Friday, August 24, 2012

Friday Night Music--Sublime (with Rome ) Edition

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Going to see Sublime with Rome tomorrow at one of the coolest concert venues in Philly, the Festival Pier at Penns Landing. It sits right on the Delaware River with views of the Ben Franklin Bridge and always a nice breeze.

Here's a good shot:


I've seen the Wailers, Offspring, 311, RatDog and Pepper there and tomorrow should be a fun one as well.

Since the death of Bradley Newell from a heroin overdose (heroin is the devil), the surviving members of Sublime just kind of floated around and played some with the Long Beach Dub Allstars. But still, Sublime was more than a band, they were an attitude and there was no way they weren't going to carry on. There was some legal wrangling but eventually they worked it out and they are touring pretty regularly. 

While I'm looking forward to the show, the rule of thumb is that when the lead singer dies, a band tends to never be as good. Think Johnny Van Zant replacing his brother Ronnie. The one argument may be AC/DC but I'm not sure if Bon Scott was ever really replaceable, but I digress.

Unfortunately, there's very few clips of high quality captured live. Remember, Bradley died before Sublime really hit it big. 

Let's start with the epic Garden Grove, which captures them in all their mash-up glory. Elements of reggae, Ska and hip-hop make this a classic


 Next we have Sublime's talk on the Rodney King riots. Bradley Newell could write about social events if he wanted and this is a great example of that with humor. They interspersed actual police chatter:



And finally, every good band takes anthers song and makes it their own, Sublime did that with the Grateful Dead's Scarlet Begonias. I did find a live version with Bradley of decent quality but embedding is restricted (link here) but you get a feel for what a live Sublime show was back in the day. Instead I'll play a live one with Rome:

 

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