One Eighty Two @ Cathouse Rock Club 02/09/2023

Where: Cathouse Rock Club – Glasgow, Scotland (UK)

Venue rating: 10/10 (I can’t complain)

Who I went with: Paul!

Where we stayed: Ibis Budget Glasgow (You can never go wrong with Ibis and there was a lot to do around the hotel to keep us entertained)

How we travelled there: Paul drove from Inverness

Beverage of choice: Jack Daniels and Diet Coke

SETLIST:

Feeling This
Anthem Part Two
The Rock Show
Dumpweed
Aliens Exist
Man Overboard
First Date
Edging (with Greg from the crowd)
Stay Together For The Kids
Reckless Abandon
Down
I Miss You
Carousel
What’s My Age Again?
All The Small Things
Dammit (with a snippet of No Scrubs)
Family Reunion

This weekend didn’t turn out how we expected it to. We booked to see Blink-182 at The Hydro back when the tour was first announced, during the pre-sale. Paul has been a huge fan of the band from the beginning and I have learned the majority of their songs through him, only knowing ‘All The Small Things’ and ‘I Miss You’ when we met in 2016, which is embarrassing to admit. We found out they had postponed their Scottish and Irish dates when we had just taken the last bites of our lunch at Harvester, during our regular pit-stop in Perth. My heart ached for the rest of the day and Paul said he had to go outside to get some fresh air. I thought it was because he was completely devastated but it turned out he had over-eaten and felt a bit sick. Curse the tempting free salad bar when the servings are already large as it is. It is not the first time the band has cancelled a concert in Glasgow from what I have read online but it seems serious this time around. Travis Barker has had to return to the US due to a family emergency. We haven’t received an update yet but I hope whatever it is works itself out and everyone is as okay as they can be. It’s only speculation at this point. I was scrolling down Twitter (or “X” as it is now called) and saw lots of fans complain they had travelled hundreds of miles and are now out of pocket, not being able to come back for the rescheduled date. Many said they should have organised a stand-in drummer for Travis but you can’t easily replace a beloved core member of a band.

There were now hundreds of people in Glasgow, unable to cancel their trip and searching for something fun to do to fill the holes in their souls the unexpected news had left. I was looking up events as we drove into the city but knew we had just missed Connect Music Festival as well The Killers and Paolo Nutini in Edinburgh. We considered checking out other music venues as there is certainly no shortage of them in Glasgow but didn’t recognise any of the bands we came across on the posters. Instead, we ended up spending a lot of time in the arcade beside our hotel. I kept checking my phone and was delighted to see the Cathouse staff had worked so hard to pull together this event at such short notice. The effort they all put in to make this gig possible is genuinely heart-warming and I also have a lot of respect for the band, driving all the way up from London at the last second to give us poor fans our Blink-182 fix.

Gigantic.com describes One Eighty Two as “The UK’s Number One Blink-182 Tribute Band” and there is a paragraph about them on there stating they mainly travel throughout England and Wales playing songs from all of the albums, old and new. People seemed to already know about them, as far as I could make out from the comments online. Some fans had already done a u-turn and travelled back home but wished us all a good night, confident we would have a great time because the band are so enjoyable. I gave Paul the responsibility of jotting down all the songs they performed, as he is still a much bigger fan than me. We queued half an hour before doors opened as there were already people waiting outside. There was such a good turnout that some people had to be turned away. We passed the time by competing against each other, seeing who could spot the most people wearing Blink-182 or Angels & Airwaves merch. Staff came out and snapped a couple photos of the ever-growing queue. There were a lot of amusing comments online aimed at the dedicated fan who dressed up as the hilarious character Boomer from the ‘First Date’ music video.

