1999 was the year we all got enemas.

If 1998 was the year I first felt the pull to music and the idea that a band and a sound could be my very own, 1999 was the year I saw what happened when that feeling went mainstream. In 1999 Blink-182 released Enema of the State and blew the fuck up. Over the years, people have asked me why I think this album, and this band, had the impact they did on so many people and why they were the ones to help bring this sound into the mainstream. I don’t really have the answer to that question, but what I do know is my story and why the band resonated with me in the way it did. I can only extrapolate outward from the reasons I ended up with posters of the band all over my wall and more Hurley t-shirts than any one child should own.

It’s 1999. I’m on the precipice of turning 16. The previous year was one of the most formidable for my young music tastes. I discovered punk and pop-punk music for the first time and began diving into anything that sounded remotely in that genre. I have my first real girlfriend. I have my first real “heartbreak.” Both are textbook examples of young stupidity and arrogant jealousy. Neither are helped by listening to music that reinforces the idea that girls are there to break my heart, and I’m the one that’s been wronged in all situations if my emotions have been hurt.1 Blink-182 and specifically Enema of the State played into this disaffected suburban youth mentality perfectly. It was a band and album that rebelled just enough and showcased what I wanted to believe I could be: a cool guy that just likes to goof around and have fun with my friends. Some girls try too hard; I’m just out there acting immature and weird for the laughs; where’s my dog? It’s a combination of music (catchy, fast, pop but with just enough of an edge to be cool), aesthetic (clothes, attitude, southern California vibe), and mentality (fuck it let’s just dick around, adults be damned), that was utterly addicting to a sixteen-year-old in suburban Oregon. And I ate it all up. I still remember begging my mom to pick the album up for me on release day so it would be there when I got off the bus. She did. I don’t think that CD left my CD player for months after. It was everything I wanted. And it went beyond the music; I wanted to be Blink-182. When I turned on my TV, I saw Backstreet Boys, NSync, and 98 Degrees dominating TRL. And I looked at the Boy Bands and thought, “I don’t look like them, I don’t act like them, is this who I am supposed to be?” and then I saw these three dudes running around naked with spiked hair and baggy t-shirts and skater shoes and it was the first time I had a model for something different. This was all pre-internet, pre-being able to find others to look up to or model your style or life around. I had MTV, some magazines, and now this new window into a world I didn’t know existed. This southern California skate/surfer vibe was like unlocking a part of my brain that said, “there are others out there that are going through similar shit, they made it through, they’re having fun, you can too.” So right as I’m seeing this world start to open up in front of me in the form of these bands, I also go to my first concert.

Over the past ten weeks, I’ve been looking at the old AbsolutePunk best-of lists and reevaluating my end of the year lists from some of the prime years in our music scene. But what happened before 2005? Over the next few weeks, I’d like to explore the very early years of AbsolutePunk and the music that helped shape my life.

It’s 1998. I’m 15. Every school dance is playing “Gettin Jiggy Wit It,” and boy bands are just beginning their reign. My clothes are too big. My musical taste is mostly made up of whatever my friends have been listening to. There was a grunge phase in middle school. I listened to a lot of Nirvana. A friend’s brother showed us Dookie. There was a Snoop Dog, Boyz II Men, and Salt-N-Peppa thing that happened in elementary school. I don’t remember it that much, but I remember a friend sharing some cassettes with me. And I was a child of the ’80s. I liked Michael Jackson. I had the Batman soundtrack by Prince. I listened to the music my dad would play on the record player every Sunday morning: The Beatles, Elvis, Simon & Garfunkel, John Denver. But my musical identity? The music that I called my own? The obsession with needing to listen to something every single second of the day? At this point in time, it didn’t exist. My closest friends were listening to Metallica and Pantera. I liked it well enough, but it never quite connected with me. It felt like the Nautica shirts I was wearing at the time, a costume I wore because everyone else was. This period, between 1997 and 1998, is where everything changed.