Dude Ranch (album)
Dude Ranch is the second studio album by American rock band Blink-182, released on June 17, 1997, by Cargo Music and MCA Records, making it their major record label debut. MCA signed the band in 1996 following moderate sales of their 1995 debut Cheshire Cat and their growing popularity in Australia. Dude Ranch was the band's final recording released on Cargo and the last to feature their full original lineup as drummer Scott Raynor was dismissed from the band in 1998.
Dude Ranch
The band recorded the album from December 1996 to January 1997 at Big Fish Studios in Encinitas, California with producer Mark Trombino. With lyrical material written on their nonstop tours over the previous years, as well as completed songs, the band recorded with Trombino in sessions that lasted for five weeks. During production, the members of Blink-182 were plagued with difficulties only made worse by the rushed schedule: bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge, co-vocalists for the band, were having vocal problems and Raynor had to record his drum tracks with injuries to both feet.
The album was released in the summer of 1997 and was a success, reaching number 67 on the Billboard 200 and number one on the Top Heatseekers chart. The second single, "Dammit", became a rock radio hit single and helped the band gain mainstream credibility as they toured worldwide on the Vans Warped Tour. The band toured exhaustively behind the album, creating tensions which led to the firing of Raynor in mid-1998. Three more singles were released, with "Josie" gathering MTV play and charting highly in Australia. Dude Ranch eventually grew in sales and was certified platinum in the US by the end of the decade.
Music and packaging[edit]
According to music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Dude Ranch is an album of "juvenile, adrenaline-fueled punk-pop."[28] Billboard magazine's Doug Reece described it as "a collection of machine-gun-quick, energetic punk songs—sometimes with a puerile slant—about such topics as girlfriends, broken hearts, and fights with one's parents."[29] At Alternative Press, it was characterized as a "killer skate-punk record".[30] Greg Simpsons at Punknews.org too labeled it skate punk, stating that the album "set [the] blueprint for their style of poppy, goofy skate punk that they would later bring to the masses."[31] DeLonge considered the album a step up in terms of songwriting, with "Dammit" proving the breakthrough to him.[22] The album's guitar tone has been interpreted as scratchy and displaying a "blown-out quality that's in constant combat with the vastly more refined vocal hooks." DeLonge at the time was playing a "sticker-heavy" Stratocaster with a Seymour Duncan Invader pickup.[32]
"Pathetic" has been considered a tale of "abject self-pity in the face of collapsed relationship."[33] "Pathetic" is also reportedly about DeLonge's mother being disappointed about how DeLonge was doing in high school and college.[34][35] The distinctive riff of "Dammit" was created when Hoppus was forced to skip over the missing two strings on an acoustic guitar.[9] The song's theme is maturity, exemplified by the refrain, "Well, I guess this is growing up."[33] "Dick Lips" was named after an insult the trio bandied around at Big Fish during recording. It was written about DeLonge's experience when he was kicked out of Poway High School for showing up to a basketball game while intoxicated.[26] "Waggy" was a word Hoppus created while belching, prompting him to name the song with it.[26] "Untitled" has been considered a tribute to the emerging ska punk scene,[33] and "Emo" by its namesake, which is partly a tribute to DeLonge's favorite band at that time, Jimmy Eat World.[26]
"Apple Shampoo" was inspired by Elyse Rogers of Dance Hall Crashers, whom Hoppus dated; the title is culled from a particular brand of shampoo she often used.[36] "Josie" makes further reference to Dance Hall Crashers and the band Unwritten Law ("My girlfriend likes UL and DHC").[26] "A New Hope" takes the standard rock subject matter of a hopeless crush and rewrites it with details of the Star Wars series.[37] The original Star Wars trilogy were popular during Hoppus' childhood into the late 1970s and early 1980s, and a theatrical re-release in the late 1990s reinvigorated interest in the series.[36] "Degenerate" is a re-recording of a track that first appeared on the band's demo cassette Demo No.2. "Lemmings" is another re-recorded track, which had previously only been available on a 7-inch. The band felt the song was strong enough that it should not be limited to those owning record players.[9]
The cover design, a collage by artist Lou Beach, features a bull with the band's name branded on its rear end, while the packaging is decorated by images of the band as cowboys on a "dude ranch".[12][33] The gatefold packaging features a painting stating "Greetings from the Blink-182 Dude Ranch," which was intended to be a pastiche of both "cheesy postcards" and a parody of Bruce Springsteen's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J..[33] Art direction for the album was headed by MCA in-house graphic artist Tim Stedman, with Stedman and designer Ashley Pigford crafting the visual package.[12] The CD art, a revolver chamber, was designed by artist Victor Gastelum, while the band photography was done by Steven Shea.[12] DeLonge recalled in 2012 that the only "bad" aspect of Dude Ranch in retrospect were the jokes found within the inside artwork: "I remember sitting at the Sombrero taco shop going, 'Fuck, we’ve got to finish off our album cover, let's just write some jokes to these cowboy pictures.' Why did we do that? We should have had better jokes for those pictures."[19]
Touring[edit]
