On Sublime

Sublime were one of the first bands I ever really loved. I had gotten into Green Day just a few years before, but I think I found their lyrics a little hard to parse sometimes. This seems kind of funny now: "when masturbation's lost its fun you're fucking breaking" is lab engineered to be something that a 14 year old could relate to. But something about Sublime seemed even rawer than Green Day. They had even more curse words and drug references. Their CDs bore the mark of 2000s authenticity, the black and white parental advisory sticker, which meant I was not allowed to own them. They seemed seeped in the mysteries of the adult world that I craved access to.

I remember sitting on the floor in a guitar store while my dad noodled, next to a rack of guitar tablature books, reading through the Sublime self titled one so that I could learn all the lyrics (and make note of all the cuss words). Later, I would buy all their albums on the sly; cool record store clerks never actually gave a shit about that sort of thing.

Lyrics about drug abuse and sordid sexual encounters and keeping a strap, switching to Spanish from time to time, throwing in bits of hip hop slang, and melding reggae and punk rock and ska and turntablism and samples. It all seemed mind-blowing to me, a window into the secret underlife of America. I hadn't heard Odelay, or Hello Nasty, or whatever the "cool" version of this would have been; for me, it was Sublime.

In the song "Garden Grove," Bradley Nowell lists a series of sordid hood rat behaviors that he routinely engages in, then says that all this is "waiting for you," like Aladdin gesturing to the gigantic universe from atop his magic carpet, except in this case the whole gigantic world mostly consisted of walks to the corner store or the drug dealer's apartment.

It seemed to say, the world is fucked up. Not necessarily in a political way, but more in the Bukowskian "human as animal" way. So what else was there to do but get loaded to the point that you could barely stand, and play chilled out white boy reggae?

Punk in general - and I will argue that Sublime firmly belongs in the punk pantheon, whatever else they may have been - was also a way for me to try to escape the ghetto of nerddom that had exemplified my pre-adolescence. Now as a teenager, I wanted something else.

The idea of being a chill stoney crooner; by turns macho and sensitive, capable of kicking an ass but also feeling the weight of the world oh so deeply, and in such a way that could only be expressed through my music, man....

The dream stuck around for a little bit; some of the first songs I wrote for No Gentleman included that kind of groovy ska/punk/reggae vibe (we would ditch the ska before too long and come into our own fully as snotty Descendents style pop punk). But I don't think I ever made a convincing Bradley Nowell; scrawny body, pointy nose, socially awkward when I wasn't drunk or trying to play a role, trying to shoot above my pay-grade.

I had no idea that almost all of their songs are riffs on older reggae or punk songs, even the ones that aren't overtly advertised as being a cover. No one knew what cultural appropriation was back then anyway. It was only later that I learned of their reputation as, as what my friend Jon coined, "frat boy boner jam music."

Still, there's a memory that feels stapled to the core of my brain, not directly related to Sublime but a key moment in this sort of fantasy universe that I was building for myself. In my junior year, the high school band went on a trip to Hawaii; ostensibly to play a "concert" though mostly just an excuse to go on an extended field trip. We only played one concert - somewhere near the Pearl Harbor museum, and it only took about 45 minutes - then spent three days running around, occasionally doing "cultural events" but mainly just getting into teenage shenanigans. One of the nights I wandered down to the bar that was next to the hotel pool, and found an acoustic duo playing.

I watched them a bit from the corner, not wanting to venture too far in since I was underage. I don't remember if they actually played any Sublime songs, but they might as well have played "What I Got" 5 times in a row for the vibes I got; hotel pool, chill but kind of scruffy band (self deprecating and probably a little bit drunk), the people around the pool drinking beers and burning cigs, the warm night air wafting up to us from the beach.

It was a glimpse of heaven, is what it was.

Anyway I decided to listen to the three main Sublime albums, and here's what I think of them.

