Band Bio - Music - http://maxpages.com/musicalmadness/SUBLIME

SUBLIME IS:
Brad Nowell - Guitar, Vocals
Eric Wilson - Bass Guitar
Bud Gaugh - Drums

It's been a long and wild ride since sublime's first gig way back in 1988 in Long Beach, California. The explosive debut not only set off a small scale riot, but also marked the beginning of a rare, genre-busting collaboration. Once known as the “below average garage punk band that every kid wanted to play at his party,” sublime steadily escalated from a group of backyard beer buddies to a renowned musical entity. Blending a love of dance-hall and rock-steady reggae rhythms with an aggressive punk ethos, sublime ammassed a nearly fanatical Southern California following that would do just about anything (or anyone?) to catch one of their blistering sets. In 1992, realizing the hysteria they were creating, Brad and co-conspirator/producer Miguel pawned the band's equipment and founded their own label, Skunk Records, to release and self-distribute their now cult classic, 40 oz to Freedom. “Basically, we created Skunk Records so that I could have a business card,” explains Miguel, “and so we could say `Skunk Recording artists sublime'.” 40 oz to Freedom, which was originally recorded for under $1,000, has gone on to sell thousands of copies with the first 30,000 being sold directly from the trunks of the band members' cars. 40 oz to Freedom was not only on the Billboard Alternative New Artist Albums Chart for over 50 weeks, spending the last 30 weeks in the top 20, but also broke into Billboard's Heatseeker (Top 50 New Artists Chart) while spending 5 weeks as the Billboard Pacific region #1 new artist top seller. The album became an indie icon exemplifying the synthesis of life and art. Utilizing samples off of everything from old Minutemen records, hip-hop and conversations with street denizens to just plain old bong sessions in the garage, sublime so much embodies the D.I.Y. ethic that has come back to haunt them at times. Much like the problems that De La Soul and other early Native Tongue artists experienced with using samples, sublime has was forced to pay up or remove samples from their albums. In fact, their signature sounding track, “Get Out,” which lyrically dictates the bands approach to making music, unfortunately had to be cut from 40 oz. Robbin' the Hood, the experimental masterpiece released in 1994, also on Skunk, was recorded on a shoe string budget, partially on 4-tracks, in various living rooms and abandoned houses around LBC as well as with some charitable free time from Mr. Brett (Epitaph) at the legendary West Beach Studios (whose past occupants include The Minutemen, Bad Religion, and The Descendants). This subversive album, woven together with punk, dub and crazy spoken word, was never meant to be a follow-up to the conceptually classic 40 oz; it served as a precursor to the untapped possibilities of sublime. Robbin's eclectic bouillabaisse of sonic manipulation has now gained thousands of listeners. Sublime's D.I.Y. ethic and intensity has garnered them shows with local and national music icons such as Firehose and Mike Watt, HR of Bad Brains, The Melvins, The Vandals, Rage Against The Machine, Avail, Ramones, Supernova, Greyboy All-Stars, No Doubt, Butthole Survers, The Mentors, The Ziggens, and of course, Duran Duran.
Over ten major tours, three vans, and one motor home later, the band sas spread its garage-hall gospel all across America, creating a rabid grass-roots following everywhere they go, especially among the surf/skate/snowboard constituency best exemplified by sublime's co-headlining gigs on last summer's inaugural Warped Tour, a hybrid of punk and skating with L7, No Use For A Name, Fluf and others that were organized by Warp Magazine. Also furthering the group's natural connection to the board culture was the Sno-Core Tour–with Guttermouth and Skankin Pickle–which destroyed ski resorts (and hotel rooms) throughout Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and California. The 3 Ring Circus tour, a scary three-headed beast of a show, was conceived and released by sublime and its Skunk Records' employees on the unsuspecting West Coast in 1995. The 20-plus sold out shows on the Circus tour featured not only sublime, but the amazing and shocking talents of The Wesley Willis JFiasco and the Lordz of Brooklyn. The tour's diversity is a direct refelction of sublime's ability and drive to combine seemingly disparate forms of music and cultures.
Sublime and Bad Religion were the featured artists at the Band Aid III benefit show for Lifebeat (a fundraising organization for AIDS research) at Bear Mountain, California. Sponsored by Warp and Snowboarding magazines, the bibles of the boarding culture, the show spotlighted the top board athletes and organizations that support that subculture.
In April, 1996, High Times and Skunk Records teamed up to bring a Legal Defense Fund Benefit Show to the House of Blues in Los Angeles and Wetlands in NYC. Sublime headlined all three sold-out nights, which also featured the likes of the Greyboy All-Stars, Wayne Kramer, Weapon of Choice, Slightly Stoopid, DFL, the Wesley Willis Fiasco, and the Lordz of Brooklyn.

Bradley James Nowell:
Singer • Songwriter • Guitarist • Digital Ambassador

“Sublime is a hodgepodge of all types of bands I have been into since I was a kid. Not like I mix it all up on purpose but more like its a subconscious type of thing. As a young kid I was heavily into hard core punk, like the Circle Jerks and Black Flag, then I first heard the ska sound from bands like The Selector and The Specials. I thought this was the best music I had ever heard. Then came the rub a dub style of dance hall reggae music which I've never been able get out of my head since! A little later I was into Run DMC and the whole NWA sound. I was blown away when I heard groups like BDP and KRS-One mixing rap and reggae. It was devastating. Without really trying I now seem to put a dance hall style lyric melody over much of my attempts at writing other types of music.
“The bottom line is I love good music and I try to shy away from all these labels that people think are so necessary to slap on music. It seems like people get afraid of a certain music if they can't pigeonhole it to their satisfaction. They will be up all night trying to slap a label on sublime. Good music is good music, and that should be enough for anybody.”

Eric Wilson:
Bass Guitar • God of Thunder

“We were in bands before... just mess around bands. I was in a band with the drummer and then we all got together and said, `hey let's start a band.' We are all original members now.”

Bud (Floyd I. Gaugh IV):
Drum Kit • Accounts Receivable

“We're pro-choice. We think everyone should have the right to smoke pot or not.”

There's a quote that often comes up in Sublime tributes and on the countless Web pages dedicated to sublime to the band which describes Sublime as a "below average garage punk band that every kid wants to play his party." Though many authors are quick to point out that Sublime's genre-jumping style of ska, hip-hop, reggae and dub reached far beyond that, live Sublime - even at the height of their career - always retained that three-guys-playing-for-beer attitude. wether in front of 50 or 5,000 people, Sublime was either at a party, brouth one along. or caused one to start. Just three guys and a dalmation jumping onstage and looking for a good time. Often playing without a set list and letting the show go in any direction it chose, the Sublime experience had the ease of an open-envitation Long Beach backyard party. Undedicated to one specific genre or clique, Sublime were a direct representation of the Southern California Beach Community where color, race, musical style didn't matter. One of the few bands that could remain so individualistic yet appeal to so many different kinds of people, Sublime shows would have dreadlocked Rasta lovers grooving, beach bunnies shimmying and SoCal tattooed punks moshing - all to the same song. Anyonone, though, who tells you Sublime were always good live is lying. But that's what made them so memorable. There were those nights when extended members of the Sublime family would jump on stage for their go at the mic. But even then trhe guys were able to string grooves together, peppering ska riffs with snippets of songs in the works or giving way to punk ferocity, ending the set with a series of Bad Brains covers.

Clasicford@Hotmail.com

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Page Updated Wed Nov 1, 2000 4:51pm EST