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Interview With SUBLIME!

I got this from Heckler Magazine

Sublime is...not so sublime. More like...uhh...you know when you down about your weight in alcohol, then puff a blunt, and you reach for the nearest piece of furniture to ground yourself, but that really doesn't help. That's it, they're more like vertigo. A three piece out of Long Beach, California, these guys have done their share of paying "friend's backyard party dues." Sublime is a smooth blend of thick music under the influence that is reminiscent of the guy at your high school parties that was waaay too fucked up to drive, let alone form sentences. But Brad (6 string, cantador), Eric (4 string bass ridims), and Bud (beats) hold their own in a big way.

When I first heard that I got the Sublime interview, I did not know what to expect. What it shaped into was a blenderful of memories that was kicked over onto this floor we call Heckler, and I was the one with the mop, rubber gloves, and degreaser. No surprises. Bradley, Eric, and Bud, along with an entourage of samples, twisted soliloquies, and dogs are here today to talk to talk about themselves (what they can remember) and how they ended up on the forefront of a new class of music, Sublime-style. Oh yeah, they're also plugging their latest CD, entitled "Robin The Hood", on their home grown label Skunk Records. Let's all put our hands together and give a warm welcome to uhh...what was your name again?

HECKLER: You're over half way through with your tour of the west coast. What was your best time up north?

BRAD: Our best time? We made it in an airplane. An hour and fifteen minutes from Seattle to Sacramento.

ERIC: Our favorite time was when our roadie was arrested at the Border of Canada for a warrant that didn't exist.

H: I heard through a friend of mine that you (Eric) lost your dog (Toby) in Mexico once?

E: Yeah I did...for nine days. I payed a nice Mexican family two hundred bucks for his ass.

BR: I lost Louie (his dog) in Costa Rica once for about a week. He was out fuckin' around in the jungle. You were out fuckin' around, weren't you boy? (they take their dogs everywhere, including on tour)

H: What made you decide to do "Robin The Hood" on a 4-track in various living rooms as opposed to a "professional" recording?

BR: Because nobody was interested in what we were doing AT ALL. No investors or anything in order to make a "real" album with. So I was, you know, sittin' around with my 4-track, and put it out just to let everybody know we're still alive.

H: I'm really down with your grassroots distribution of your first album, "40oz To Freedom." Do you have any words of wisdom for all of the struggling independent labels out there?

BR: Oh God, that's really easy, man. Just keep on doing it. Especially if you think it's good. Just believe in yourself and just keep on doing it. God Damn it's gonna take a long time, but just keep doing it.

H: What is your theory for happy living?

BR: I think that self-reliance is what makes you happy. Not having to worry about anything or not depending on anybody besides yourself. Totally being down for your own thing. It doesn't matter what you're really into. If you're down for your shit, I think that's pretty much the key to happiness. It helps if you have, like, a wife and kids and stuff like that. But before all of that starts out, if you can really be satisfied with yourself and what you're doing, then you can be fucking happy with a relationship and stuff like that. Start straight out from your heart and go outward from there. It's a pretty simple formula, really. Nothing too fucking philosophical at all.

H: What was the shit that you (Brad) ate out of Papa Scully's refrigerator that time you stayed there after a Sacto show? (This refrigerator had some sort of fungus vernal pool at the bottom, several mold mounds on the shelves, and a family of flies flourishing inside. It was eventually pushed into the backyard and demolished with a few shotgun blasts.)

BR: It was some sort of...it was a bread product of some kind. I was fucked up that night.

PAPA SCULLY: That shit was fucked up. I know that I hadn't eaten out of that shit in like four weeks. I thought that frig had been quarantined.

H: How did you guys hook up with Raleigh Theodore Sakers?

BR: Umm...our old drummer Kelly. His brother had a friend that worked in a halfway home. He was in there one day and there was this fuckin' wierdo (Raliegh), and he was just going off. So our buddy just got his tape recorder and pressed record. Then Raliegh started hallucinating and thought that he was making a science fiction magazine. He was making such a scene that they tried to kick him into the psych ward. We have, thank God, about two or three hours of this guy just rambling. The whole thing is just, there is only a certain amount of time that you can put on a CD, and we like to fill it with not only good music, but some funny stuff too. It's just like stuff you can come across, alright, that is sooo fucking funny. I mean, that Raliegh shit is fucking hilarious. We just put as much as we could on this CD.

H: I heard that you (Brad) lived in Costa Rica for a while. How did that influence your music?

BR: So much towards the dance hall/reggae style. Oh my God. Reggae music plays non-stop down there. It's like...a whole 'nother world. So much aggression of reggae music down there.

H: What's your favorite verb?

BR: Chingar.

H: What are you going to be doing when you're fifty years old?

BR: Same exact mutha-fuckin' thing, I reckon. I'll just be doing it better.

H: What does your daily diet on tour consist of?

BR: Beans and rice, pretty much for all of us. We don't eat a whole lot of meat. We like red beans.

H: What is your gravestone likely to say?

BR: Loving father. Devoted husband. Shit like that.

H: In your song, "40oz to Freedom," where are you "not going back" to?

BR: We lived out on Ohio and ? street in Long Beach. I was just drinking a lot of alcohol at that time. That was when I made up the name "40oz to Freedom" or whatever. I wrote that song and all of that other 40oz bullshit came from there.

H: Anything else you'd like to add?

BR: Buy the new KRS-One album, and buy Bornge American. The album's called Kits From Foreign. You're ears will be pleased. Make it your business to see these guys AS SOON AS YOU CAN, while you can still see them in small establishments.