Beginning in the summer of 1997, Blink-182 would enter an extended period of touring. The group had played a handful of dates on the Vans Warped Tour 1996, a lifestyle tour promoting skateboarding and punk rock music. However, upon Dude Ranch's release and popularity, Blink-182 would play every date of the 1997 tour worldwide with influences Pennywise, NOFX, and Social Distortion. "The Warped Tour is really more of a traveling-band barbecue," commented DeLonge. "You hang out with the other bands all day, you play your set, and then hang out again."[67] In late 1997 and early 1998, the band would be on the road for nine months straight, only coming home to San Diego for days at a time before striking out on the next tour.[68] "When we did our longest tour stretch, it was right when I started dating my fiancée," recalled DeLonge. "We were all new and in love, and I had to leave. It was just, 'Hey, I'll see you in nine months.' It was really hard."[69] In addition to the hefty touring schedule, the trio grew tired of other commitments, including interviews and TV appearances due to the success of "Dammit".[47]
Desperate for a break, the overworked band began to argue and tensions formed.[69] Raynor, who was at the center of this drama, had been commenting of his desire to attend college for years, and had been taking homework out with him on tour to try and complete his high school diploma.[70][71] The tension came to a head in February 1998 as the band embarked on SnoCore 98, described as "a winter version of the Warped Tour." Sharing the stage with Primus, the band was enjoying more success than ever before, but the drama between the musicians had grown substantially.[72] The band reached a low point when the band engaged in a fight on a Nebraska date after SnoCore's conclusion.[48] Shortly after the conclusion of SnoCore was a short minitour along the western coast, most notably Southern California, the band's favorite place to play. The tour ended with the band headlining a sold-out show at the Palladium in Hollywood, California, where the band had dreamed of performing at for years.[73]
Raynor suffered a "tragic loss" during the West Coast minitour and flew home, forcing the band to find a fill-in drummer: Travis Barker of the ska punk support band The Aquabats.[74] Barker learned the drum tracks for the band's set in only 45 minutes prior to his first show.[59][75] Raynor returned for the band's Hollywood Palladium performance, and the band became increasingly uneasy and arguments grew worse.[75] To offset personal issues, Raynor began to drink heavily and it began to affect the band's performances.[76] Following a largely successful Australian tour in the spring, Hoppus and DeLonge presented an ultimatum: quit drinking or go to an in-patient rehab. Raynor agreed to both and informed the band of his decision after taking the weekend to mull options.[76] According to Raynor, he was fired through a phone call despite his agreement to rehab.[77] Despite this, he felt no malice toward his former bandmates and conceded they were "right" to fire him.[76]
The band would minimize the impact of the situation in future interviews and remained vague regarding his departure.[76] The "Josie" CD single, released in the US in November 1998, was the first Blink-182 release to feature Barker in any capacity (he is pictured on the back cover alongside Hoppus and DeLonge).[24] Barker would join Blink-182 full-time in the summer of 1998 and toured with the band for the remainder of the year, playing sold-out shows across America on the PooPoo PeePee Tour.[78]
Legacy[edit]
Dude Ranch was the band's first leap into the mainstream and proved to be a pivotal moment for the trio. While subsequent albums sold more copies, Dude Ranch has proved influential in other ways. Lindsay Zoladz provides context for its place in the band's canon in a 2019 piece for The Ringer: "For a lot of pop-punk fans who felt the whiplash of Blink's sudden late-'90s transformation from Warped Tour upstarts to genuine TRL heartthrobs, Dude Ranch came to develop a mythic, almost Edenic glow. It was their final punk record, the one they made before they went pop."[79] Trevor Kelley from Alternative Press credited it with "reigniting" the pop punk movement while calling it a "huge source of inspiration for a new generation of bands," such as Midtown and New Found Glory.[22] The members of FIDLAR credited the album's impact,[80] while original Panic! at the Disco guitarist Ryan Ross has cited the album as his first influence: "I wanted to learn how to play like Tom DeLonge [on Dude Ranch]."[81] The musician Day Wave has said the album made the band his grade-school heroes;[82] likewise, the Wonder Years frontman Dan Campbell wore out his copy of the album: "I played Dude Ranch to death," he laughed in a 2022 interview.[83] Some writers, like Chris Payne at Billboard, have suggested hints of the album's impact in groups like Cloud Nothings.[84] In a 20th anniversary piece celebrating the album, Maria Sherman, writing for MTV News, commented that on Dude Ranch the trio "found a subversive way to embrace lameness as something to be commended—a language all outsiders could understand."[1] Vice columnist Emma Garland writes: "Dude Ranch remains a formative and timeless classic [...] the perfect segue from [Cheshire Cat to their 1999 effort Enema of the State], capturing Blink-182 right on the precipice of self-discovery."[85]
At least three full-length album covers of Dude Ranch have been released. In 2019, American musician Colleen Green issued a cassette-only cover of Dude Ranch in her signature lo-fi style.[79] Green's cover was widely celebrated: "There's a sepia quality to Green's covers, as if they've been filtered through translucent gobs of memory," wrote
Randall Colburn for The A.V. Club.[86][87] It's Never Over Til It's Done, a charity album supporting Black transgender communities, was released in 2020 and contained covers by bands like Joyce Manor, Adult Mom, and Rozwell Kid.[88] Another "concept cover album" by American musician Cameron Hurley (under the name new.wav) saw release in 2023, this time in the high-energy and sonic style of the band's later work with Barker and producer Jerry Finn.[89] The album's title is also the namesake for one Blink-182 cover band.[90]