least able to sell out arena tour after arena tour flogging their old hits.
2. AC/DC – with Brian Johnson
Right before Joy Division made their change to New Order, Aussie hall of fame rockers AC/DC experienced a tragedy of their own, losing original frontman and all-around legend Bon Scott to acute alcohol poisoning. It was an absolute tragedy, the band having just broken into the lucrative American market and looking poised to be huge. Most predicted it would be the death blow for AC/DC, until they linked up with new frontman Brian Johnson and proceeded to blow up on a scale larger than anyone ever expected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAgnJDJN4VA
Unlike Joy Division, they continued using their original name. Back In Black, the first album the band put out with their new frontman, became their most successful to date. It sold over 50 million copies worldwide and is only behind Michael Jackson and Thriller for the highest selling album of all time.
That is absolutely huge, even more so when you consider how drastically the vocal sound of the band changed with its frontmen. Johnson’s vocals were raw power where Scott’s had been slithery sleaze, but fans accepted the change with open arms and proceeded to catapult AC/DC into the stratosphere as one of the biggest bands of all time.
Critically, Back In Black was their peak and they never released a better album, oftentimes devolving into the dumbest of generic arena rock, but their level of success after such a tragedy is yet to be ever repeated.
1. Black Sabbath – with Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan
The grandfathers of heavy metal music and so many of its subgenres. Black Sabbath were a revelatory experience when their self-titled debut album dropped in 1970. Doomy, dark and demonic, featuring guitars with the feedback cranked and the wailing, unforgettable lead vocals of showman-extraordinaire Ozzy Osbourne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKttMFgaf0
Sabbath, like Stone Temple Pilots many years later, went through plenty of ups and downs in terms of original frontmen, the Ozzman doing just about every drug known to mankind while almost swigging booze in his sleep. Whenever Ozzy departed, the band were quick to replace him and the results often varied enormously.
After the band got tired of Ozzy’s shit for the first time in 1979, they replaced him with then Rainbow lead singer, a singer who was diminutive in stature but possessed vocals that soared up in the heavens (rest his soul), Ronnie James Dio. Some of the band’s greatest work was done with Dio, who brought about a change in both sound and attitude. They recorded two albums together, Mob Rules and the utterly amazing Heaven And Hell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frtJQFe9apw
It seemed like the new Sabbath were going to be just fine without Ozzy, who was busy forging his own marketable solo career. Creative differences between Dio and the rest of the band began though, and when he left in late 1982, founding members Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi decided to replace him with the then vocalist of everyone’s dad’s favourite hard rock group: Deep Purple. It sounded approximately this terrible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFJkNk6z3OE
Born Again is frequently regarded as Sabbath’s critical and commercial nadir. It was reprehensible to say the least. Their tour in support of the album, replete with a stage set like Stonehenge, had the immortal piss taken out of it in the This Is Spinal Tap mockumentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyh1Va_mYWI
Gillan went one and done with the band and Black Sabbath ran through a whole mess of nobody vocalists for years after that, hooking up with Dio again for a brief period, before Ozzy rejoined them in 1997. They’ve been kicking around since then (with Dio once more touring Heaven And Hell again in 2007), the band currently comprised of Ozzy, Geezer and Iommi. They reportedly have one more album left in them, their twentieth, and a final tour in 2016 before retirement.
Their career remains an example of how new frontmen can work like magic and how they can fail in a disastrous explosion of awful. A rock and roll tale that is almost Shakespearean.
We wish Blink-182 all the best and look forward to seeing how their new frontman situation plays out.
Someone with a little too much free time on their hands, and a lot of technical expertise with computer graphics, decided to repurpose Blink 182’s song What’s My Age Again into a new video, recreated in Grand Theft Auto V.
The video shows the main characters of GTA V – Michael De Santa, Franklin Clinton and the meth-addled Trevor Philips – running through the streets of Los Santos butt naked, shocking onlookers and running into unaware bystanders as they streak through the city and across a beach setting which strongly resembles Venice Beach.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19WZL5vwgZI&w=560&h=315]
The video culminates in the three characters running onto a military base, slapping down any army personnel who get in there way, and running onto an airstrip chased by a tank.
Managing to avoid the tank’s blasts at first, it eventually gets the better of them, running them over and finishing on the video on that oddly disturbing note. Presented in ultra-HD, the video gives startling details to the CGI characters and their surroundings – but all of the characters facial expressions remain weirdly fixed throughout the entire video.
One of Blink 182’s most iconic and revered videos, GTA V’s version of What’s My Age Again really ups the ante on the violence, which is unsurprising considering the incredibly vicious nature of the game. Meth-addict Trevor king hits unwitting pedestrians in broad daylight and the trio of psychopaths trample many sunbathers in their rampage through the beach.
