Sublime with Rome – Marymoor Park 2019!
If you have listened to the show for any length of time you probably know that I love music. Wait, actually you probably don’t. I’ve only talked about my history with music a few times.
Let’s start over.
Hey everyone! I love music! So much so that I used to play guitar/bass/drums in a few bands! No, not all at the same time. I’m not that cool. Music though has always been a huge part of my life.
I wouldn’t say Sublime is my all time favorite band, but they are certainly in my top most influential groups in my life. I first heard them when one of my sisters friends from southern California came up to visit back in 1992 or 1993 and brought with him a copy of the 40oz To Freedom tape. I was around 11 or so years old and took this tape and loved it. It fit in well with my Kriss Kross, Blind Melon, and Snoop Dogg tapes I had at the time.
I was a pretty cool kid.
Fast forward to when I bet my wife, Haphazard Adventures cohost Kaylie, and discovered her love of Sublime, it was like a marriage made in heaven. Well, in addition to the fact that we really like each other, have similar life goals and stuff.
Back to Sublime.
You could say we are fans as the first song we danced to at our wedding was Santaria. I know, totally appropriate first dance song, but it works for us. Because of this Sublime holds a special spot in our hearts. Mind you neither of us is old enough to ever have seen them play live back before Bradley passed.
Enter, Sublime with Rome.
I’ll be honest, I was not the biggest fan of this when they first came out. Feels…dirty. Using the Sublime name to play shows and release new albums 15 years after Nowell passed just seemed wrong. I mean, I GET IT. Bud and Eric did the Long Beach Dub All-Stars and it did ok but never reached Sublime status. Rome has a great voice and sounds like he is Channeling Bradley, but it feels off. Let’s not talk about how they originally toured as Sublime until the Nowell estate was like “No, stop that”, so they changed to Sublime with Rome.
This isn’t a history lesson on the band, you can look that up. I just wanted to give some context to where I was going into this show. I only bought tickets so Kaylie and I could go, hear some Sublime songs from the former members and just generally have a good time.
I bought the tickets for Kaylie for her birthday, but when the time came to go she sadly wasn’t able to make it due to school work so I took our 11 year old daughter, Saidey. To say she was excited would be a tad bit of an understatement, this girl loves just going ANYTHING that involves going some where. I also didn’t tell her we were going to a concert until we were already there. If you want to hear us talk about this show we do so over on the Haphazard Podcast Episode 72 – Sublime with Rome.
I’ll skip the parts about the long line to get in, the ticketing machine breaking down and everyone missing the first band cause they wouldn’t let anyone in. NOPE. If you wanna hear about that, I guess re-read that first sentence over and over again until you are satisfied.
Instead I’ll focus on the Sublime with Rome portion of the show. As I mentioned earlier I was a little apprehensive because something just felt off about seeing Sublime without Bradley. Granted, I know I’m late to this as they have been around for a decade and I’m sure it’s all been said before, but I’m just now seeing them so you get to read it now.
While the show was good, and Sublime with Rome does a fantastic show, it’s pretty much like watching a really good Sublime cover band. I’m not gonna lie, when they broke into songs like “Bad Fish” or “Date Rape” it was awesome. Seeing them live was amazing. When they closed with “Santeria” it was like a dream. While it’s not my favorite Sublime song, it’s a song that holds the most meaning (for the reason why, read above).
I’ll end this sporadic review with that even though this whole thing feels off, and I wish they would just use a different name (especially since it’s just one original member left), it was an entertaining show.