Sublime
He says "i can play the guitar like a mother f-ing riot," then proceeds to plink out the most awkward amateurish solo imaginable.
It's a good joke, but he's wrong. That's a great little solo exactly how it needs to be played, on par with Paul Gilbert's inconspicuously astonishing 8 bars in the Mr. Big classic "To Be With You."
The story of Sublime is pretty dismal (shock and awe, you gasp), but i watched it play out in real time. This little ska punk band from Long Beach, CA made two pretty popular independent albums, then stepped up to the big leagues for their 3rd (coincidentally the album that most critics say is single-handedly responsible for the 3rd wave of Ska). Damnit, i'm building up to the 3 strikes you're out baseball joke and i don't want to do it.
Anyway, major league self-titled album, but Bradley is such an enormous heroin addict that they kick him out of the studio before it's even finished, and he overdoses and dies before the masters even made it to the manufacturing plant. He's dead, the band doesn't exist anymore, the singles skyrocket up the radio playlist to every hour on the 10s, and us highschoolers are like "this is freakin' awesome...oh that sucks."
Neil Young said "dear everyone, please stop shooting up and dying," and everyone replied "heroin good. Got it. Thanks, Neil."
Look at it from my perspective. I'm 16/17, my musical heroes have been killing themselves since i was old enough to understand the concept of suicide. My actual friends are being treated for ADD and Tourette's and they kill themselves. Now, you might imagine a few different ways that might mess me up psychologically, but you don't have the other perplexing part of my personal experience of being alive.
My whole existence has been subdivided into segments of doing what i thought i was supposed to be doing, then being told "you're too smart to be here, and you need to leave." I don't think that was anyone's actual intention, but rejection is rejection no matter how absurd the context. I'm perfectly happy to talk about it, but i don't want to ramble on about my bizarre inverse inferiority complex. The point is my adolescent brain said "oh, clearly it's the being important and famous part that makes the universe a miserable place for people to exist."
All of which is beside the point, because we're here to talk about a Sublime album. I think his point is that we're all miserable, we can't do anything about it, and we end up destroying ourselves looking for a quick bit of fun or relief. Why do i say that? Let's delve into it a little.
Apologies for not having the booklet anymore, i've listened to this album a time or two.
1 - the image might look cool, but my life is crap.
2 - it doesn't do any good to dwell on the negative, you just keep going as best you can
3 - here's a story about Annie, who's dad actually encouraged her to be a prostitute. What could i possibly do to fix that messed up reality? I'm Gregg Allman (i'm no angel, get it?), i could kill him, i guess. It's you're life, it's not like i'm any better, so i can't really tell you to run away.
4 - let's face it, somewhere deep down i like destroying myself
5 - Remember Offspring and Alice In Chains's fun during the 1992 LA Riot? Here's Bradley Nowell's sarcastic song about using it as an excuse to rob liquor stores and steal the guitar he's currently playing. Zappa lived through this riot too, but he already stated his opinion about a previous one, and i think he would have been at least a little pleased by the sheer snark of this song.
Again, i could keep going, but i've already talked your ear off and you can go hear the rest of this fantastic album any time you want to do so.
My friend Rocky, who i haven't seen in an unacceptably long time, listed this among his 10 influential albums and i couldn't resist.
You might be thinking holy crap how can one little album elicit all this logorrhea? Yes that's a real word, and my answer as always is i am a bottle of beef.
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