As a 15-year-old who’d never so much as seen a joint, I remember listening to Sublime and concluding that this music sounded like how smoking weed felt. The key to Sublime’s success, however, was its ability to use this musical omnivorousness as a means through which to articulate a specific lifestyle, one that prized skating, surfing, drinking beers, smoking weed, and generally chilling as hard as humanly possible above all else. Led by the late Bradley Nowell, the band synthesized a truly staggering range of influences, pivoting from SoCal ska-punk ( “Seed”) to Misfits-style horror-prom ballads ( “New Realization”) to dubbed-out trip-hop tracks that crib their choruses from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess ( “Doin’ Time”). Now, imagine your favorite band is Sublime. And how are you, an 18-year-old kid, supposed to fill the shoes of your musical hero? Is it even possible? Do you even try? Now, imagine randomly meeting the bassist for that band, impressing him with your knowledge of his band’s catalog, and then being asked to join that band as their new frontman. Your favorite band, the band you obsess over - the band whose songs you’ve played and sung so many times that you know them backwards and forwards and inside out - has been broken up since you were eight years old, when their lead singer died of a heroin overdose. ET to hear Rolling Stone Music Now broadcast live from SiriusXM’s studios on Volume, channel 106.Imagine, if you will, being 18.
#SUBLIME SINGER PLUS#
and many more - plus dozens of episodes featuring genre-spanning discussions, debates and explainers with Rolling Stone’s critics and reporters. Sublime with Rome periodically included original drummer Bud Gaugh, who ultimately left because he “doesn’t travel well,” Wilson says.ĭownload and subscribe to our weekly podcast, Rolling Stone Music Now, hosted by Brian Hiatt, on iTunes or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts), and check out two years worth of episodes in the archive, including in-depth, career-spanning interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Halsey, Ice Cube, Neil Young, the National, Questlove, Julian Casablancas, Sheryl Crow, Johnny Marr, Scott Weiland, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, Donald Fagen, Phil Collins, Alicia Keys, Stephen Malkmus, Sebastian Bach, Tom Petty, Kelly Clarkson, Pete Townshend, Bob Seger, the Zombies, Gary Clark Jr. Soon after their first jams, WIlson invited him into the band.
“And a lot of people over at his house are like, ‘can we play ‘What I Got’?'” But I like all the same punk rock bands that he likes. “Eric never plays Sublime when he’s jamming,” says Ramirez. “Eric just always throws a dope-ass parties,” Ramirez explains, “and he’s like, ‘yo, start coming over these parties,’ you know? And then eventually, it was like, ‘why don’t you come jam?'” Ramirez’s Sublime fandom ran deep enough that he had learned not only their own catalog but songs by their influences. I’m going to play these songs.” He immersed himself in Sublime’s music and the surrounding culture, going as far as to root for Long Beach’s basketball and football teams from afar. So then I came back home and after that summer, I told my parents, ‘Yo, I want a guitar. And I was like, ‘Dude, this is crazy-ass music.” I never heard any shit like this, because I really liked reggae music, and I really liked hip-hop, but I never heard it together before. Ramirez grew up in the Bay Area, where he’d get in trouble, “stealing and fighting and just dumb shit that our other older peers are doing.” His parents would take every opportunity to have him spend time with his uncle in San Diego, he says, “and that’s when I heard Sublime for the first time.
#SUBLIME SINGER DOWNLOAD#
To hear the entire episode, including untold tales of Nowell’s early days, press play below or download and subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.
In the conversation, they explained how Sublime’s music came alive again after the death of frontman Bradley Nowell, thanks to Ramirez, a Sublime super-fan who ended up as their new singer. The members of Sublime With Rome - bassist Eric Wilson, singer/guitarist Rome Ramirez and drummer Carlos Verdugo - joined host Brian Hiatt in our SiriusXM studio for a recent episode of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, covering the entire career of the original band and its current incarnation.
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