MUSIC: SUBLIME: WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER

SUBLIME COULD BE ROCK'S NEXT BIG THING--EXCEPT THE GROUP'S LEAD SINGER IS ALREADY DEAD FROM AN OVERDOSE

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When Brad Nowell woke up in a San Francisco hotel around 6:30 a.m. on May 25, his life appeared to be turning around. The 28-year-old singer-songwriter for the ska/hip-hop/punk-rock trio Sublime had a reputation for wildness and womanizing, but he was trying to change. He had been married the week before in a Hawaiian-theme ceremony in Las Vegas, and now he was doing what he loved, touring the country with his band, which had just finished recording an album that, to everyone who heard it, sounded like a smash. In fact, Nowell felt so good that May morning, he decided to take his Dalmatian Louie for an early walk along the beach. He tried to get Eric Wilson, Sublime's bass player, to join him--"It's a beautiful day out there," Nowell said--but Wilson closed his eyes and pretended to snore. It would be the last time anyone would see Nowell alive. A few hours later, Sublime's drummer, Floyd ("Bud") Gaugh, found him lying on his hotel-room bed, dead of a heroin overdose.

Nowell left behind his new bride Troy, an 11-month-old son Jakob and a host of might-have-beens. The group's final album, titled simply and aptly Sublime (MCA), was released last week and might have been the band's ticket to becoming the hottest new act in the music industry. Nowell might have been to ska what Kurt Cobain was to grunge--a big, blazing talent who introduces the mainstream to a new musical world. Nowell, however, played the Cobain role a bit too well, and Sublime, like Nirvana, will be best remembered as a band with history-making potential that perished before reaching its full potential--or, in Sublime's case, before most Americans had even heard of it. Says Gaugh: "The band died when Brad died."

Nevertheless, the band's album lives on and deserves to be heard. Simply put, it is the best rock release of the year so far. Like such cutting-edge performers as Beck, Tricky and Rage Against the Machine, Sublime draws confidently on the group's new CD from both alternative rock and avant-garde hip-hop, creating a sound that is sharp and soulful. The band also tosses reggae and ska (a faster, jerkier reggae precursor) into the sonic mix, resulting in songs that are hard to categorize and harder still to resist. While much of today's pop wallows in recycled schlock rock from the '70s (Kiss) and rehashed alternative rock from last week (just turn on the radio), Sublime offers up a sound that is fresh and potent.

Will morbid curiosity attract some listeners? Of course. But MCA is trying to avoid looking like postmortem profiteers. A press release accompanying advance copies of the CD expresses a wish to avoid "the appearance [of] exploitation of Bradley's death," although it then goes on to say that "if there is one last gift" Nowell could give to his bandmates, his widow and baby boy, it was "financial security."

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