 |
| UGLY TREND OF THE YEAR '96 |
|
UGLY TREND OF THE YEAR '96
DRUG BUST
The smog blows east from the coast and there's nothing to obscure this rooftop Long Beach vantage. You can see the endless strip of sandy shoreline -- which established Long Beach as a tourist mecca -- and the nearby oil refineries -- which helped foot the tab. Facing away from the beach, there's a hint of LBC, the ghettosphere where gangstas plot revenge and their next hard-core hit. Look straight down in all directions, though, and you spot patches of backyard green, little plots punctuated by sprinklers, crabgrass, hibachis, and Evinrudes. This is the flagstone cradle that rocked Sublime into early prominence.
"We were, like, the band that everybody in the scene would show up for," says drummer Floyd "Bud" Gaugh. He's a soft-spoken, smooth-domed guy with a troubled face. "If you were having a party that night and you had us play, dude, there would be two other parties in the same neighborhood and everybody was going to be at the Sublime party."
"Yeah, that was definitely my favorite time," adds bassist Eric Wilson. "Because all the music was young."
Wilson and Gaugh easily drift back to the days of backyard beer bombs. Back to when 300 to 400 kids squeezed onto some punk's property and Sublime could pocket $250, big money at the time. Towering Samoans were party security and the cops left you alone until the noise curfew -- after 10 P.M. their helicopters would hover just above tree level, the searchlights tracing psychedelic patterns through the leaves.
|
|
