Wilson, Lou Dog, Nowell, and Gaugh; hanging out in front of their not-so-stealth tour bus on ’ 95’s ill-fated Warped Tour
FROM LEF T: JOHN DUNNE; STEVE EICHNER/PHOTOWEB/ WIREIMAGE.COM
Tribute musicians tend to be superfans, zealously committed to being slavishly familiar—some acts, like ABBA doppelgängers Björn Again and the Australian Pink Floyd Show, are huge, exacting (re)productions that tour the world. I spend several hours with the members of Badfish and never once hear them boast that they use the same guitar amps as Sublime did or debate whether someone’s stage moves achieved true Sublimosity. Begin, who has close-cropped brown hair and a muscled physique, wasn’t that into Sublime before he joined Badfish. “I grew up on a diet of classic rock and late-’80s hair metal,” he says. Singer/guitarist Pat Downes, 24, who replaced Badfish’s original singer in January, does resemble Sublime singer/guitarist Brad Nowell, especially when he performs with his shirt off and his boxers exposed, but he doesn’t magnify the similarities. Hanks has a pronounced jaw and a buzz cut and, like the other members of Badfish, dresses almost exclusively in a T-shirt and shorts. He looks less like a rock musician than a guy who works in a surf shop. As it happens, the members of Sublime also looked like they worked in a surf shop, but Hanks insists this is a coincidence, not a costume. “I’m a beach person,” he says. “I wear shorts because that’s what I’m comfortable in.”
Instead, Badfish have focused on the music, which they play with workmanlike precision, and on continuing to be a professional, well-managed enterprise (a description rarely attributed to their infamously—and ultimately tragically—flaky forebears). In fact, owing to reasons that have as much to do with Hanks, Downes, and Begin’s brazenly careerist approach as with Sublime’s singularly odd career arc, Badfish aren’t honoring Sublime so much as they are becoming them.
“Honestly, if you think about it,” says Hanks, “it’s unbelievable that a thousand people are here to see us.”
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ending the band (which also included bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh), Sublime’s songs have never left the radio, and their back catalog continues to sell briskly. According to Nielsen SoundScan, their self-titled third album, from 1996 (which contains the hits “What I Got,” “Santeria,” and “Wrong Way”), has sold some 100,000 copies so far this year—more than Nirvana’s Nevermind.
The reasons for Sublime’s popularity are numerous, starting with what Jon Phillips, the band’s manager (he still handles their affairs), calls the “stoney factor.” Sublime began in the late ’80s by playing backyard parties in Long Beach, California, and in the simplest terms, the trio’s fusion of lite reggae, hip-hop, and alt rock is party music, full of tight, danceable rhythms and references to drinking and drugs. “Any song that talks about smoking pot is going to appeal to our listeners,” says Lisa Worden, music director of L.A. radio station KROQ. In May, KROQ held a listener poll to determine the biggest bands of all time; Sublime came in third (behind Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers).
Much of the band’s appeal can be attributed to its unique juxtaposition of sunny, up-tempo music with a seedy, derelict vision of SoCal life. “Wrong Way,” for example, the story of a 12-year-old girl forced by her father into a life of prostitution, is set to a jaunty pop-reggae melody. “Guns, drugs, cars, tattoos, having a good time when you’re young, the difficulty of growing up—Brad wrote about what real people talk about,” says Michael “Miguel” Happoldt, who has played in Sublime, produced the band’s early records, and continues to oversee new releases. Like 2Pac, Sublime has been posthumously prolific, with a live album (Stand by Your Van), a collection of previously unreleased material (Second Hand Smoke), an acoustic record (Sublime Acoustic: Bradley Nowell & Friends), and a box set (Everything Under the Sun), not to mention countless bootlegs.
Many of the audience members at Badfish shows are in their teens, so the draw can’t strictly be nostalgia—teenagers just like songs about weed. “Kids today can still relate to those trials and tribulations,” says Sublime’s Bud Gaugh. “The music is kind of rebellious, in a way.” Moreover, Sublime have become what the Doors were to an earlier generation: a band that had a short, prolific
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