Sublime Discovery Green April 1, 2011

Check out our slideshows from this weekend's Big Dance Concert Series: the bands and the fans.

Aftermath has been listening to Sublime as long as we can remember.

They helped define our childhood, but we never thought we would get the chance to see them live, because vocalist Bradley Nowell died long before we even began attending concerts. At the time of his death, we were only eight and, to our recollection, had never even heard Sublime's music.

Unaware of his untimely death, we grew up and began discovering music, eventually stumbling on a few tracks by the Long Beach natives that made us smile. So much so that we ran to our local CD store (remember those?) and bought the group's entire discography.

Two years ago, when we caught wind that Sublime would once again be performing but with a new lead singer, we were skeptical. Nowell's voice sparked in us a love for music we couldn't find in anywhere else at the time.

The older, cooler kids we knew listened to Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Pink Floyd, but we weren't ready for that yet, and their greatness was lost on us when we finally heard their albums.

Our peers, meanwhile, were listening to Korn and Limp Bizkit. Maybe we just weren't as angst-filled as some of our classmates, but they didn't quite satiate our appetite for music either.

Sublime was that band for us.

The announcement that Rome Ramirez, who was only 20-years-old at the time, would be taking over as the voice of Sublime seemed like an affront to us and, as far as we were concerned, to all fans of Sublime.

But once we heard his voice (first, via YouTube), we realized that the young man had the pipes, the swagger and the confidence to keep Sublime alive and hopefully share its music with another generation.