Sublime is a gateway drug to 3rd wave ska without wholly being it. They ware their influences on their sleeve in a charming way and those influences are diverse and only partly ska. They are as much a gateway to The Decedents, Operation Ivy, various punk and hardcore acts, ska and reggee without being a pure form of any of them. As someone who played in 3rd wave ska bands long before Sublime came out the groups that everyone aspired to be like in the the 3rd wave were more along the lines of Bad Manners, The Toasters and Let Go Bowling. @Yeollowoftops@ post with Sublime and Gwen is a pretty good example of the whole Rockin Ska that No Doubt and Sublime pushed. I think it's a branch off the tree.
I've been waiting for an opportunity to tell this story for about a week, this isn't a very good segue but I'm going to force it anyway because I'm afraid I'll forget this ridiculous story. Around 2000-2001 me and a couple friends went to see Voodoo Glow Skulls and Pulley play at a club in Little Rock. One of the opening acts was a Christian ska bad. A three piece ska band made up of high school kids with a horn section that was a trumpet. They played a cover of Bryan Adams "Summer of '69" with the words changed to be about going to Bible camp in 1999. It was an origin story for an awful band told within the framing device of one of the worst musical choices ever forgotten by humanity: the Christianized Bryan Adams cover. They also asked the sound guy to make changes after every song and were about as annoying as you'd expect for a group with such poor judgement. Sorry for the tangent. I was just thinking about how weird that was and wanted to share. As a side not the VGS tour bus broke down which was disappointing but we got an extended Pulley set that was fun as hell.