Blink 182/The Story So Far – Manchester Arena Monday 16/10/2023

Blink 182 end European tour in grand style

The Story So Far have been supporting Blink 182 (and playing some club shows of their own) around Europe since the end of August and hit the stage tonight with great energy and focus showing them at the top of their game on this tour. Mixing songs from their back catalogue, focusing a lot on 2018 album – Proper Dose as well as new songs, that are greeted with approval from this Mancunian crowd. I feel that The Story So Far will be back in the UK soon to capitalise on the momentum that they are building here, that the covid barren recent years may have challenged, but certainly not defeated the band’s upward curve in popularity. The band are pretty thankful to Blink 182 for inviting them on this trek around Europe and it was really refreshing to see a headline band give their support a full lighting rig and great sound!

During the interval tracks from Stiff Little Fingers, The Stooges and The Cure help get this excited crowd to fever pitch as the Strauss’ theme to 2001-A Space Odyssey fills the air and the lights go down and Blink 182 hit the stage to pyro playing Anthem Part 2 as we see this futuristic pentagon shaped stage in all it’s glory. Blink 182 cover every inch of this peculiar shaped stage and look more a band in their teens than experienced middle aged rockers. The show looks incredible, with massive screens running different animations for every song and cameras making sure that every fan even those at the very back, have a cracking view of the proceedings. Second song The Rock Show goes into Family Reunion and this sell out crowd are treated to a twenty seven song set that covers all points of the band’s career, right up to Dance With Me, the current single from new album One More Time, each track is greeted like a long lost friend.

Blink 182 are having the time of their lives and if there is another band that is as funny as them on stage…well I am yet to see them. During the track Violence, drummer Travis Barker is blindfolded by a band mate but to no avail, the man is a drumming monster. His over exuberance is shown on the big screen when you can see that his hands are a bloody mess, as he has cut them to shreds rocking out. If this threat to his personal safety was not enough he spends about a third of the set hoisted to the roof of the arena, his whole kit hanging in the air above his fellow Blinkers, bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom Delong. Those two don’t just share vocals in Blink 182, they are also the butt of each other’s jokes. Do they sleep with each other’s Mums? Are they indeed better than both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones? In the world of onstage banter they are up there with Paul and John or Mick and Keith any day!!!

With all the funny and entertaining parts of the show, I do feel that some memorable moments of this last gig of the tour will all be ones that could have brought a tear to the eye. The crowd singing I Miss You so loud that you could barely hear the musicians on stage. When Mark Hopper talks about his Stage 4 cancer diagnosis and explains how it was meeting up with his Blink 182 comrades that started him on his road to recovery.

But in some ways, it was after the band had played their final track One More Time, and were greeted by a rapturous applause that the Oasis track, Don’t Look Back In Anger came through the PA and you could not help of thinking of the 2017 bombing in this very arena and the covid years that during which  it was closed….just how important music is and how it can help heal, not just Mark Hoppus from Blink 182, but all of us.