Jason Tate
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Jason Tate
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Liner Notes (May 13th, 2023)

Cheers
Jason Tate

This week’s newsletter has early impressions of the new Japanese House album, thoughts on a really good week of new pop-punk and pop-punk adjacent music, and a love letter to summer. There’s also a playlist of ten songs worth your time, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.

If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week (it’s free and available to everyone), you can sign up here.

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Blink-182 Live at Coachella Bootleg

Blink-182 Bootlegs
Jason Tate

Blink-182 performed two nights at Coachella as their first two shows back after reuniting with Tom DeLonge. I wrote about what the first performance meant to me in my newsletter:

Last night, Blink-182 returned to the stage to perform with Tom DeLonge for the first time in almost eight years. And the return at Coachella was live-streamed on YouTube. While I feel awful for the fans that had their shows postponed due to Travis’s injury, this being the return, to a massive hometown crowd and the entire thing being streamed so that fans across the globe could experience it together … was such a perfect treat. I texted a few friends to let them know it was happening, sat down on the couch, and experienced a new Blink-182 memory that I’ll carry with me for years to come with a whole bunch of fans in the Blink-182 thread on Chorus. It was an incredible evening. The band sounded as good as I think I’ve ever heard them with Tom. Mark sounded incredible. Tom sounded like he wanted to be there. Travis was an animal behind the kit. Seeing the smiles on the band’s faces, seeing how happy Mark was, and hearing the banter back and forth again was everything I could have hoped for. I sat there with a stupid grin on my face. Just an hour of being happy. An hour of hearing some of my favorite songs being played by one of my favorite bands and getting to nerd out with a bunch of like-minded fans just losing our shit like it was 2001. There’s a magic this band has always had that just hits different. A mixture of fun times with band members that we’ve grown up emulating and songs that we’ve spent countless hours listening to. And for those of us they’ve infected, it’s been an almost lifelong obsession now. Last night was a beautiful entry into the pantheon of Blink memories. With all the band drama, the health scares, and the years adding up on all of us, to see the band at this level deliver on that stage, with all of us experiencing it together, was truly special. Maybe it’s because I turned 40 a few weeks back. Perhaps it’s a combination of the collective trauma of the past few years. Or maybe it’s just an elder emo being over dramatic on a Friday evening, but I couldn’t help but be a little choked up seeing this all play out. The adoration for the songs that have meant so much to me over my life, the happiness radiating from the stage, and the shared experience with other Blink fans, was one more addition to the scrapbook of memories I’ve had with Blink-182. And they absolutely crushed it. Blink-182 for life.

Being able to experience this show, with other fans, really captured how much being a Blink-182 fan means to me and how the fanbase really is a wonderful community. I’m not usually a big bootleg, or even live album, listener. However, these two shows were so much fun to experience, and were two of the best performances I’ve heard from the band in ages, that I felt like they should live for posterity for all fans to experience over and over again.

I used the highest quality rip of the performance I could find, a direct from source download. Then I cut the files up into individual tracks, using The Mark, Tom, and Travis model of where to put the dialog and splice the songs. And then I used my, admittedly very novice, audio engineering skills to “master” the files in Logic Pro. I tried to clean up the audio the best I could, removing extra artifacts, trying to reduce the audible “hiss” that permeated weekend two’s vocals, and giving the entire thing a more clean and punchy EQ. It’s edited to my personal taste in what my ears find pleasing. Then I raised the volume to better match what I expect an album to sound like, and avoid any clipping, and exported all the tracks as 320 kbps MP3s.

I added the awesome artwork done by Danyel Saldanha Evangelista and am now sharing the entire thing with other Blink fans. Please feel free to share these as I believe everything deserves more Blink in their life. And, I’m crossing my fingers no one gets too mad at me for sharing live bootleg audio only files.

Y’all can keep the videos for your YouTube channel, let us share and experience the audio!

UPDATE • Apr 28, 2023

Welp, Coachella’s lawyers are a bunch of party poopers:

God forbid people want to enjoy something and actually have a positive feeling about your festival. 🙄

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Liner Notes (April 15th, 2023)

Blink-182
Jason Tate

This week’s newsletter has thoughts on last night’s Blink-182 performance at Coachella as well as some other random comments on music and entertainment I consumed over the past week. As always, there’s also a playlist of ten songs worth your time, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.

If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week (it’s free and available to everyone), you can sign up here.

Read More “Liner Notes (April 15th, 2023)”

I remember turning 20. I was a sophomore in college building the website that would, in many ways, define the next two decades of my life. It was 2003. And while countless albums from those years left a mark on me, it’s often Fall Out Boy’s blue painted ‘Take This To Your Grave’ I think about the most. They blow up. My website blows up. And so begins a two-decade ride of following this band’s career. And it’s over these years that I find myself intertwined with the songs. Each album holds a special place in my memory for where I was when I first heard it, who I was with, and the person I was, even if that wasn’t the person I wanted to be. Those early albums became the soundtrack to my stumbling twenties. And when I turned 30 in 2013 I wrote about the band’s rebirth in a way that looking back was not so subtly partially autobiographical. So, it’s only fitting that I turn 40 a week before the band releases another album. In many ways, the perfect cosmic bow tie of coincidence. In others, the exact music I need to hear as I’m evaluating the person I am now, the life I lead, and the future ahead of me. Ever since I first listened to those early demos, there’s been something about how Patrick thinks about music that aligns almost identically with what my brain craves. The way he crafts melodies, uses syncopation, starts, stops, speeds up, and builds songs has been soul candy since the beginning. And it’s why from the moment I first hit play on their new one a few weeks ago I’ve had a massive smile on my face just thinking about the songs and what they created. It’s an album that wears obvious influence from each era of the band. And it culminates in arguably the band’s most cohesive and ambitious album since ‘Folie.’ I grew up listening to Fall Out Boy. If there’s a band that can define where I came from to where I am today it’s hard not to think of this one. And at the precipice of middle age, of no longer being able even half to pretend I’m not an adult, I find comfort in turning to this old friend once again. A boy on a couch with headphones, typing away about the music that moves him. I am, as I ever was, me. God damn, what a band. God damn, what an album.

Jason Tate Photo Blog

Liner Notes (March 25th, 2023)

Stars
Jason Tate

This week I write about turning forty and the new Fall Out Boy album. There are some other thoughts on new music I checked out this week as well, but it’s mostly about growing up with a band and how their music has punctuated some of the most important moments in my life. Yep, I like Fall Out Boy. Surprise. This week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.

If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week (it’s free and available to everyone), you can sign up here.

Read More “Liner Notes (March 25th, 2023)”

Nobody likes you when you’re … 40?

Yeah, I’m still not sure how I feel about that number. But what I have discovered is that moving into my forties has a much different feeling than any previous birthday. A decade ago was a time of massive change, I was moving down to the city and feeling burnt out with the website I’d been running since I was a teenager. Today I’m feeling more grounded and at home than I ever have before, while my passion for music has seen its spark renewed.

I’m happily married to someone that can make this incredible @blink182 cake and surrounded by the best friends and family I could ever hope to have. And most days the two cats keep me company while I’ve turned a once stressful “job” into a place to write and talk about music with people that share the same love of music and community.

Life continues to have ups and downs, but the last ten years have given me a new appreciation for what can be endured and how a stoic mind can give a calming presence to any stormy sea.

Anyway, I’m 40. I’m on the other side of the proverbial hill. Um, yeah, I guess this is growing up.

Jason Tate Photo Blog