Dude ranch

Description

Dude Ranch is unquestionably blink-182’s most juvenile album. Released in June 1997, this second effort is certainly the Californians’ most wild and unruly: the trio’s favorite theme—the love and sex life of the average teenager—appears on almost every track. From a historical standpoint, Dude Ranch also deserves mention for two reasons. First, it is the last album on which Scott Raynor, the band’s very young original drummer (later replaced by Travis Barker), appears before his departure; and second, it is the band’s last album to be released on an independent label, Grilled Cheese. The fifteen tracks, all in punk rock format, take the listener onto American college campuses, populated by weird, acne-ridden, bespectacled students, thick-headed football players and seducers, and cheerleaders whose only role is to be prey for the other two groups. Produced by Mark Trombino, this Dude Ranch is by no means a dumb, mean-spirited musical product. The three boys in blink-182 know exactly what they are doing, and know by heart the world they describe, with humor, good-naturedness, but also complexity (“I’m Sorry,” “Lemmings”) and perspective. Funny, sometimes childish (crude?), but ultimately far from the idiots they sometimes portray in their songs, the members of blink-182 deliver here their foundational album, in a way.