Angels & Airwaves Get Moved by Bloc Party

Angels & Airwaves, the art-friendly, engaging rock ensemble fronted by Tom DeLonge will head home from the U.K., to play at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in their native San Diego. The stop will give the four piece not only a welcome homecoming after several weeks in Europe, but a chance to begin the final preparations for their October 23-due second album, 'I: Empire.'

Their European trip wasn't all hard work and slogging it out on stages to inebriated U.K. crowds. Last Sunday at Britain's Leeds festival, Spinner caught A&A frontman Tom DeLonge, meeting a real inspiration of his backstage -- Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke.

"I know Russell [Lissack], the guitar player, and I'm a huge fan of Bloc Party so I met Kele today for the first time," DeLonge recounts to Spinner shortly after his frontman-to-frontman introduction. "Our bands are both kind of part of the modern movement, I guess, so it makes sense that we talk. It seems to me we're both fans of each other, so it seems like a great time to hang out and get to know each other."

As it turns out, the meeting was slightly more poignant as Bloc Party and their debut album, 2005's 'Silent Alarm,' resonated deeply with the former Blink-182 man. "A couple of years ago on the first record, when it first came out in America, an old friend of mine started playing it in his car, blasting it," DeLonge recounted. "It reminded me of things I wanted to do with music, in a sense of like mixing drum and bass and music and electronic beats with a punk rock kind of sensibility. And they were doing it -- they were the first ones to do it so it was really cool."

It left an impact on A&A guitarist David Kennedy too, who Tom bombarded with the British four-piece's tunes, as their own group were in San Diego working on their own debut album, 'We Don't Need to Whisper.' "Remember when you pulled up, you even wouldn't get out of your car, which was weird," Kennedy says to DeLonge. "I was inside the building and you called me outside. You go, 'I'm going to play you a band right now that will change your life.' It was Bloc Party. It was very 'Garden State' of him. I was Zach Braff and you were Natalie Portman."

"In our scenario," DeLonge interjects, "he was Tony Danza and I was Alyssa Milano."

"He was Heath Ledger," Kennedy responds, "and I was Tobey Maguire."

"I was Danny Glover," DeLonge replies, "and you were Kevin Bacon."

"Was one of you John Cusack and the other one Jeremy Piven," Spinner asks.

"Only if they kiss," DeLonge answers.