Blink-182: Cheshire Cat [GEFFEN]

Why you'll love it

This 180g reissue comes in a gatefold jacket. The album sold steadily through skate magazines and local radio, passing 250,000 copies by 2001 on an indie label.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Before the arena tours and the stadium choruses, Blink-182 were three San Diego kids playing all-ages shows in YMCAs, Elks Lodges and school lunch periods. Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and drummer Scott Raynor made Cheshire Cat for the local Cargo label in a hurry, and it still crackles with that first-album rush.

They cut it mainly at Westbeach Recorders with Otis Barthoulameu of local band Fluf producing, keeping the overdubs to a minimum. "Carousel" kicks off with that famous bass intro, "M+M's" and "Wasting Time" were the singles, and "Strings" and "Touchdown Boy" show how sharp their hooks already were. You can hear the debt to NOFX, the Vandals and the Descendents, plus a sense of humour that would never quite leave them. Sixteen songs, minimal overdubs, and the whole thing flies by at speed; nobody hangs about.

The record first came out under the name Blink, until an Irish band of the same name objected and the trio added the numbers. Thirty years on, nobody can agree what 182 stands for, and the band seem to prefer it that way.

Also at Kops: more Blink-182 on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Cargo / Geffen (cat# B0025293-01), a reissue of the 1995 album.