Audio By Carbonatix
Though it’s been 14 years since the death of Sublime singer Bradley Nowell — and the release of their biggest album, the posthumous self-titled record featuring “What I Got” –the band is still incredibly popular, and attracting new, young fans all the time. Shrewdly, a lot of other bands have capitalized on this phenomenon, including The Dirty Heads. Like Sublime, they’re from Southern California — just a couple miles south, in fact, hailing from Huntington Beach rather than Sublime’s oft-referenced hometown of Long Beach. The Dirty Heads’ breakthrough hit, “Lay Me Down,” even features a hook sung by Rome Ramirez, a dude who sounds so eerily similar to Nowell, that he’s now the lead singer of “Sublime with Rome,” the legally agreed-upon name of the current project of the two remaining Sublime members. It’s working: the track’s already reached No. 3 on Billboard’s alternative songs chart, and it’s laid-back, beachy rhythms make it an early front-runner for the unofficial title of “song of the summer.” It’s not like The Dirty Heads are bandwagon-jumpers, anyway, given that the band’s been together since 1996. Though it remains to be seen how the public at large will accept their songs that don’t have a guy that sounds exactly like the lead singer of Sublime on them.
Sat., May 15, 6 p.m., 2010
