I was at the same Blink / Bad Religion concert as Kip was, at Darien Lake near Buffalo NY. I'll post my comments in the extended section of this article.





This was a show I was not intending to attend at all. The price of a ticket, with the Canadian exchange and the ticketmaster handelling charge was a bit too much. However a friend of mine was in a bind so I bought his.

I had a rather biased opinion going in. When anyone asked, I said I was going to see Bad Religion... Blink 182 was an afterthought to me... Fenix TX was in another dimension entirely. I arrived during the end of Fenix TX's set, spent my time getting a cross-buster t-shirt while they entertained the crowd of young (younger than me) kids.

I moved through the screaming hords of pre pubescent girls and used my trump card, my pit ticket, to get up front. Bad Religion was, needless to say, amazing. Greg Graffin wore a US Scoutmasters uniform, adorned with bad religion patches as merit badges. BR put on a great show in the time they had. The new songs were played well, accompanied by they're amazing older stuff. Infected (from Stranger than Fiction) was powerful, and the version of Generator was very good (it was not so much alternative, as much as it had a slow build up before the ass-kicking commenced). My only regret is that they ran out of time, and were unable to play Fuck Armageddon... This is Hell (which they do at the end of most shows).

When Blink ran out I was at the back of the pit area. I was perfectly satisfied by Bad Religion, so it didnt matter who was on stage at that moment. Blink was not as bad as they have been in other live performances I've seen (SNL, Much's SandJob were just horrible). However, I could see a difference between the "emerging" Blink I saw at Warped Tour last year, and this "popular" Blink we have today. At Warped they played more for the fans... but then again this was at the time when Enema Of The State was just released.

In the end I managed to blow an entire roll of film on Bad Religion, not one shot for Blink. I can understand why they played together. Bad Religion wants to expand their audience, which is fine, they have been around for 20 years. In my opinion they have paid they're dues and already have a solid fanbase. As a final thought, during Blink's encore, Jay Bentley and Brian Baker of Bad Religion were sitting beside the drum set (on one of the couches Blink had setup), they both looked quietly amused with the whole ordeal.