Virtuosic drummer Travis Barker was kind enough to offer a suggested remedy to decidedly loud wrongness this week.
Indeed, Barker—who will return to the road with the classic blink-182 lineup in February—initially offered a simple correction in response to someone who questioned his ability to play the kit with one arm. As longtime blinkiverse enthusiasts will note, Barker did exactly that during a series of shows while he was in the supergroup +44, including a performance of the Mark Hoppus-fronted band’s “When Your Heart Stops Beating” on The Late Show in 2006.
At the time, Barker and Hoppus were promoting the band’s lone album, also titled When Your Heat Stops Beating, in the wake of the seminal punk trio’s first split with Tom DeLonge.
Fast forward 17 years, and DeLonge has again returned to blink, complete with a new No. 1 album (produced by Barker) to add to the group's legacy. Meanwhile, archival footage showing Barker's injury-spurred inventiveness in action during a time when a reunion (much less two of them) seemed improbable still routinely makes the rounds, especially on certain anniversaries.
"I love Travis, but this is just playback," one Twitter (NOT X) user wrote in response to a +44 clip shared earlier this week. Barker responded, pointing out that everything heard in the video was "100 percent played live."
Later, the same person, this time referring to themselves as “the unpleasant internet guy,” pushed back by purporting they saw “some magic” happening at one point in the Late Show video. As fans know, and as Barker quickly pointed out, any so-called “magic” is easily explainable.
“My left foot is playing a midi snare drum with a pedal. That’s the magic,” Barker wrote. “You need to get laid and spend less time on the internet.”
Barker himself has commemorated the Late Show footage in the past, including in an Instagram post from 2021 captioned, “This was fun.”
Barker's latest mastery behind the kit and the boards can be heard on blink's aforementioned One More Time... album, the title track of which directly and quite effectively addresses the band's storied history while packing an undeniable emotional punch.