The re-imagining was made using GTA V’s Rockstar Editor by a obviously very dedicated fan as an homage to both the game and the 1999 music video. Check out the original below for your own comparison.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7l5ZeVVoCA&w=560&h=315]
Words by Cozzie Wood & Lauren Ziegler
Following the news that FKA Twigs, previously Twigs, might be getting forced to change her name once again, we take a little look at five other artists who have had to change their names for legal reasons:
BLINK 182
American rockers Blink 182 had to add those three magical digits to their name after clashing with Irish pop/rock band Blink. Fans still debate over the meaning of the supposedly arbitrary number to this day. Official records claim it was a random number, but many have delved into conspiracy research, trying to find a deeper meaning.
Highlights of real fan explanations include:
– “The 182 is the number of time Al Pacino says the work “fuck” in the movie Scarface.”
– “Its actually because their name means f**k RB. rancho bernardo highschool. R is the 18th letter of the alphabet and B is the 2nd. they went to poway and one of them went to RB high. and i go there so i know this”
– “If you have to ask this now, you ain’t a real fan.”
Blink 182 are currently in the news for announcing, finally, what an astonishing dickhead guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge actually is and that he’s left the band. Their upcoming tour will feature Alkaline Trio‘s Matt Skiba. Apparently DeLonge has said that he never quit, and then wrote a long letter about it that I haven’t read because I don’t care.
THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS
Grammy-winning duo The Chemical brothers first Djed under the alias The 237 Turbo Nutters. Luckily, they quickly changed this to The Dust Brothers, in honour of the US production duo of the same name, responsible for works including The Beastie Boys‘ Paul’s Boutique, Beck‘s Odelay, and most importantly, Hanson‘s smash hit single MMMBOP.
Yes, The Chemical Brothers named themselves after the guys who produced this song.
The British big beat pioneers didn’t encounter any problems until embarking on their first international tour in 1995. Turns out that naming yourself directly after another artist doesn’t go down too well for the other artist – especially when you’re about to become one of the biggest electronic acts in history. Retrospectively, it was a pretty dumb decision. Threatened with legal action, they became The Chemical Brothers that we know and love.
THE RACONTEURS
One of Jack White’s many musical spawn, The Raconteurs are responsible for his biggest non-White Stripes hits including Steady As She Goes, Salute Your Solution and Many Shades of Black. Around the world, they are known as The Raconteurs. Except for here, in good old ‘straya. Some band from Queensland were already called Raconteurs. They were offered money for the name, but stupidly refused and asked for even more money. The record company said no. The band have 69 likes on Facebook and are probably feeling pretty sorry for themselves right now.
Anyway, White and co went on to release music in Australia under the name The Saboteurs. They’re currently on an indefinite hiatus, but that’s okay, because Jack White’s solo releases are sickkkk.
RÜFÜS
Speaking of Australia, Sydney electronic duo RÜFÜS had to revise their name in 2014: Introducing the all new (but exactly the same) RÜFÜS DU SOL. Don’t worry, incase you were wondering why you hadn’t noticed this sparkly new addition, its only for North America. The incident occurred due to an existing US trademark on the term ‘Rufus.’ Following months of “colourful internal debate” and “months of strongly worded letters,” they renamed themselves for their US audiences, “because trademark is a serious bitch.”
We don’t really know who specifically trademarked the name, but the Sydney Morning Herald reckons it’s Chaka Khan’s “1970s Chicago funk band Rufus, who topped the charts with Tell Me Something Good and Ain’t Nobody.” In any case, it seems that they’ve adapted to their new name quite well, considering one of the members has since been DJing under the similar name JÜAN DU SOL.
DAVID BOWIE
That’s right, even bloody Bowie changed his name. Formerly, Davy Jones, our favourite glittery starman was often confused with The Monkee’s lead singer of the same name. He was also generally unhappy with how boring ‘Davy Jones’ sounded, so he went and renamed himself after the 19thcentury American frontiersman Jim Bowie, who is also known for popularising famous hunting blade The Bowie Knife. He of course then went on to provide himself with a fantastic androgynous glamrock alter ego, Ziggy Stardust.
I don’t know about you but I can’t exactly imagine a world where Bowie was actually called Davy Jones.
Name changing seems to be a thing in his family. Bowie had a son in 1971 currently named Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones. For a long time, he was simply known as Zowie – or Zowie Bowie. He grew up and is now known, thankfully, as Duncan Jones.
A few more fun facts:
The Preatures used to be The Preachers
Eves The Behavior was Eves
Hinds were Deers
The Temper Trap used to be called Temper Temper
Panic! At The Disco were plain old Panic At The Disco
Similarly, Godspeed You! Black Emperor used to be Godspeed You Black Emperor!
Prince famously changed his name to a symbol, and for a time, becoming The Artist Formerly Known As Prince