Sublime deliver a hot mess in West Auckland.
Isn’t that how it should be?
The air was hot, sticky and desperately humid, with not a single vent, duct or open window available to cool things down. The sound levels were wonky too, with heavy bass drowning out everything else for much of the show. Bursts of microphone feedback erupted regularly, and one of two giant blow-up Dalmatians perched on the stage kept listing dangerously to the right, threatening to keel over at any moment. They didn’t have a trumpet player, so the band’s lead singer “parp parped” his way through the solos. Near the end of the night, he thanked the crowd for coming and announced the night’s last song. He repeated this routine four separate times.
Trusts Arena was having a weird one, too. At the front entrance, staff didn’t have the correct wrist bands for us, so the head of security guided us to our section and warned us not to move or we wouldn’t be allowed back in. It appeared to be the West Auckland venue’s first show in a while: staff were still rearranging barriers and pushing confused punters into lengthy bar queues as the headliners arrived on stage. One woman’s sole job seemed to be waving around a giant “four drink limit” sign. God-damn it was hot. After Logan Campbell Centre’s demise, Trusts Arena seems to be campaigning for the title of Auckland’s Worst Music Venue.
For a Sublime show, these wayward vibes were exactly as they should be. Of all the 90s acts that have visited us lately, the Long Beach ska-punk-dub-reggae-roots-pop-rap-bbq-house-party-rockers easily come with the most chaotic backstory. A reminder: Sublime hit it big with their self-titled third album after singer Bradley Nowell’s death by heroin overdose in 1996. That album’s creation was completely unhinged, according to reports by Stereogum and The Ringer, with trashed studios, pissed off producers, rampant drug abuse and a failed family intervention. And yet, after Nowell’s death, Sublime emerged with the decade’s most indelible crossover anthems, the pure pop radio smashes ‘What I Got,’ ‘Wrong Way’ and ‘Santeria,’ and many more.
So, this Sublime tour, which finishes in Wellington tonight, is billed as the band’s “first” in Aotearoa, which is arguable. A version of Sublime, called Sublime with Rome and featuring the singer Rome Ramirez, has been touring heavily since 2009, including, by my count, at least three visits here. (Yes, there are lawsuits.) Ramirez was ousted last year and replaced by Jakob Nowell, Bradley’s son, who was yet to celebrate his first birthday when his dad died. Jakob has been blasted into the Sublime hot seat: this version of the group, with OGs Eric Wilson and Bud Waugh, played their first official show at last year’s Coachella. All three dates on this New Zealand tour sold out and a new album is due in June.
That’s a lot to untangle, but their enduring popularity shows just how deep Sublime’s canon sits with many 90s kids. Last night’s show was full of them: ageing skate-punks in baggy jeans and baseball caps, drunk dads with their arms around their kids, and besties dancing and hollering along to their favourite songs while stuck in those bar queues. Everyone was up for a good time, including the woman I spotted with a lit cigarette in one hand and a bubble machine in the other. If you’re charting the year’s best singalong, it might just be what happened when ‘What I Got’ played as a late-set standout.
It didn’t matter that this show was a hot mess that felt like it could fall apart at any moment. Everyone was there for pure, uncut hits of nostalgia, and they got them: a gloriously rocky ‘40oz. to Freedom’ as Jakob stalked the stage with his long hair straddling his face, a bass-heavy ‘Doin’ Time’ testing that poorly-calibrated speaker system, and ‘Bad Fish,’ which Jakob dedicated to Bradley. When ‘Garden Grove’ opened the show, I instantly whooshed back to my university flat, drinking warm Export Golds on the deck with my flatmates. With sketchy skate and surf videos playing behind the band, and just one new song on the setlist, firing up a 90s time machine is the entire point.
The parallels between this show and a recent visit by Linkin Park are eerie. Like Emily Armstrong, Jakob’s voice is soulful and strong, yet he’s clearly still learning how to be the front man for a very popular band. By standing in the shadows and turning his back to the crowd, I didn’t get a clear look at his face the entire night. It’s uncomfortable to hear him singing lines like, “Sticking needles in my arm,” and, “Shoot it up!” knowing what happened to his dad. But, by the end of the night they’d all worked out exactly what this incarnation of Sublime is supposed to be: a ramshackle Californian house party on a wonky road trip. Jakob goofed around, invited the crowd to join him at McDonald’s and kept adding songs to the encore. It was still super hot, but the sound issues were sorted, and even Lou, the blow-up stage dog, seemed to have found stable ground.
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Bonus beat.
