WARPED
Magazine interview
"I was in fourth grade, sitting on the swings with my friends," remembers Raynor. "We were all into Metalica and stuff like that. We decided to make up a band, and everyone else got the good parts- guitars and vocals. I was stuck with playing drums. "I eventually started taking lessons and learned to play. When I was in sixth grade, I was really into metal and hessian rock. Then I started getting into punk a few years ago. Now, I like a lot of jazz drummers," Raynor says, sitting in the kitchen at the Rancho Bernardo, California home of Blink singer/bassist Mark Hoppus. To concentrate on the band, Raynor recently moved in with Hoppus' family after spending a year in Reno, Nevada. A few years after his initial bit of make-believe, Raynor met singer/guitarist Tom Delonge, now nine-teen, at an eighth-grade party. The two decided to form a band and searched for a bassist until finding Hoppus. Blink released its debut, Cheshire Cat, last year and is currently writing new material for an album due in April 1996 (yeah, try june '97 - they were just a bit off). Atlantic Records and Interseope Records have expressed interest in signing Blink, and the band will tour with Pennywise this November. Like Green
Day, Blink writes uptempo songs about raging hormones; songs like
"Carousel" and "Does My Breath Smell?" are devoted
to failed attempts for attention from the opposite sex. "Our songs
are pretty much about toilet humor and girls," Raynor says.
"I like bands that are political, but it's kind of cool to be in a
band that is just jolting around and having fun. Sometimes I think we
might be a little offensive, but we're not serious. We're not racist,
prejudiced, or sexist. We're just three guys jolting around and having
fun." |