006 - California

"You don't want to be like Tom, walking away on top. I want to walk away at the bitter end when no one cares."

## Episode Summary

### Housekeeping

* Sam surprises Josiah by announcing that he is currently in California, in a hotel room in Los Angeles. Sam put on California (album) in his rental car as soon as he arrived in Los Angeles
* Sam is in a time crunch (2 hours)

### Initial Thoughts

* Sam hates all songs that are like California, like Adam's Song and other slow blink songs. But its cloying pseudo clever lyrics and preschool melody had made him like it. It is a bad song that he likes
* Josiah thinks this it is painfully embarrassingly sentimental and a disaster of a song that he almost respects how awful it is.

### Main Discussion

* This song shows a full circle cultural shift as blink goes from being pop punk guys making fun of boy bands to sounding like the Backstreet Boys. The fifth co-writer on the song, Martin Johnson, has worked with lots of pop acts.
* Sam wonders if this pivot is a symptom of the fact that no one in their 40s is making vital music or if the poptimism movement is just breaking down genre barriers.
* In Coupe de Maine magazine, Mark said that Martin Johnson came up with the piano part, which was almost a show tune.
* Josiah suggests that the song sounds like a new U2 song. After boundary-pushing Neighborhoods was a flop, maybe blink just decided to make a record accessible to everyone
* This is almost Josiah's most hated blink song, but the one on Neighbourhoods where Mark takes acid is worse. Josiah also thinks California is worse than Love is Dangerous because that was just Tom's ego, but California involved 5 people.
* The line "beige little boxes" is gross (Josiah has a similar reaction to the word 'beige' as most people have to 'moist').
* It's unclear about what blink is trying to do lyrically with this song. Feldy describes the song as sounding like Wham's Wake Me Up and very 'jazz hands.' He also says it is about giving credit to the state they grew up in, which Josiah says is the band being absolute, teacher's pet losers. It also sounds like an attempt at a new state anthem, which could be accompanied by a video of Jared Leto plucking an orange from a tree.
* The song feels very long but is only 2 minutes
* There is not much more to take from this song other than "we live in California"
* Josiah assumed everyone on the blink reddit would hate California but was surprised to learn that the majority like it.
* There is a reddit theory, from JustinGitelmanMusic, that suggests the song is a triology with San Diego and Los Angeles. San Diego and Los Angeles represent the divide between Mark and Tom, California is what encapsulates them both (Josiah thinks this was written by a bot).
* Josiah notes that blink was really talking up the song and then they named their album after it and this build up may have contributed to the letdown he felt hearing it. They never played it once on tour.

### Final Thoughts

* Sam was embarrassed that other people would hear him listening to the song while he was stuck in traffic.
* Josiah agrees it is a "windows up, air conditioning on" type of song.

### List of Covers

1. Found by Sam - Joshholly3: Soundcloud drunk vocals cover. Sam enjoys the moxie, 4 listens. It sounds like they are playing in the middle, but that is just where the recording starting.
2. Found by Josiah - Bely Basarte: Youtube, 100K views, speaking in Spanish, shot by her parents in her house. They agree it is an improvement on the original and could be a CW song.

## Bands/People/Places Mentioned

* One Direction - shot one of their videos on the same beach from All the Small Things
* 5 Seconds of Summer - also work with John Feldman, are a corporation owned by One Direction
* Fat Mike - After Josiah laments being 13 and feeling better than other people because you drew an anarchy symbol on your binder, Sam suggests Josiah would get along with Fat Mike really well because he's still a punk
* Boys Like Girls - Songwriter Martin Johnson's band, Sam interviewed them for Exclaim magazine by pretending he had a film crew, which allowed him to see Avril Lavigne
* U2 - Everyone's cologne-drenched uncle uses U2 to show off the sound system in his Audi, but like blink, they used to be interesting and pushed musical boundaries.
* Death Cab for Cutie - Their documentary is declared the moment rock n roll died due to their insistance on showing themselves showing up to load in and soundcheck on time.
* Goldfinger - Josiah remembers the album with the underwater girl on the cover. Sam thinks the new Goldfinger records sounds like California but with ska parts.
* MxPx - Josiah's "true, in his heart" favourite pop punk band
* Jared Leto - Sam claims he has an additional Jared Leto tangent but will save it until episode 155.
* Park Chan-wook triology - film references that Sam makes to compare to the triology of California, Los Angeles and San Diego. Josiah mentions Koyaanisqatsi, but then remembers it is a tone poem, not a triptych. Sam then mentions that the Tea Party have an album called Triptych
* Bryson Tiller - Who Sam compares the song to after learning Feldy described the clacking sounds at the beginning as Travis's "trap beats"

## Other Notable Items

* Sam acknowledges he has maybe gone too far editing out tangents, however also says "the idea of seeing a podcast about a blink-182 song that's an hour and a half seems crazy to me."
* Sam says the idea for blink-155 was inspired by The X-Files Files by Kumail Nanjiani
* Josiah and Sam think they should do a Twitch stream at some point
* Sam learns that John Feldman is first referred to a "Feldy"
* Sam tells listeners that the blink-155 twitter is a good place to get follow up information because they have pledged to no discuss songs after the episode comes out.
* A theory that there is a shared universe between Ben Wah Balls and Wasting Time is alluded to but not explained.
* Josiah hopes their project doesn't gentrify blink-182 appreciation.