There wasn’t one singular moment when blink-182 became the next biggest band in pop-punk, but 1997 was the year it happened. As their now-famous breakout Dude Ranch made its way up the ranks of rock radio, particularly its lead single Dammit, blink-182’s crowds gradually got bigger and more invested. Video of their Warped Tour appearances from early in the summer captures crowds who are mostly standing still, either uninterested or unaware of what they were witnessing before them.
But as footage from their show in LA just a few months later demonstrates, people were beginning to scream apropos of nothing in between songs—a solid metric for determining how beloved a band is. At that point Dammit was a bona fide hit, and the reactions they got from teen fans became the new norm. Yes, Mark, this is growing up.