The idea of playing music that fused funk, pop, ska, rock, soul, metal, jazz, and punk came from a group of black kids from the Los Angeles ghetto. Fishbone formed in 1979, although they changed their name a couple of times, and they invented a genre of great originality and success. Unfortunately, they didn’t push much beyond the invention (their humorous style directly links, over a span of thirty years, to the Coasters’ novelties), and they rarely displayed the genius of a great musician. But revolutions often arise from simple ideas. Their work effectively changed the musical geography of popular music in the ’80s and ’90s. Guitarist Kendall Jones (main composer), bassist John Norwood Fisher (a Billy Bass/Funkadelic emule), drummer Philip “Fish” Fisher (a virtuoso who could compete with great jazz musicians), and Christopher Gordon Dowd on keyboards and trombone (main arranger), aided by Walter Kibby on horns, are the pillars around which the band’s complex and chameleonic sound revolves.

The frenetic, exuberant, overflowing EP Fishbone (Columbia, 1985) remains a milestone of this type of black music for white teenagers. The spirit is that of Madness, the execution a shameless series of references. The powerful ska cadence of the rhythm section forms the backbone of all the tracks, with each one layering a festival of comedic yet catchy ideas. It opens with Ugly, featuring a surf organ, a Chuck Berry-style melody, a rhythm-and-blues trombone, and a silly chorus; followed by Another Generation, an exuberant fanfare incorporating Roaring Twenties dance steps and cabaret inflections within a sophisticated harmonic context; closing with Lyin’ Ass Bitch, a cartoonish reggae.
From gag to gag, it leads to Party At Ground Zero, the monumental silliness of the record and perhaps still the band’s masterpiece: the first part, instrumental, driven by a soundtrack-like motif played on guitar and doubled by horns, showcases soul keyboard solos, heavy-metal guitar, spiritual-style backing vocals, wild New Orleans-style fanfares, and so on; the second part, led by a silly chorus, continues from disguise to disguise without giving respite, always driven by an irresistible cadence.

A far less creative and playful album, In Your Face (Columbia, 1986), sounds tired and repetitive. More involvement from saxophonist and vocalist Angelo Moore during composition is not enough to ease the disappointment. Among many tracks conceived as funk backdrops for dancing in clubs (When Problems Arise), and among stumbling, pale copies of their hyperkinetic ska (A Selection, Give It Up), only the numbers that dig into vintage music (Cholly, Simon Says The Kingpin) stand out, even though they were intended as the exception rather than the rule.

Overall, the 1987 Christmas EP, It’s A Wonderful Life, was better, reaching the peak of their blasphemous (but harmless) humor with Santa-themed satires like Slick Nick You Devil You and Just Call Me Scrooge. The band could still write ridiculous anthems, as demonstrated by the frenzied title track.

Unable to sustain a full album, Fishbone stumbled with Truth And Soul (Columbia, 1988). Despite a frantic Caribbean-style dance track like Ma And Pa and an ethnic gag ā la Camper Van Beethoven like Slow Bus Movin’, the album is still marred by slow, cloying ballads and fanfares like Ghetto Soundwave and Bonin’ In The Boneyard that have lost their former verve. In the occasional “exceptional” tracks, Fishbone reveal an alter ego as a soul-rock combo imitating the Was (the heavy-metal pandemonium of Mighty Long Way) or Zappa (the farce of Subliminal Fascism).

The band withdrew from the scene for a few years, allowing the market to digest a couple of EPs recycling old material. Fishbone returned in grand style with the monumental Reality Of My Surroundings (Columbia, 1991), an ambitious double album that also features John Bigham on guitar and keyboards. The work is a summa of their polyglot style, from the heavy-metal anthem of Fight The Youth to the “spoken” Junkies Prayer, from progressive Rush-like rock in Sunless Sunday to the overwhelming Sly Stone-style shuffle of Everyday Sunshine. The most conceptual tracks are also the ones that carry deepest the “hard-funky” Clinton imprint: Behavior Control Technician and So Many Millions.
The sound is generally hard and compact, without diminishing the band’s true talent: the ability to freely fuse, in constantly different mixtures, New Orleans marching bands, ska orchestras, doo-wop groups, gospel, spirituals, soul, and funk. It is in this stylistic tightrope act that the virtuosity of the individual musicians shines. Fish’s drumming, in particular, is a true tour de force, a high-class show that acts as glue for this fragmented mosaic of ideas. Equally captivating is Fisher’s deep bass tone, his fingers drilling the strings wildly.
The comic side of the operation (when the band stops taking itself seriously) is also the most enjoyable, from the dizzying Zappa-like music-hall of Pray To The Junkiemaker and Naz-tee May’en to old-school novelties like Housework and Pressure. With this record, Fishbone injected new life into the genre they had invented and remedied the lack of classics in their repertoire.

A dreadful production instead turned the next album, Give A Monkey A Brain (Columbia, 1993), with Jones relegated to the background, into a dull hard-rock record. The single Swim opens the new era, in which the energy is entirely at the service of harmony (it could be a heavy-metal hit), rather than vice versa, and only Lemon Meringue, No Fear, and Drunk Skitzo retain scraps of past genius.

Chim Chim’s Badass Revenge (Rowdy, 1996) is perhaps their most experimental album, though certainly not their best. It is a kind of bitter, pessimistic concept record on modern slavery (to big capital). The “noir” tone is set by Chim Chim’s Badass Revenge and deepened in the reggae-punk anthems In The Cube and Alcoholic. Jazz-infused ballads like Beergut and soul tracks like Psychologically Overcast perfect the atmosphere, though the album later sinks into slow and confused tracks like the reggae-blues fanfare Sourpuss and the ten-minute rhythm-and-blues of Nutmeg.

Uncertain until the end whether to become the post-punk Chicago or the Camper Van Beethoven of black music, the Queen of funk or the Clinton of heavy metal, Fishbone failed to capitalize on a prescient intuition. Perhaps, in chasing trends and pleasing black intellectuals, they always shied away from their true mission: carefree fun.