Blink-182 sing the unprintable and make millennials feel mortal in Austin

First of all, when I say “millennial emotional terrorism,” it’s positive.

Amid giant inflatable rabbits, lyrics that would make a modern teen boy blush and the highest amount of jokes about having sex with people’s mothers allowed by federal law, Blink-182’s Friday night concert at Austin’s Moody Center felt, above all, significant.

I teared up three times. And listen, I’d laugh if someone told me that, too.

Blink-182 is the seminal — given the subject, feel free to engage with the dual meanings of that word — pop-punk band of the Y2K era. Love them or hate them, it’s doubtful anyone would argue that. Blink’s multiplatinum reign over the “Total Request Live” generation made their name synonymous with a scene. If Green Day were kings of Hot Topic, the Blink boys raised the Warped Tour crowd.

The band’s current tour marks the first time in a decade that the original lineup of Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker and prodigal Tom DeLonge have reunited. That gave Friday night’s concert the air of a high holiday. As I approached Moody Center, a mom told her young son, “You’re going to hear a lot of cuss words tonight, OK?” Ah, the passing of the torch.

She was right to warn the kid. For a show at the University of Texas, these three middle-aged men are still gleefully sophomoric.

An irony-soaked intro to “Also sprach Zarathustra, op. 30” and copious pyrotechnics led into a Monster energy drink-soaked string of beloved songs like “The Rock Show” and “Man Overboard.” A drink flew up from the floor during “Anthem Part Two,” ice suspended in mid-air like Tony Hawk coming up off the end of the ramp.

“Family Reunion” — the lyrics of which comprise 41 unprintable profanities, four conjunctions, one pronoun, the word “your” and the word “mom” — ended with a burst of white streamers spraying through the air. Don’t make me spell out the symbolism.

Hearts stirred for the first time with “Feeling This.” It’s a massive fan-favorite, the chorus a pressure valve to release anxiety about property taxes and fill the space with memories of late nights, tight pants and cheap beer.

“Fate fell short this time, your smile fades in the summer/ Place your hand in mine, I'll leave when I wanna,” the chorus goes, an invitation to stay in your salad days for the night.

It’s the perfect example of a Blink song. Barker, virtuosic, builds rolling towers of rhythm, as Hoppus and DeLonge’s distinctive voice trade off until they come together in a final, overlapping finish. The singers’ voices don’t sound the same now — they’ve got almost a century of age between them, which isn’t conducive to the sound of sneering youth — but they more than got the job done.

Time has not made their antagonistic banter any less puerile. (There’s no use making a “What’s My Age Again?” reference here, because any fan already feels pretty old by now.) A few highlights of the conversational lows to which Hoppus and DeLonge gleefully sank:

• Hoppus: ”I sleep in a big bed with my wife.” DeLonge: “What’s his name?”

• Hoppus said there’s a “bunch of cousin (expletives) in Oklahoma,” before dubbing the state “Any-hole-klahoma.”

• Hoppus: “I have a question about threesomes.”

• DeLonge, referencing Richard Gere: “You guys don’t know gerbil-in-the-butt jokes.” Hoppus: “Isn’t it time for you to quit the band again?”

Crass? Immature? Not politically correct? Yes three times, and yet, the characters felt like a part of the show. Culturally edifying, they ain’t. But, at the risk of making excuses for three privileged men who are well-off rockstars — one’s married to a Kardashian! — it played like performance art. Lean into the dissonance of the evening, the time-stuck jokes seemed to say, and find some humor in the fact that you have a 401(k) and you’re screaming out lyrics like, “My friends say I should act my age” and “The state looks down on sodomy” in rapid succession.

Back to the emotional significance of the night, because therein lies the alchemy that elevated an evening with Blink-182.

Try as they might, the trio couldn’t cloak growth, especially the kind wrought by their very real traumas. Before “Adam’s Song,” a band standard concerning loneliness and suicidal ideation, Hoppus opened up about his 2021 bout with cancer. He called the song a reminder about finding light in the darkness. Later, Hoppus made a sincere, full-throated call for more women in the music industry, praising the technician who runs their pyro.

DeLonge lent a hand to Hoppus’ shoulder while his bandmate discussed his health battle. Later, DeLonge addressed the interstellar elephant in the room: “Three years ago, a lot of people thought I was nuts.” Referencing his very-publicized search for extraterrestrial life, he dedicated the song “Aliens Exist” to two colleagues in his mission, who were in the audience. The number ended with tongue-in-cheek newspaper clips, one bearing DeLonge’s photo with the headline, “My brush with aliens.” Self-aware and still unapologetically passionate? Gotta stan.

The most heartwarming part of Friday’s show was Hoppus and DeLonge’s mutual love for the near-silent Barker, whom DeLonge called “the special operations force.”

Barker is a survivor, too — remember his near-death experience in a 2008 plane crash — and has become somewhat of a modern alt rock godfather in recent years, his hand guiding up-and-comers as his sticks pound on tracks for Willow Smith, KennyHoopla and Yungblud. At Moody Center, he was a stoic force of nature, drumming with a towel over his head, drumming in the dark, drumming on a platform lifted into the air.

So, this is a band that knows they’re no longer the nude delinquent heartthrobs from the “What’s My Age Again?” video. Hoppus said that the first time Blink-182 played Austin was in 1997 at Emo’s. Newer songs like “Up All Night” and “Bored to Death” understand the tension of being a pop-punk snot in a world that’s ripped you into the future. From the former: “Everyone works and fights/ Stays up all night to celebrate the day/ And everyone lives to tell the tale/ Of how we die alone someday.”

How could you not tear up a little, when confronted with juicy hooks, an arena of “All the Small Things” karaoke and evidence of your own mortality?

“Dammit,” the band’s first hit single from 1997’s “Dude Ranch,” was the perfect closing number.

As the song goes: “I'll turn to a friend/ Someone that understands.”

What’s a concert, if not a perfect night of doing just that through the most embarrassing tears of your life?

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Blink-182 tour reunites original members, honors pop-punk of Y2K era