Watch Blink-182 reunite with Matt Skiba for ‘Bored To Death’ at LA charity gig

Blink-182 reunited with former member Matt Skiba last night (February 13) as part of a special charity show for those affected by the LA wildfires.

• READ MORE:  LA music community tell us about “tragic” impact of wildfires: “This will be felt for years”

The Alkaline Trio vocalist who joined the band as a replacement for Tom Delonge in 2015, teamed up with the band for ‘Bored To Death’, which featured on their 2016 album ‘California’, at the Hollywood Palladium. You can view the footage below.

‘Bored To Death’ was the first Blink track released with Skiba as co-vocalist and it has also featured in the band’s live set since their reunion with DeLonge. It was the first time Skiba had performed the track with the band since 2020. His band, Alkaline Trio also opened the show.

After a seven-year run with the pop-punk trailblazers, Skiba’s time with the band came to an end after they announced that Delonge would be returning to the classic line up in 2022.

Last night’s one-off gig saw 100 per cent of the ticket proceeds from the event – which was staged by Live Nation who previously pledged $1million (£813,355) to help the music community affected by the LA wildfires – donated to the Pasadena Humane Society, California Fire Department, LAFD Foundation, and ARC Firefighter Fund.

Recently, Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker paid tribute to the incarcerated firefighters who helped with the Los Angeles wildfires, hailing them as “heroes”.

His own family were affected by the fires, with his children Landon and Alabama evacuating their Pacific Palisades homes during the disaster.

Members of the LA music community recently spoke to NME about being hit hard, with a number of venues, studios and artists being affected by the blaze.

Elsewhere, Skiba recently revealed that he wrote “almost a whole album” of new material with Blink-182 that was scrapped following Mark Hoppus’ cancer diagnosis, before he left the group. Skiba recorded two albums with the band – 2016’s ‘California’ and 2019’s ‘Nine’.

He said at the time: “There’s almost a whole album’s worth of stuff. It was supposed to be an EP, and it just kept going, and going. And now we have, I don’t know if they’re just going to get scrapped, but there’s eight or nine brand-new Blink-182 songs that are done. We basically finished those, and then Mark was diagnosed, if I’m getting the timeline correct.

“I hadn’t even thought about those recordings. But I have them. They’re good songs. I’ll keep them a secret. I’ll keep them safe forever. But we’ll see. I don’t know, maybe they’re something that we could open up and look at differently, or it’s something that’ll come out later, I have no idea.”

He also previously said that one of his biggest regrets was his first photo shoot with the band.

“My buddy Greg Teal, one of my best friends, ran Hurley (clothing company) at the time. I wasn’t even thinking about it but I was wearing Hurley shit [to rehearsal]. And I forgot that Blink was like the Hurley band forever,” Skiba said.

He went on to explain how he accidentally showed up in an outfit that was reminiscent of the DeLonge’s style, instantly regretting his fashion choices.

“So when I showed up to practice, I’ve got a baseball hat on and this Hurley T-shirt, and everyone was like, ‘What the fuck?’ Like, ‘You fucking poser! You’re trying to be Tom!’ and I was like, ‘I didn’t know we were going to take a picture,’” He continued.

“We took a picture against the door, the loading dock, and I’ve got my dopey Hurley shirt on, clueless to how that would read,” he said. “But that was the one thing where kids were like, ‘Dude, don’t do that.’ I’m like, ‘Do what? Oh, right.’ If I would have thought of it, I probably might have changed T-shirts, just because I don’t want to be that guy. So that was the one thing [I’d take back].”

Speaking to NME about joining Blink-182, he also said he got a lot of hate for stepping into DeLonge’s shoes, but “it only lasted until we started playing shows.”

He added: “The overwhelming amount of support and graciousness the fans have shown me overpowers any hate or shit-talking. It feels like our band – Mark, Travis, me and the fans. It’s not the same band without Tom but it has the same name, and I think there’s a good reason for that.”

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