Raleigh Theodore Sakers is both
man and
myth. Featured in three soliloquies on
Sublime’s
Robbin’ The Hood, we hear the
rantings of an obviously disturbed man who is obsessed with both
science fiction and
blow jobs. At first these three tracks just seem
bizarre, and they are. However, after listening to the
album a few times, Raleigh really starts to get funny.
But who the hell is he?
A tough but valid question. Here’s what we can find:
"He's just a nut case who made tapes of himself and we decided to put him on our record," Wilson said.
"We thought everyone should hear him," Bud added.
It seems Sakers has disappeared, but the band would like to locate him and put him on a cross-country poetry circuit.
The above comes from an article appearing in
The Lumberjack, the
school newspaper for
California’s
Humbolt University. This article was supposedly written after a phone interview with
Bud and
Eric, but got many facts wrong about the band. This info is either a case of bad reporting or the guys fucking with a reporter, which is not unheard of. A somewhat more reliable account:
Heckler: How did you guys hook up with Raleigh Theodore Sakers?
Brad:Umm...our old drummer Kelly. His brother had a friend that worked in a halfway home. He was in there one day and there was this fuckin' wierdo (Raleigh), and he was just going off. So our buddy just got his tape recorder and pressed record. Then Raleigh started hallucinating and thought that he was making a science fiction magazine. He was making such a scene that they tried to kick him into the psych ward. We have, thank God, about two or three hours of this guy just rambling. The whole thing is just, there is only a certain amount of time that you can put on a CD, and we like to fill it with not only good music, but some funny stuff too. It's just like stuff you can come across, alright, that is sooo fucking funny. I mean, that Raleigh shit is fucking hilarious. We just put as much as we could on this CD.
This comes from a
Sublime interview appearing in
Heckler Magazine, a
Sacramento,
CA zine.
That’s about as much as anyone knows about the man himself.
Isn’t the whole thing a hoax? I heard Raleigh was just Bud messing around.
The opinion that Bud == Raleigh first came around on online message boards, but there was little (if any) evidence to support it.
However, if you want to get truly obsessive there is one thing you can listen to. On the Sublime Acoustic: Bradley Nowell and Friends album, listen to the end of the 14th track, “Freeway Time In L.A. County Jail.” After the song there is about 30 seconds before the track ends. Some one can be heard impersonating Raleigh, saying ”this is a pre-recording...”. Now who knows if this is really related to Raleigh at all, but it could be one of three things.
- Nothing at all. Just a coincidence.
- Brad impersonating Raleigh as a joke.
- Bud! Bud! Proof that Bud is Raleigh! (not likely)
In my opinion, Raleigh is just too crazy to be
fiction.
Where can I hear more?
Or you might be thinking, ”Where the hell can I get my hands on the ‘two or three hours’ Brad is talking about?” The answer, of course, is the grand ol internet. On Skunk Records’ official website there is a 28mb MP3 of Raleigh’s original uncut rant. This is the source of the three soliloquies appearing on Robbin’ The Hood. Also on the website is art work for what appears to be a CD release of the rant. The art work features the picture of a 17th century man smoking a pipe and gives the title of the CD as Psycho-Semantic Blockage. The back of the CD has this to say:
DISCLAIMER
The opinions, thoughts, and ideas expressed on this CD are NOT those of Skunk Records. Nothing is known about the origin of this recording or the physical location of the man himself, so don’t ask. If you take anything he says seriously maybe you’re the one who’s crazy.
I presume this
CD just contains the same content as the
MP3, but there is no way of knowing for sure. Who knows how many of these
CDs were pressed. If you have an original copy of one I’ll do almost anything to get it. :D
There it is, the myth and reality of Raleigh. One last bit of trivia: on the Robbin' The Hood CD cover, Raleigh's name is misspelled Raliegh. As obsessive as this writeup has become, I am still probably missing something. /msg me and I’ll add it and give you credit.
For a transcript of the soliloquies see Psycho-Semantic Blockage.
fueling the madness:
Heckler Interview: http://www.heckler.com/old_heckler/4.3/sublime.html
Lumberjack Article (google cache): http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.thejack.org/back_issues/Spring95/Online2-22/5Scene2-22/Scene5-1.txt.html+Raliegh+Theodore+Sakers&hl=en
Skunk Records Raliegh Page: http://www.skunk.com/good/raleigh.html