A Trip to Garden Grove

When I was a junior at Purdue University, I took an African-American literature class. Purdue is a very, very diverse university, but at the time, African American students were a very small percentage of that diversity. After growing up in a predominantly white community, I was excited to take a class with students from all walks of life. The professor was tough but engaging. She also had a sense of humor and was open to discussing very sensitive topics in a constructive manner. During one of the lectures, she simply asked if racism still existed in our society. A very blanket, general question, but one that garnered some major silence in the small classroom. I remember that we had one Purdue basketball player in our class (he happened to be African-American). He was the brave one that spoke up - knowing that he would be challenged by the professor. He responded that he did not feel that younger generations perceived race to be important. His reasoning - television and musical influences. He cited MTV, BET, HBO, etc. He explained that so much of our generation's influence came from the media - not news sources, but entertainment sources. For one moment our professor was speechless. The media of the 90s was a melting pot of cultural influence. I could not have agreed with him more.

Posts up to this point have had a really broad focus. I've covered years, genres, and trends, but I want to highlight one album that I feel really defined my current musical genre loves. A melting pot of an album that can really be classified into many genres. It's also fitting that this album came out right before I began high school. Everything from the songs, to the lifestyle, to the drama behind scenes really set into motion my high school years and beyond. The album I am speaking of is Sublime by Sublime. Their third and final studio album with their full cast of characters.

Every time a song from this album comes on, especially in a group setting, you can look around the room and see its influence. People mouthing the words and bobbing their heads. It's an amazing mix of punk rock, reggae, ska, dancehall, hip-hop, and dub. Everything that the 90s exuded. I remember getting into Bob Marley and reggae after this album. I remember looking up what Santeria was on Microsoft Encarta (haha). All of the videos associated with the songs are iconic. I remember singing the songs with the team on the back of the football bus coming home from games. It seemed to dominate my freshman year and is an album I continue to go back to over and over. I wanted to be those guys. I wanted to move to California and live that carefree, Animal House lifestyle that they portrayed. It would be later on that I would find out that there was a lot going on with the band behind the scenes and why they never released another album with this crew. Bradley Nowell, the lead singer, would die shortly after from a heroin overdose. A common theme in the 90s. Nowell was even ejected from the recording of the album before it was finished because of his addiction. One of those times as a kid when you realize that some of the people you look up to aren't as perfect as you think.

I would later get into the other Sublime albums. This one is just so iconic to me for many reasons. It blended everything I loved into one compact disc. I'm instantly transported back in time everytime I listen. I'm a huge Jack Johnson fan and his cover of the band's song Badfish is one of the reasons it is my favorite song. I used to teach English and would have my sophomore students complete a 90s research project. The only reason I got one student to turn in his project was because he liked the band and the historical events behind the song April 29, 1992. I think he later dropped out, but I got that assignment out of him :). He made the connection.

That Purdue basketball player was right and is still right. We can become better people with broadened influences. We can exhibit one message to the world through many different lenses. Thank you to Sublime and crew for doing that for me.