From Warped Magazine ('94?) When seventeen-year-old Scott Raynor, drummer in the Poway, California-based Blink, first thought about playing in a rock band, it was pure fantasy. He and a few of his grade- school buddies imagined forming a heavy-metal group and each chose an instrument to play. "I was in fourth grade, sitting on the swings with my friends," remembers Raynor. "We were all into MetaUica 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." Although Blink displays its propensity for fun on Cheshire Cat, the band also shows signs of maturation. The songs "Sometimes" and "Cacophony" deal with classic punk themes of alienation and despair. In "Cacophony," vocalists Delonge and Hoppus explore their inner fears: "Words like for-ever, they scare the shit out of me. Maybe I'm afraid of commitment." The song's sicerity presents a welcome contrast with other tracks on Cheshire Cat. While he disagrees with some of the comparisons critics have made between Blink and other punk bands, Raynor admits Blink is still trying to find an identity. Raynor explains, "We get compared to NOFX a lot, and I really don't see the similarity. NOFX is one of the forerunners of punk music in America, and all punk bands sound a little like them, but I don't think we really do. Mark [Hoppus] plays chords like Ned's Atomic Dustbin, and Tom [Delonge] was influenced by the Descendants and a lot of East Bay punk. I guess all bands combine different styles, but I think we're starting to develop our own stvle." Although Raynor intends to finish high school by pursuing "home studies," he hasn't written college out of his life. "I'm definitely going to go to college, and eventually [I'll] grow up and get a real job," Raynor says. "Even if the band becomes really big, there's no saying how long it will last. I want to make good music, but I don't want to miss out on other opportunities. I'm already missing out on my senior year of high school. Besides, I don't want to be 30 and still in a punk-rock band. That seems kind of scary to me." -J.N.