After Nowell’s death,Sublime’s label, Geffen, moved quickly to meet the sudden demand for a bandthat no longer existed, releasing posthumous albums throughout the ’90s, butinterest in Sublime luxuriated long after the band vault was exhausted. Withthe group still ubiquitous on alternative radio and college campuses today, acottage industry has thrived by recycling the Sublime songbook, led by tributebands like Badfish and 40 Ounces to Freedom.
Perhaps it was onlyinevitable, then, that the surviving members of Sublime would carve out theirown share of that market, despite drummer Bud Gaugh’s initial assertion that“the band died when Brad died.” Last year Gaugh and bassist Eric Wilson beganperforming under the Sublime moniker with a young new singer and guitarist,Rome Ramirez.
Nowell’s estate objectedimmediately. “It was Brad's expressed intention that no one use the nameSublime in any group that did not include him, and Brad even registered thetrademark 'Sublime' under his own name,” they wrote in a statement. After acourt agreed, Gaugh and Wilson changed the band moniker to Sublime With Rome.
Though it’s hard tobegrudge Gaugh and Wilson for playing their own band’s musicafter all, theydid toil on the road for nearly a decade with Nowell before his death preventedthem from enjoying the fruits of that laborSublime With Rome induces the samereflexive cringe as all bands reunited despite a key member’s death. Nowellwasn’t just the voice of Sublime; he was its reason for being. It was his petloves for punk, dub, ska and hip-hop that birthed Sublime’s sound; his squalidsongwriting that gave the band its bite; and his vulnerability that turned eventhe group’s sloppiest, most throwaway numbers into something more intimatesointimate that it can seem distasteful hearing them sung by somebody else.
Substitute singer Rome is a dead-ringer forNowell, his voice soft, boyish and unabashedly achy. At 22 years oldborn in1988, the year Sublime formedhe is a demographic nod to the band’s permanentlyyoung following, an affable frat boy with a backward baseball cap and anacoustic guitar he probably breaks out quite a bit at parties. He’s a cleanerguitarist than Nowell, not nearly as rough around the edges. A widely viewedYouTube video of him strumming a cover of T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” shows hewould have fit nicely on this past season of “American Idol.”
With Rome, Sublime has begun writing and recordingnew songs. In May, Gaugh said he hoped to finish “one or two of them for alate-summer radio release.” That may sound optimistic, the suggestion thatSublime could return to the radio just that easily, but there’s actuallyprecedent. The reggae-rock band The Dirty Heads has topped the alternativemusic charts for nine weeks running with a summery, distinctly Sublime-esquehit called “Lay Me Down.”
The song’s trump card?Guest vocals from Rome.
Sublime With Rome plays an 8 p.m. show at the Rave withopeners Matisyahu and (who else?) The Dirty Heads on Wednesday, July 14.
