The Dirty Heads

Though it's been 14 years since the death of Sublime singer Bradley Nowell — and the release of Sublime's biggest album, the posthumous self-titled record featuring "What I Got" — the band is still incredibly popular and attracting young fans all the time. Shrewdly, a lot of other bands have...

By Albert Ching

May 13, 2010

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Though it's been 14 years since the death of Sublime singer Bradley Nowell — and the release of Sublime's biggest album, the posthumous self-titled record featuring "What I Got" — the band is still incredibly popular and attracting 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 — hailing from Huntington Beach, just a couple of miles south of 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 number three on Billboard's alternative chart, and its laid-back, beachy rhythms make it an early front-runner as the unofficial "song of the summer." It's not as though The Dirty Heads are bandwagon-jumpers — they've been together since 1996.

Albert Ching

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