"I don't know if you knew this," Sublime bassist Eric Wilson tells me, "but I heard that Dave Grohl was going to call the Foo Fighters Nirvana, but he had a disagreement with Courtney Love, and he just decided not to pursue it. But it worked good for him, you know? He wasn't even the original drummer for Nirvana."
This is the defining moment of my interview with one of the two surviving members of Sublime, now known as Sublime With Rome. It's at this point that I realize there's no penetrating the thick mucosal sheen of bullshit surrounding the rationale for continuing a band whose frontman, guitarist and primary songwriter died - taking the band trademark with him - nearly fifteen years ago. Making up stories about another iconic rock casualty to justify your own musical necrophilia weighs in at roughly the same level of sacrilege as taking your dead frontman on a Weekend at Bernie's style tour.
Honoring or even replicating a multiplatinum band's legacy after their lead singer dies is a sticky, divisive situation no matter what the scenario. AC/DC may have made it look like a cakewalk, but most others find themselves in a vicious cycle of self-parody and glorified karaoke.
For Alice In Chains' first album in 14 years, careful steps were taken to make sure the record was worthy of the band name, and not to box new singer William DuVall into a Layne Staley impression. Such is the case when your mascot lead singer is dead and you try to regain your former glory. To err on the side of respect for one's own legacy can't be faulted - as long as the sound isn't reliant upon the past to the point of parody.
That brings us to Sublime. Or should we say, "Sublime With Rome" - because this is most certainly not the band that transcended the cliques and gave high school & college kids a soundtrack to getting fucked up in the mid-'90s. Bradley Nowell's 1996 heroin-induced death was the end of Sublime as we knew it, and the music world moved on.
A series of ill-conceived copycat bands cropped up in its wake, most notably the still-running Pepper, who openly admit to ripping off the Long Beach originals. But Sublime With Rome is another animal altogether; what we have here is a failure to leave a legacy intact, a wanton severed-head cash-in of integrity and reputation for quick-buck karaoke singalongs.
2009's SmokeOut festival in San Bernardino featured the much-debated return of what was billed as Sublime, with an unknown 22 year-old named Roman Ramirez filling in for the trio’s long-deceased singer and chief songwriter Brad Nowell, the face and sound of the stoner-jam band that united high school jocks and stoners alike in 40-oz. of glorious party-mischief music.
The band's return to the stage was a display of feel-good sacrilege that, by many accounts, should never have happened; Nowell’s family and estate holders, the rightful owners of the Sublime name, expressed their disapproval over the name use: “It was Brad’s expressed intention that no one use the name Sublime in any group that did not include him,” they said in a statement, “and Brad even registered the trademark ‘Sublime’ under his own name.”
Their case was clear - Brad had taken steps to make sure Sublime was his own trademark, an understandable decision given that he not only wrote the bulk of the band's material, but was far and away the most recognizable in the group. When he died of a heroin overdose in 1996, the name was supposed to have died with him.
Nevertheless, a District Court judge allowed the Smokeout show with Rome to go on, albeit under an amended name, and remaining members - bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh - returned with their own catty statement, which read, “While we all mourn the passing of our brother and bandmate Bradley Nowell some 13 years ago, Sublime still has a strong message of hope and love… Brad’s heirs apparently do not share this vision.” Or capital ambition, whichever.
The crowd, largely oblivious to the controversy, were just happy to revel in the ’90s nostalgia overload. Despite a few stumbles and a lackluster stage presence, Roman held his own, but Bradley’s rambunctiously mischievous presence was a key missing ingredient in the memory-lane walk.