40 OZ TO FREEDOM

Sublime's first proper album starts with "Waiting For My Ruca," which I think is actually brilliant; not starting with one of the Sublime TM ska/reggae tunes, but with a collage of sound, first turn-table scratching, then a little Minutemen sample (which to me signifies that they really did have an allegiance to all that much more critically respectable DIY music from the 80s), and then into some barking from band icon Lou Dog. Finally it goes into an 808 driven pseudo-croony hip hop thing that tells a nice little story about confusing love affairs amongst the lower classes, with some Mexican American slang trickled throughout, and then ends with a juvenile doggy style joke. It doesn't sound anything like their other songs, but somehow contains everything that was good and creative and raw - and also shitty and meatheaded and misogynistic - about the whole band in one little 2:20 package.

Relistening to this album, I wasn't sure if I was going to hate on it or be pleasantly surprised, but goddamn when it gets to the hook on "40 Oz to Freedom", with that perfect distorted guitar that isn't all processed to shit like on big rock records nowadays, then goes into a kind of noodly guitar solo which sounds to me now a little bit like the Grateful Dead (not an influence I picked up on when I was a teenager) - I'm pretty sure this album is going to kick. The song's about walking to the corner store to get drunk, an entire universe contained in one little microcosm. I honestly might still love this. I'm as surprised as you are.

"Smoke 2 Joints" is a bit of their more standard reggae shtick that I don't have that much to say about, though I will note that I heard the original Toyes version first because it was on a Dr. Demento compilation CD.

I'm loving the production on "We're Only Gonna Die for Our Own Arrogance", which is crisp but still sounds like it might have been recorded in a living room where someone spilled bong water on the sofa. Sidebar but if you haven't heard the original Bad Religion version, you should. It has a piano in it.

The rest sort of goes on like this, with each song seamlessly transitioning in and out of different styles and rhythms, going into little DJ breakdowns, doing part of a cover one moment, a sort of developed original the next like a really tight but also wandering party band (which is what they were), throwing in samples and crowd noises and little extended freestyles from other members of the band, like they were just completely in love with sound itself.

Which brings us to Date Rape. I don't have a strong interest in defending or condemning this song, but it gets cited a lot as evidence of Sublime's broey dumbfuckery.

Clearly the song is anti-rape - they just come to it from the same perspective as a Farrelly Brothers movie, so they just have to get the meatheaded prison rape joke in there too. For what it's worth, the band themselves did not particularly like playing the song; on the other hand, the legendary Fishbone did do a cover of it.

That said, there is definitely a streak of misogyny that runs through Sublime's catalog, that ranges from typical frat boy "woman as sexual ornamentation" attitudes, to several references to various forms of violence, to a consistent tendency to refer to woman as "hos", to a preoccupation with sexual humiliation and fear of being cuckolded.

Most young straight men are, I think, essentially afraid of women. Women hold the power to humiliate men, and women are also used as the primary vehicle through which men measure their own masculinity - ranked higher even then feats of strength or daring. I'd like to think a lot of us grow out of this as we get older; but we probably don't. I think there's also a fear, expressed on the song "Ball and Chain" among other places, that women are going to stifle a man's wild and rapscallion ways. (Obviously women are afraid of men too, more so in fact, but that's a whole other can of Heineken).

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, yes, Virginia. The shirtless stoner bro-dude surf punk singer guy from the early 90s was, in fact, a misogynist. Or at least held some misogynistic views.

ROBBIN' THE HOOD

This is somehow an even looser collection than 40oz. If 40oz was a hodgepodge of ideas, but all finessed into a fairly polished whole, this is much more a collection of sketches. Instrumentals, dub tracks, and then amidst this some absolute stone cold gems.

"Greatest Hits" and "STP" are maybe their peak as a ska band, shifting modes continuously throughout both songs. And Gwen Stefani absolutely murders the duet on "Saw Red."

"Pool Shark" (both versions), meanwhile, is the most naked Bradley Nowell ever gets about his rapidly expanding heroin addiction, essentially predicting his own death.

As a whole, Robbin' The Hood has way way way too much fluff and nonsense on it to be actually better than 40oz, but you can hear the songwriting evolution, as they seem to figure out how to blend their disparate influences together in more sophisticated ways, and as Bradley starts to plumb the depths of his own battle with addiction.

