Sublime

We were getting ready to board a bus for our school trip, and he’d made me a mix CD with Papa Roach and Staind on it—songs about being alone and nobody understanding.

All these thoughts, all these ideas, coalesced into what may have been our most consistent record since Things Fall Apart. It was so unified in its message, in fact, that one of the songs we thought would be the lead single, a track called “Birthday Girl” with Patrick Stump as a guest vocalist, had to be taken off the record. It was a topical song,

“JEFF!” Liam ducked past his parents and saw JEFF’s panda head lying on one of the seats. “Oh man, what happened?” “I have been upgraded to travel size. HA HA HA.”

Bob was private and punctual, never wasted any time, still one of the most focused people I’ve ever worked with.

“Acknowledged. Liam had previously mentioned to me something about the universe collapsing.”