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Grade A Funk

When Blink 182 took the stage Tuesday night, they blatantly lied to the audience.

"Nobody likes you when you're 23," they sang.

The hundreds of screaming fans disagreed.

The 20-something boy pop/punk band Blink 182 performed for a sold out crowd with Silverchair and Fenix TX on Tuesday night at the Mesa Amphitheater.

Unofficially known as the "Loserkids Tour," Fenix TX opened the show and warmed up the crowd for the Australian group Silverchair. Sound problems stopped the show for a few anxious minutes, but Silverchair finally retook the stage and finished, ironically, with "Anthem for the year 2000." Could the technological glitches have been attributed to an early case of the Y2K bug? Highly doubtful. "We'll make it up to you in the year 2000," they sang.

After all, the show must go on.

Even so, it was obvious who the stars of the show were from the beginning. Blink 182 had the crowd pumped before they even hit the stage. It took them a chart topping song, "Damnit" from the "Can't Hardly Wait" movie soundtrack, and a CD cover with the guys clad in nothing but their boxers and a few smirks to get the band noticed.

It may have taken them seven years to make it to the top, but now Blink 182 is hotter than ever with the release of their most recent album, Enema of the State (MCA Records).

So what happens when a couple of horny young men perform on a stage in front of a sea of fans?

Grade A, All-American punk with a little stand up comedy on the side comes oozing out. Basically, the show consisted of a bunch of adolescent, love-starved males kickin' it like they always do.

A sea of people literally swayed back and forth in front of the stage at the open-air venue. Security could be seen pulling crushed fans out of the pit at the front. One insane fan surfed right onto stage in his tighty whities only to get thrown back into the ocean.

The crowd ate up the sex jokes and immature comments Blink made throughout the show. Masturbation was one of the hot topics of the evening, including several more-than-PG rated jokes involving defenseless animals. In response to the rush of estrogen in the crowd, every other word from singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge's mouth was "boobie." The female population reacted to that word fairly strongly by lifting their shirts for the guys every chance they got. The audience loved it though, right down to the few brave parents in the back row accompanying their pre-teenage kids.

Blink closed out the show with one of its most popular songs yet, "Damnit." Of course the crowd begged for more, and brought the guys back on stage for an encore.

"You knew we'd be back out here," said Mark Hoppus, singer and bass guitarist. "It's written in the contract!"

When the show officially ended, adoring fans trekked around to the back of the complex to meet and greet the band. Unfortunately, the guys had to travel immediately so they weren't available for further comment.