Note that the increasing drug use, that seemed at least mostly fun (if slightly medicinal) on 40oz (he denounces crack cocaine at once point, in favor of the sensimilla) is starting to take on a darker tinge here. "Pool Shark" is the most obvious example, but there's a little throw away line on "STP" - blink and you miss it, about killing a prostitute that jacked his heroin. Entirely possible he's speaking metaphorically, but it's an ugly sentiment either way (according to Genius, he also calls her a "fucking ditch pig") and coincides with what seems to me to be an uptick in references to guns and, yes, misogyny as well. This broey sweetheart who constantly talked about all the "love" he was finding with his golden throat, I think, had a real nasty side to him, that the pyrotechnics of the music obfuscate, but never quite conceal.

The most problematic song though is "Mary," in which Nowell explicitly talks about a sexual relationship with a 16 year old girl. I have no idea if it’s supposed to be from the perspective of a fellow teenager (which would be sort of ok, if it actually made that clear), an intentionally seedy “character” (which I would personally buy, though a lot of you probably wouldn’t) or if he was just a horndog from a time when people were maybe a little less, uh, observant about such things - the metaphorical rock n roll hall of fame is paved with alleged statutory rapists and odes to jailbait, after all. I'll say this, to me there seems to be a real deep strain of self loathing in this song, a front of being a crooning lover from someone who is also deeply unwell. But maybe that's just my own 36 year old rationalization of this thing. In any case, as a teenager, I didn’t really care, it just seemed fucking raw to me.

SUBLIME

By far the most polished of the three, produced by the Butthole Surfers Paul Leary, with warm crisp production ready to compete with the rest of the 90s alternative rock milieu. The whole recording process was apparently beset by substance abuse (see here for a great write-up of the recording of this album), and Nowell was dead by the end of it. It's also my least favorite Sublime album by far.

See, to me, Sublime is more palatable the scrappier they are. The more they lose that slightly unpolished edge, the more they become that thing that's exactly what you heard they were, that thing that fucking sucks. "Loving is what I got" has to be undercut with lines about your mom smoking crack, otherwise you end up with, well, this.

It's not entirely this album's fault - nearly half of the songs on it were played to death by alternative rock radio in the early 2000s, and what's left are some meandering reggae covers that I would rarely willfully listen to, and "Seed," probably my favorite in the album, and also the song that taught me that sex sometimes had blood in it.

But overall the songs seem less freewheeling, and more like regular songs that don't try to fit in like 10 samples and switch between 10 different modes - that say, I'm going to pour everything that I like about music into THIS ONE SONG. I do wonder if this has to do with the substance abuse. Why bother looking for more and more things to add into the song when you gotta get drunk by noon, or cop heroin before the withdrawals start?

We also have "Wrong Way," which is another song fixated on the relationship between the narrator and a fucked up underage kid. If we accept the thesis that Sublime songs are not just autobiographical party and addiction songs, but also explorations of the American underbelly, then there is a logic to this. Coercive sexual experiences, especially for women, are about as common as bugs on a windshield in the summer. In any case, it at least has a bitchin' trombone solo in it.

It's not a bad album, per se, but to me it lacks in comparison to the debut exuberance of 40oz or the songwriting peaks of Robbin' the Hood. Still, at it's best the guitar tones are warm and the band sounds tight and if you aren't already sick of it, it's great to put on while you're cleaning the house or having a beer or walking the dog. Apparently, Bradley Nowell got to listen to most of the finished thing himself before he died.

This is where we'll leave off for now, though there are a ton of B-sides and rarities collections, as well as a score of copycat bands (some even including the name "Sublime" in them.) I don't have much interest in diving into "Sublime With Rome," though I am in favor of the supremely talented musicians Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh getting to make money playing music, as opposed to being real estate agents, or high school principals, or whatever.

I rocked Sublime into early college, but eventually I moved on; maybe their growing reputation as a basic bro band sent me astray. Or I found other bands that scratched whatever itch I was looking for (if you want dark visceral lyrics about getting inebriated amongst the American underclass that also rock, I mean, c'mon.)

But I was surprised by how much I still enjoyed this. Perhaps I will join the legion of fans who get the Sublime "sun" tattoo like I thought I might when I was 16, when I believed in this music, when I believed that I could be whatever I wanted to be.