Entry was pretty straight-forward. Tickets were only £5 each, which was a bargain. Attending the gig also meant we could access the nightclub for free after 10:30pm if we wanted to. As soon as you get in, it is obvious the venue is nice and incredibly atmospheric. There are signed guitars lining the walls from musicians who have played there over the years and the names of the bands on the steps. There is interesting decor everywhere you look and I caught myself taking a lot of photos once we were inside. The girl doing the bag checks at the top of the stairs laughed at the stupid key-ring we won at the arcade because it was the only thing I had in mine and I wanted the ground to swallow me up in that moment. We got drinks first and then headed to the barrier. I was conscious the venue was on the smaller side and worried the room would fill up quickly, depending on whether they let everybody in or cut off access. You can’t see the stage from the bar but there are screens dotted around the place if you choose to rely on those instead. The sound was loud and clear enough, even if people were chatting at the bar. Paul and I kept guessing who they were going to play over the speakers next, since they kept to the same genre as Blink-182. There were screens on the walls advertising bands who are visiting Glasgow next, which reminded me about Fall Out Boy next month and got me excited for Wheatus.

They came out after about an hour to Richard Strauss’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ theme, like Blink-182 sometimes does. They never introduced themselves using their real names but perfectly captured the mannerisms of Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge. They even put on fake American accents and made similar silly jokes (such as ad-libbing crude lyrics), only slipping into their regular voices to address us seriously from time to time. They said they wanted to join us all for drinks after the show, since they had come such a long way in a short space of time. They explained how they didn’t have a drummer available (much like the real Blink-182) so borrowed Seb who plays for Biffy McClyro, the Biffy Clyro tribute band. He only had twenty four hours to learn all of the songs! He did an amazing job and seemingly even requested they add ‘Carousel’, which is extremely difficult. The whole band did an incredible job, as all of the songs were instantly recognisable. We were especially impressed by the Tom DeLonge impersonation, as it really sounded like it could have been him singing at points. Mark Hoppus is probably slightly harder to emulate as his singing style is not as distinctive (people were imitating Tom in the queue for laughs when we were waiting) but their voices sounded great together and gave us as authentic an experience as we could get in the circumstances.

Someone in the crowd shouted out a request, predictably. I didn’t catch what it was but they said to him Seb has a hard enough time learning these songs without having to do an obscure B-Side from 2010! He was very impressive and I wouldn’t have noticed he wasn’t their regular drummer if they hadn’t said anything. It must have been an exhausting couple of days for him. Fair play to him for agreeing to do it. They said they thought they better put the new single ‘Edging’ into the setlist as the band are performing it on this tour but the lyrics were a bit hazy to them still. They asked if anyone would like to come up and help them sing it and someone named Greg raced on to the stage. He was maybe a tad over-confident as he didn’t know one hundred percent of the words but he did a great job regardless and received a lot of encouragement from the crowd. Almost everybody started chanting “One more tune!” when they stopped playing and they did ‘Family Reunion’ for the encore, which is one of the funniest songs and a good one to end on, even though it is under a minute long.

The setlist was well assembled and they fitted a good number of songs into the hour-long time slot. I was sad when it ended, as time seemed to fly by. They announced when they had only a few songs left, so I tried to enjoy them as much as possible and not think about the night coming to an end. They included most of the biggest hits and the only song we were surprised they didn’t do was ‘Adam’s Song’. I was confused when they started the chorus of ‘No Scrubs’ during ‘Dammit’ but Paul said it’s not unusual for Blink-182 to do that, sometimes choosing even more random songs than that. I had been doing my homework and comfortably knew all of the songs except ‘Man Overboard’, which I clearly need to listen to again. We were right beside the speakers on the left-hand side, which may have given us permanent ear damage. We wanted to be in the thick of it and get the best photos we could manage.

Paul’s favourite song from the night was ‘First Date’ and mine was probably ‘Aliens Exist’, as it has been stuck in my head since. Although we were all deflated, this definitely helped patch the devastation. It was lovely seeing all the dejected fans coming together to make the most of their time in Glasgow and start chatting to one another. One Eighty Two said the band must have put off the concerts for a good reason and will surely be back to make it up to us. It’s not clear whether the rest of the Europe tour will be affected but we will find out soon enough. Some fans were understandably frustrated but nothing is guaranteed and everything you book comes with risks. I hope the people who travelled long-distance had a good time in Glasgow anyway. It is my favourite city and times like this make me feel even more fond of it. The weather was great, too! All in all, it was a brilliant night and I would return to the Cathouse in a heartbeat. If you are ever in the area, it is definitely worth tracking down.

GALLERY: