Waking up to an alarm
Sticking needles in your arm
It really says something about what a genius we lost in Bradley Nowell, when Sublime's songs are still being played and raved about today. The song "Garden Grove" is track #1 of Sublime's third album, also self-titled
Sublime.
And as most any music enthusiast knows, by the time this album hit the streets in July of 1996, Bradley Nowell had been dead for two months from heroin overdose at the age of 28. He lived just long enough to finish the album and sign the contract, Sublime's only commercial record deal (the first two albums were self-published and sold out of the trunk of Nowell's car). He never lived to hear his songs get broad commercial radio station airplay, which only started with this album.
Statue of Moses at Crystal Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California
photo: Klodien, DreamstimeIf that isn't bad enough timing: He had only been married to his wife, Troy Dendekker, less than two weeks, she having borne his son, Jakob James Nowell, in June of 1995. Which means Jakob got to know his father just eleven months before he was gone. The Sublime CD comes with a booklet inside the cover, with photos of the band. It is impossible to look at the photo of Bradley sitting on the bed, strumming his guitar and singing to his happy infant son, and not get a lump in your throat.
This song is about Garden Grove, California. Even if it seems like something else that's only tangentially related to Garden Grove, it really does concern Garden Grove with every verse. Located in the heart of Orange County, California, Garden Grove has a half-joking nickname amongst the locals: Garbage Gulch. While the city does boast Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral as well as being only a few blocks south of Disneyland, the rest of Garden Grove has degenerated over the years into an almost but not-quite slum. Gangs and drugs do indeed run rampant, and law enforcement is only able to curtail the activities so much.
The 22 Freeway runs right through the middle of Garden Grove, like a spine on a salamander, and it is a common sight on an afternoon commute along here to see prisoners in orange vests picking up trash, which is where the line "Picking up trash on a freeway" comes from. The Orange County animal shelter is right at the east end of Garden Grove, in the area known as Orange Crush for the freeways that come together there, so "Picking my dog at the pound" is another thought common to the area.
Then of course there's "Living in a tweeker pad," "Finding roaches in the pot," and "Sticking needles in your arm," all drug references. A "tweeker" is a methamphetamine ("speed") addict, and "tweeking" is what you're doing when you're buzzed on the stuff and prone to undertake massive projects in your restless state which you lack the comprehension to finish, such as rebuilding your engine or ridding the US economy of the Federal Reserve. We don't have to explain that "roaches" are small butts of smoked joints from marijuana ("pot") or that "Sticking needles in your arm" is what a heroin addict does, do we?
By the way, picking his dog up at the pound was something Bradley was likely to do. His Dalmatian, Lou-Dog, was brought up many times in Sublime lyrics; here it's "Lou-Dog" smelling up the van in the second verse. Lou-Dog was to outlive his master until 2001, just a few days after what all Americans remember as "9/11." Bookend that fact with the fact that when Sublime played their very first gig in Long Beach in the Fourth of July, 1988, it started the "Peninsula Riot."
Do you believe in curses now?
Cenarth Fox
July 3, 2009
Comments: 7
Statue of Moses at Crystal Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California