So I’m on a Metro-North train the other day, stumbling around looking for a seat that is not next to a screaming infant, and I fall down into a chair across from a high-school age kid wearing a freakin’ Fishbone t-shirt.

“Fuck yeah–Fishbone“, I offer.

He looks up, surprised that anyone on this stuffy commuter rail could possibly be familiar with America’s foremost psycho-ska-deep funk-punk-dub-metal outfit for 22 years and counting.

“I used to listen to those guys when I was your age…” I continued, uninvited.

And almost instaneously, it all came back to me in a flash. This band–full of nuance and insanity in every goddamn track–Fishbone redefines where funk and metal merge in perfectly maniacal fashion with ska, a genre I have indubitably hated for at least a decade. And as so-so as that might sound to many of you, rest assured…when they nail it (and they certainly do on at least 65% of each album and more than 3000% live), you can’t help but become a true believer.

metallic Fishbone mp3s after Le Jump….

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen as high-octane a performance before; Angelo Moore, lead singer and infinitely exuberant baritone sax player, is the nastiest. My man is at once wirey and jacked enough to candy flip on a half gallon of gasoline…and he’s still doin’ it, 22 years later. Unbelieveable.

I recently dug up a couple old Fishbone tracks to share with y’all that qualify as metal; the first below, “Servitude”, does so in a lot more traditional sense of the genre, and the second, “Sunless Saturday”, in a much more Fishbone way, fusing several varying affects of a few different styles (and production coming from the early 90s, well before either grunge or the gay 90s hit the scene).

The first time I ever heard “Sunless Saturday” it was from seeing the video on 120 Minutes back when I was in 8th grade (you do the math), and I was on the normal 12 year-old kick (for back then) of hearing a song that was clearly unique (awesome or not, whether I knew it or not) and running out and buying a cassette tape (or cassingle, nawmean?) asap.

I didn’t really even like the song at the time, but I guess I knew it was something cool or underground or at least different…truth be told, I listened to that tape once, couldn’t make any damn sense of it, and put it down for 3 long years as I found my way through Zeppelin and Cream and classic rock in general, on to jazz and funk, and eventually back into modern rock with the grunge…Fishbone was somehow an amalgam of all of those things (in one way or another) and more, all the while sporting a backbone groove that was tighter than how my asshole clenched the first time a judge sentenced me to prison.

When I finally came back to that album, The Reality of My Surroundings, it became my favorite of theirs (along with the manic Truth and Soul, of course), and I became a huge fan of this crazy fucking band. Glad I already had the tape to listen to.

-KW

FISHBONE – “Servitude” (from Give a Monkey a Brain and He’ll Swear He’s the Center of the Universe - in KW’s top 10 best album names ever – Columbia, 1993)

FISHBONE – “Sunless Saturday” (from The Reality of My Surroundings, Columbia, 1991)