You can rightfully call pop music redundant, but that’s missing the point. While every song created today-especially the fodder for FM radio-has its obvious inspirations, that’s become part of pop music’s role: honoring those who came before with something more different than it is familiar.
And so while talking about how the slate of pop-punk acts that have all taken a “Dance Dance” cue from Fall Out Boy – the lively Chicago quartet that’s given the punk-loving kids a reason to dance – even the band’s outspoken bass player and lyricist, Pete Wentz, gives credit where it’s due.
Fall Out Boy is headlining this summer’s Honda Civic Tour, which kicks off at Coors Amphitheatre tonight. The supporting bill alone – including +44 (made up of former blink-182 members Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker), The Academy Is… and Cobra Starship – makes obvious their spunky influence.
“With +44, we grew up on blink-182, so we originally took stuff from them freely,” Wentz said recently from his home in California. “So if anyone notes that there was any sort of back and forth between us inspiring them or them inspiring us, more than anything, I feel honored to be in the middle of that.
“It’s great to say that we’re cutting-edge or that we smashed in these doors, and history will write itself however, but I’m just happy to be here. And I don’t want to take credit away from other people. We stood on a lot of other peoples’ shoulders to get here.”
Fall Out Boy is hardly groundbreaking, but they were the first mainstream pop-punk band to make the kids dance. It’s been a steady rise, starting with the band’s debut “Fall Out Boy’s Evening Out With Your Girl.” Wentz said that record was a picture of a young band who just wanted to get out of the town they grew up in.
The following year’s “Take This To Your Grave” cemented the band but not their sound, Wentz said. Their coming-of-age revelation came in the form of 2005’s “From Under the Cork Tree,” their major label debut and coming-out party.
“With ‘Cork Tree,’ we didn’t purposely try and break away from the pack,” Wentz said. “We didn’t write it with the intention of us doing our own thing and saying, ‘Hey, we’re different.’ We were just writing Fall Out Boy songs and hoping that people would like them.
“It’s the dumbest thing to say ever, but pop-punk needed to be reinvigorated with something a bit sexier and different,” he said. “There’s something to be learned from watching bands throughout history and the way they’ve changed things.”
He cites musicians ranging from David Bowie to Michael Jackson as artists who morphed and grew.
Fall Out Boy also stirred the pot. And their latest record, February’s “Infinity on High,” continues in that vein of gimmicky pop-punk unafraid of a time-signature swing or unexpected 1970s reference point. “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” is a fun, glammy and innovative single that proves there’s more to the subgenre.
“We just wanted to experiment with our sound, because we had the room to mess around,” Wentz said. “It was like, you’re on the precipice of this giant, looming thing, and why not take it as a big dive rather than dipping your toes in?”
The public frenzy over “Cork Tree” never allowed Fall Out Boy the leisure of dipping its toes into the water. The band’s rise was swift, and it’s taken unexpected turns, including Wentz’s sudden tabloid celebrity. The bass player’s mug is often in the supermarket tabloids alongside Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, which alarms him a bit.
“It’s fun, and it’s also really dumb,” he said. “I’m short and I don’t change my clothes and/or take showers. I don’t know why people are interested in me, but I guess people want to see others at their best and worst. But I don’t like people taking pictures of what I’m doing.”
When the band rescheduled the first few dates of its current tour, pushing the start date back a few weeks to today’s show in Denver, the rumor mill went crazy because they said it was due to personal issues.
“You say ‘personal issues’ and everyone assumes somebody’s in rehab or somebody’s dead,” Wentz said. “But we did it for the general health of the band. We had just done the worldwide release of our record, and touring really drives you into the ground, especially with time zones, going from Japan to Singapore to Australia to Paris.
“And so we took some time off, and we got the new songs down a little bit better.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
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Fall Out Boy
POP-PUNK|Coors Amphitheatre, Greenwood Village; 6 tonight with +44, The Academy Is …, Paul Wall, Cobra Starship and Dirty|$9-$35|ticketmaster.com or 303-830-8497
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4more
EL-P The always adventurous MC (and the man who started the indie label Def Jux) is touring on the strength of his excellent new “I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead,” which includes collaborations with Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails, Mars Volta and even Cat Power. He brings his high-powered show to the Bluebird tonight.
BOUNCING SOULS These Warped Tour favorites have been making music for nearly 20 years. They bring their punk revival spirit tonight to the Fillmore.
DAVE ALVIN He’s a legend in many roots-rock circles – a title he deserves given his work with the Blasters and the solo career that has followed. He plays tonight and Saturday at the Soiled Dove Underground.
KEANE “Under the Iron Sea” isn’t quite the record “Hopes and Fears” was, but this British band’s hearty fan-base will still represent Monday when the band takes on the Ogden Theatre.
– Ricardo Baca
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
CAT-A-TAC TALKS
The Denver rock band releasing its new CD, “Past Lies and Former Lives,” on Saturday at the Larimer Lounge, talks with Post music critic Ricardo Baca about its trip to the edge – and back. read at denverpost.com/music
