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311, Sublime With Rome Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion August 12, 2011
Aftermath could smell the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion before we even crossed the street for Friday night's 311/Sublime With Rome concert. The whole place was like a giant white-rasta vaporizer. In fact, we probably had a contact high by the time we'd walked in the gate as SWR played "Wrong Way."
We're still not sure what to think of Sublime With Rome. Technically speaking, they're not a cover band; they have two-thirds of Sublime's initial lineup and just released an album of original songs called Yours Truly this past July. The venue was still filling up as the band played a few of their recent tracks; the crowd that was already there didn't seem into it.
Everyone was probably just waiting for "Santeria" or "What I Got." Toward the end of the dragging set, Rome brought a guitarist named "Cheese" onstage, who asked if we all wanted to hear "Freebird." After most of the audience screamed back in approval, he played the acoustic riff to "What I Got," the "Freebird" of Sublime.
Everyone sang together and danced very awkwardly, it was like a Journey karaoke singalong. At the end of the song, Ramirez screamed, "Rest in peace, Bradley!!" Rome Ramirez just turned 23 in June; Nowell passed away when the singer was just eight years old.
We're not going to say anything, except that we kind of understand why the band is so controversial, especially to Sublime "purists." Whoa, did we really just use that phrase? Anyways, it's always best to end your set with the songs everyone came early to hear. "Under My Voodoo", "Santeria" and the set closer/stoner classic, "Date Rape" ended the SWR set around 9 p.m.
After an hourlong DJ set of standard Beastie Boys and Dr. Dre "hype" songs, 311 came to the stage without much of an introduction, opening the set with "Freak Out" from their 1993 debut album, Music. Not much has changed with the lineup in the past 19 years; lead singer Nick Hexum is still yoga-skinny sexy. DJ and vocalist SA Martinez still has the same high-pitched voice and pop-lock energy. The two still have their dual harmony on lock.
The next song in the set, "Beautiful Disaster," caused some loud clamor from the older people surrounding us. The man standing in front of us had his arms raised up high in the air, with a corndog in one hand and a beer in the other.
311 also played their latest single, "Sunset In July," from their most recent album, Universal Pulse. "Weightless" was probably our favorite track they played from the new eight-song LP, although it's incomparable to '90s 311 and sounds a little too overproduced for our taste.
It's impossible to play the same kind of music for 19 years without tweaking some things and exploring with different sounds and even new audiences. Fun fact about the record: Hexum plays the guitar on every song. Evidently the album before Pulse, Uplifter (2009), wasn't very well-received by longtime 311 fans. One of the biggest diehards we know informed us that it seemed like the band was completely ignoring the album. They didn't play a single song from it until the encore.
At this point, only four or five songs into the set, a girl in the row in front of us started puking. Rookie... we remember our first 311 concert. Initially, we laughed at her, but the joke was on us.
