Words: Kristin Chambers | Photos: Dan Florez
Thirty years ago, a group of young black kids in south L.A. began revolutionizing the perception of hardcore music. Punk rock birthed ska, discotheques were getting funky, and Michael Jackson was as innocent as Never Never Land. Somehow, Fishbone incorporated all of this through a new sound that defied genres of the time.
An eclectically diverse style of kids making music undefined by society’s standards, they took a mix of reggae, punk, rock, ska and funk, and meshed it into psychedelic songs that would soon ring out through media like MTV.
From goofy yet socially conscious videos like “Party at Ground Zero” (1985) that focused on nuclear war to their 2011 EP Crazy Glue that highlights the legalization of marijuana, Fishbone says they are merely citizens of the world and are using their voice to express concerns in a positive light.
Opening the main stage at the start of this year’s DeLuna Festival in Pensacola, the group continued to send out good vibes singing out “Everyday Sunshine” to a moderate sized crowd gathered on the white beaches. Energetic frontman Angelo Moore wailed on the sax while Norwood Fisher whapped his signature Warwick bass, one long dread hanging down the left shoulder of his white suit as they covered Sublime’s “Date Rape.” The two are the only founding members remaining.
From collaborating in music videos with Spike Lee to early 90s performances on SNL, Fishbone has maintained through internal and external struggles through the years, and as Fisher says while talking to Ignition, plans on keeping the machine moving.
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| Norwood Fisher in Pensacola for Deluna Fest. |
Being together for over 25 years, how do you feel you’ve evolved as a band? There has been a lot of growth as musicians, songwriters and as human beings. It’s broad, because from the start of the band we have been open to experimentation on a lot of different levels, and you know honestly we are still learning. I’m definitely considering myself a student to the craft of songwriting and I’m a fan of music in general – just the magic of the communication that music is, the language of it. But there’s a part of us when we started out that we honestly didn’t know our occurrence. We have evolved into a very self-aware animal, and there is still a part of us that is very much rooted in the 13, 14, 15-year-old kids that we were when we first started doing this.
Did you guys all grow up together in L.A.? We met at school at a young age and we were just becoming teenagers. By the time we were 14 we were starting a band – starting to actually play together.
What sort of reaction did you guys get at that time? From my recollection, it was really all positive. We got a lot of love and acceptance. It wasn’t until business within the music began that there began to be confusion. It was what it was. You’re looking at these black kids doing something that you shouldn’t be doing. But otherwise it was all love, man.
(Continues) When I look back, a lot happened really fast. We started playing our first punk show in May of 1983 and by November of 1984 we were signing a record deal with Columbia Records. By April of 1985, our first recording came out. It felt like forever back then, but really looking back I was like, man that was wild. Very fast succession of events. Yeah, it was youthful exuberance, and we were in a place where we had never been before. It was exciting.
How do you guys keep that enthusiasm going on stage? The love of music and actually appreciation of our core audience. I can honestly say that I don’t take it for granted, the people that love what we do. When people express that they love it, sometimes it’s kind of surprising after all these years – it’s just brand new to people. I have such appreciation for the journey.
Do you feel like Fishbone helped integrate music during that time with the whole “black rock” thing and mixing all these genres together? Absolutely. Ice-T comes to me and tells me that he saw some things that happened during a show and was like, “that made me want to do body count.” He got freaked.
(Interruption from Earl Hudson, drummer of Bad Brains)
To Earl: I’m doing an interview! Get back on the bus nigg*!
To me: Bad Brains just pulled up.
You guys have had a connection with them for a while?
We’ve done some stuff with H.R. (Paul Hudson, lead singer of Bad Brains), and Earl played drums for Fishbone in Europe. We had a lot of interaction with them for years. They are one of our biggest inspirations. Fishbone, doing what we do, made it so young black people could look at us and see that hey it’s okay that we express ourselves in any way that we see fit. Rock and roll is not taboo. Bad Brains was that for us.
You also do a lot of socially conscious stuff in your music, like in Crazy Glue’s “Weed Beer and Cigarettes” – what are you guys trying to convey through this album?
We had a prohibition on alcohol in the early part of last century right? We documented the effects that it had on the black market – the underground – and how it bolstered criminal activity, just prohibition of itself. It’s doing the same thing now. When you tell somebody just say no, when I was a teenager, everybody was like, just saying yeah to everything. It exploded into sex and drugs. Just say no didn’t work. I don’t smoke or drink or do anything, but I don’t believe that making something illegal for people that are going to do it anyway. You take away that illegal part, make it taxable, your revenue in taxes will probably save the economy and create jobs, and then you put money into rehabilitation and when people say I want to get off this stuff, they can. I remember going to Holland the first time and being all excited because you could smoke pot and then meeting Dutch girls that were like, we don’t smoke weed, our parents did that. They were over it. Because they could. Illegal makes you want to do it. Being bad is fun.
A lot of members have come and gone out of the band through the years. How do you keep the momentum going?
It is just dedication to the legacy that keeps us going. At the point when the first original members left it became like, we could stop, but there’s this legacy to uphold. That was the first time we saw it.
Are you working on anything new?
We have an EP in the can and we are just starting to work on new songs for what I hope will be a full-length record. Our EP will maybe come out in February and maybe something after that. A full-length in summer 2013 or fall.
Are you guys going to focus on more social issues?
We get a little introspective. But always, we’re people of the world and we are concerned with the world that we live in, so we speak on those matters. You know, we are the 99 percent.
Anything else?
We are that projectile entertainment. The flying Fishbones take to the sky. We swim the sea of humanity.
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