Friday Night Music--Sublime (with Rome ) Edition

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:

 

Palate Cleanser: Scarlet-Fire From Winterland '78

Sweet and Donna didn't ruin it. New Years performance, excellent video and audio quality. Check out the flame war in the comments when some dude says Sublime would have been bigger than the Dead and another says more innovative:



Here's the Fire to round it out:



Update: Bonus JGB doing Bread Box from the Garden in '91.

Update: Double Secret Bonus: Visions of Johanna from the soon-to-be-demolished Spectrum in Philly 1995. Any hard core Head should feel bad about the Spectrum's demise.

Update: To give you a taste of just how good shows at the Spectrum were, check out this gem of a show with the best sound quality I've heard:

Friday Night Dead

It's well past time to revive the Friday night music videos. Tonight I've got a sweet Loser from the Greek Theater in Berkley, CA. Jerry's voice is good but he hits some nice notes that would have reverberated through your soul had you been there live (although his guitar doesn't seem to be turned up enough in this particular mix).




The next one is interesting. Cold Rain & Snow from an undetermined date. My Dead sense says 1977 but who knows? Anyway, it's a clear sounding tape with pictures of snow and rain interspersed. The sound makes this a great video.




Finally a cool version of Quinn the Eskimo from Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View from 1987, a song I always thought was a good crowd booster. It wasn't played much but it seemed that Jerry played it when he was having a really good night and was on his game.




As an extra added bonus, here's Sublime doing Scarlet (no embed available). The Dead were all about expanding the music out and Bradley Newell did that with this Dead standard. I always thought this song was a good addition to Sublime's repertoire and inserting it on the 40 oz. To Freedom CD was a nice fit. Bradley's rap about what the after effects of meeting the girl with the flower in her hair is hilarious. BTW, if you've never heard 40 oz. in its entirety, I think it was one of the best CDs of the '90's.

Next week: Purely Jerry Band!