All Time Blow

Maybe I’m just getting old, but I can’t be the only one to be a little uncomfortable by the sound of members of All Time Low telling an audience of 14-year-old girls they’d quite like to ‘ejaculate’ all over them while on stage of their recent UK tour. Now I want to stress I’m not writing this blog because I’m upset the band managed to get away with the fact they got booted out of a hotel on the night of a planned Kingston DJ set and the police were called. Nor the fact that I think they’re really lame for flaking out of a scheduled appearance which fans had paid to see because ‘they’d eaten a big meal’. Nope, this is just a rant because I’m astonished, in this day and age, no-one else has picked up on it. I’m no prude. I’m not a member of Mothers Against Brokencyde either. But I do have a level of taste and decency. If I stood outside the school gates and accosted teenage girls and told them I wanted to do rude things to them the likelihood is I’d either a) be arrested, b) get a smack off someone’s dad or c) be labelled a nonce. Or maybe even all three. So how can a group of grown men not only get away with it, but seemingly be loved for it too? As all of Saturday evening’s “arrest” nonsense was going down ATL became a hot topic on Twitter. The sheer number of youngsters talking about them was staggering. I knew they were big in the scene, but i didn’t realise just how big. Nor did I realise just how young their fanbase was. I’ve heard and reviewed a couple of their records and thought they were reasonable at what they did. Good but never great. And lyrically they’re a clean-cut band singing songs about teen heartbreak that everyone can relate to.

So where’s the need for the on-stage filth? I spoke to a couple of friends who went to the ATL tour over the last two weeks and they were pretty surprised at some of the on-stage banter. They don’t exactly discourage underage girls from flashing and they (apparently, I wasn’t there) made more than the odd reference about wanting to ejaculate on the crowd, amongst other things. And yeah I know Bink 182 made jokes about fucking dogs and the like but this seems to be a little weirder. I just find it odd no-one else finds it weird. Of course they’re Kerrang’s premier band on the mag’s tour next year so don’t ever expect a bad word to be said about them there. Maybe someone can find an interview where someone’s asked them about their on-stage habits. i’d be interested to find out how they justify being, well, sick.