As X Games completed its final year in Austin, the action sports Olympics went out with an emphatic bang with a band whose music has been the soundtrack to skate parks for over 20 years , blink-182.

Punk rock has always been engrained in the counter culture of skateboarding through the early days of the Warped Tour to the music featured on the Tony Hawk video games, but pop-punk legends blink-182 proved again the marriage is a perfect fit Saturday at the Austin 360 amphitheater.

“Stoked (to play); been a fan of X Games for a long time, know a lot of people involved with it, so it’s good to finally play,” said bassist Mark Hoppus.

Skate-punk friendly songs “Reckless Abandon,” “Dumpweed” and “Josie” sounded great in a set surrounded by mostly hit singles. “Not Now” was a ballsy, surprising addition to the setlist. The X Games performance was blink’s best with Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba now at the helm on guitar.

The hype surrounding blink is at an all-time post-reunion era high, as single “Bored To Death” seemed to reinvigorate mainstream interest and fans are chomping at the bits for LP no.7 “California,” which drops July 1.

” ‘Bored To Death’ is doing really well right now and we’ve released a couple of the joke songs, and as it runs its course we will release another single, which we haven’t decided yet,” said Hoppus. “Ideally, we would like to release another song before the album drops.”

Blink-182 isn’t the type of band to have loads of leftover songs that don’t make the record, but this wasn’t the case with “California,” which is the band’s first record with Skiba. The band pounded out an EPs worth of material that didn’t make the final “California” cut.

“There’s a lot of really, really good songs (that didn’t make it),” said drummer Travis Barker. “There’s a song ‘6-8’ that didn’t make the record that was really heavy, kind of different for the band. There’s so much material that didn’t make the album that will possibly be on an EP or next album.”

All three members of blink grew up skateboarding and were immersed in the culture and Skiba drew a parrell to the action sports athletes and being in a punk rock band.

“Like skating or anything going on at X Games, you start doing it because you love it, and then you start doing it for a job, it’s a dream come true. As cliche, as it sounds , it is what it is,” said Skiba.

Bonus blink

Q:What are the plans after this upcoming tour ?

HOPPUS : “I think it will be a two-year cycle. We are touring all this summer and working on touring Europe and U.K.next summer and probably go into the studio after that.”

Q: There was a song called “Not For Real” that never made the last blink album “Neighborhoods.” What happened to that song / did it end up on the new album?

HOPPUS : “No, it is not. There was a song called ‘Not For Real,’and it never came together. I kept working on that was never anything we all loved, and it became one of those songs that just fell away. That’s what we always do; we start with an idea and if it comes to fruition we use that song, but sometimes it doesn’t happen.”

Q:There’s shout outs to bands like Rancid and Bad Religion on California.” Favorite Bad Religion song ?

SKIBA:: “You Are The Government”

HOPPUS: “How Much Is Enough?”

BARKER: “Generator”









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X Games setlist

Feeling This

What’s My Age Again?

Family Reunion

The Rock Show

First Date

Down

I Miss You

Up All Night

Bored To Death

Built This Pool

Dumpweed

Always

Stay Together For The Kids

Man Overboard

Violence

Josie

Happy Holidays, You Bastard

Not Now

Reckless Abandon

Carousel

Encore :

All The Small Things

Brohemian rhapsody

Dammit