The Witzard

LEKTRON, L-R: Matt Skiba, Atom Willard, Hunter Burgan, and Randy Moore (SOURCE: Facebook, photographer unknown) LEKTRON was born in a torrential rainstorm in San Jose, California on a fateful winter night. What started out as an excuse for Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio, blink-182) to make some noise in a friend's studio quickly evolved into a Garage-esque Punk Rock band thanks to the recording prowess of Ryan Perras and the Black Belt guitar musings and structural sensibilities of Randy Moore (GET MARRIED, DOKI DOKI, Dan Andriano & The Bygones.) Moore actually works at Asian Man Records with owner and founder Mike Park. The three built the foundation for the songs "Dirty Jacks" & "She's A War" to be taken up by rhythm section juggernauts Atom Willard (Social Distortion, Against Me!) on drums and Hunter Burgan (AFI, Matt Skiba & The Sekrets) on bass. What started in the vibey confines of District Recording Studios in San Jose would be taken down to...

blink-182 - Viking Wizard Eyes, Wizard Full of Lies (ART CREDIT: Dan Schenker) Art Inhuman is a collaborative effort between Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) artist Dan Schenker and writer Matt Horowitz. Dan takes band names, lyrics, and song names and with the help of an A.I. manipulates them into what he feels best represents them visually. If you have a suggestion for an upcoming addition to this series, Tweet Matt at @SharpChedder856 and/or Dan at @heydanschenker and Tag the band or artist you'd like us to feature next. This project spawned from Dan's decades-long love of music. Dan had been a fan of the band FOLLY since early high school—for the blend of Punk, Ska, and Hardcore they seamlessly wove, for the energy their music made him feel, and for the almost disproportionately poetic lyrics and topics they covered. So, when Dan thought to input some of his favorite lyrics, song titles, and album titles into Midjourney, the results were staggering. He posted them to Face...

blink-182 "and" Scott Sellers (SOURCE: Scott Sellers) Scott Sellers, one-time frontman of beloved Rancho Cucamonga-based Pop-Punk/Skate Punk Rufio has been recording and releasing solo music at a rapid-fire pace since 2018's The Judge. Sellers has also played with a variety of bands since Rufio's 2007 break-up and sporadic brief reunions, including Mercy Street and BigCity with former bandmate Clark Domae . Sellers is known to be an avid blink-182 fan—Scott covered "A New Hope" from their 1997 album, Dude Ranch, on his 2020 covers album, Influence —and we're sure blink were a huge influence and source of inspiration for Rufio. By now, we all know the "classic" (well, second line-up) of blink-182 has effectively re-united as of last week, now including long-time members Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker & Tom DeLonge. DeLonge was in the band from their formation in 1992 up until they broke up in 2005 and then, again from 2009-15 when he left and...

Last Friday was quite the busy day for critically-acclaimed drummer/producer Travis Barker : his remix for rising Pop songstress Maggie Lindemann 's "Friends Go" was released, as well as "F9mily (You and Me)" from Country/Rap emcee Lil Nas X 's latest 7 EP, AND his main gig, Blink-182 released a new song, "Generational Divide." As many of you may know by now, long-time co-vocalist and guitarist, Tom DeLonge , was fired/quit Blink back in 2015. Prior to this, the band had been active with Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge & Travis Barker from 1998-2005, then, the band broke up for about four years, and reunited in 2009 for numerous world-wide tours. FULL DISCLOSURE: Blink-182 was amongst my first favorite Punk/Hardcore bands, so I'm a bit biased! I've always stated, I was happy when Blink returned—although, Mark & Travis' Electro-Rock/Pop-Punk band (+44) formed in the interim, put out one of my all-time favorite albums!—although...

Let me first just preface this by saying: THIS WILL NOT BE A SUBJECTIVE PIECE... I've been a die-hard Blink-182 fan for as long as I can remember and I believe their Enema of The State (1999) and utterly hilarious live album, The Mark, Tom & Travis Show: The Enema Strikes Back (2000) were amongst my first CD's nestled within my barren Walkman CD wallet, alongside Alanis Morissette 's Red Hot Chili Peppers -assisted Jagged Little Pill and Mariah Carey 's Daydream (which I believe featured her Ol' Dirty B*stard -helmed "Fantasy" Bad Boy Remix ). It always felt as though a Blink-182 or Blink -related side project like Box Car Racer , Transplants, Angels & Airwaves , (+44), short-lived Hip-Hop super-group Expen$ive Taste , etc. released an album almost every summer from 8th grade all the way through my college years; a sentiment that even rings true for the reunited California Pop-Punk band's latest Neighborhoods (2011) and appropriately...