Sublime: Live '94-'96

They may be Sublime, but there's nothing sublime about this package, unless an hour or so's worth of poorly-shot, bad-sounding, hard-to-watch, thoroughly amateurish video is your idea of a good time. “Hey dude,” fans and supporters of this California trio will no doubt say, “it's all about keepin' it real.” Yeah, right. Singer-guitarist Bradley Nowell (who kept it real by killing himself with a heroin overdose) and bandmates Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson, who look like shirtless, shoeless refugees from the Deliverance set, may have been on to something with a rock-reggae amalgam that managed to include songs by everyone from Toots Hibbert to the Grateful Dead, but the fact is that this do-it-yourself stuff gets old in a hurry, while the video jacket hype of calling this footage “rare” or “historic” is, quite simply, a crock. When the highlight is an onstage appearance by tubby porn star Ron Jeremy on a piece of so-called bonus footage so bad you wouldn't show it to your goldfish, you know you're in trouble. So here's the verdict: hard-core Sublime fans, knock yourselves out, but it's unlikely that this DVD will appeal to anyone else. Not a necessary purchase. Aud: P. (S. Graham)