Fishbone

My Fishbone profile, including new interviews with Angelo Moore and Christopher Dowd, is up at The Aquarian.

Five Great Songs from the Say Anything... Soundtrack (that aren't "In Your Eyes" or "Joe Lies")

My sister once declared that Say Anything..., which turns 25 today, was a definitive chick flick that guys will watch (she phrased it more eruditely than that, but you get the idea). She's right--maybe it's Cameron Crowe's screenplay, or the way it captures the aches of the male crush, or its creation of a world where a guy who spends his Saturday nights at a Gas 'n' Sip could date a girl that looked like Ione Skye. There's something about Say Anything... that gets through to the lunkheaded heterosexual male, more than perhaps any other film in Netflix's Rom Com section.

As with every Crowe film, us music nerds get the bonus of a killer soundtrack, doused with everything from Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle" to Mother Love Bone and Soundgarden two years before the grunge boom (which Crowe went on to capture in his next movie, Singles). Of course Say Anything... is best known for the Peter Gabriel song in its most famous scene, and Lili Taylor's odes to her callous ex are probably a distant second, but its soundtrack has a trove of less-famous gems worth celebrating today.

1. Living Colour, "Cult of Personality"

It's a classic today, though there was no way of knowing that in 1989, when Living Colour were a relatively new band under producer Mick Jagger's wing. They're still a ferocious live band, and Vernon Reid is universally acknowledged as one of the world's greatest guitar players, but this is deservedly their most enduring song.



2. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Taste the Pain"

Another band on the cusp of megastardom when Crowe picked them for Lloyd Dobler's tape deck, the Chili Peppers were streamlining the disjointed funk rock of their earliest albums on "Taste the Pain," showing hints of the songmanship that was about to peak on Blood Sugar Sex Magik.



3. Depeche Mode, "Stripped"

Like Crowe himself, Depeche Mode were experts at taking the artsy underdog to the mainstream, being lonely enough for Cusack types and sexy enough for the rest of the world. Arguably the male musical equivalent of "a brain trapped in the body of a game-show hostess."



4. Fishbone, "Skankin' to the Beat"

Now that ska has been raided and exhausted beyond repair, "Skankin' to the Beat" should be as dated as Fishbone's cameo in Back to the Beach. Thankfully, its got enough of a new wave touch to earn its spot in the graduation party scene, and justify the Fishbone logo on Lloyd Dobler's shirt.



5. The Replacements, "Within in Your Reach"

Crowe dug this one out from the second half of the Replacements' messiest album, where it hid next to a drunken cover of "The Twist." Performed entirely by Paul Westerberg, "Within Your Reach" is the only song in Say Anything... that sounds like something Lloyd Dobler would actually write, though I'm glad Crowe made him a kickboxing instructor instead.

Fishbone, "Freddie's Dead"

Angelo Moore, what were you thinking? When a woman took Fishbone to court this year for breaking her skull and collarbone during one of Moore's stage dives at a 2010 show, the lead singer apparently told the court that he doesn't warn the crowd because "people want to be on the edge when they go to a Fishbone show," and that ambulances get called to Fishbone shows "every few months." The judge has now ordered the band to pay $1.4 in damages, which made me think of the scene in Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone where present-day Moore moves back in with his mom because he can't afford his own home in his 40s. As foolish as his actions were, and as awful as it is for the plaintiff, I hate to think of how long it's going to take the band to pay her back. Three decades of credibility apparently doesn't buy you anything.



They wrote some great songs and are excellent musicians, but every fan with a pulse will tell you that Fishbone's expertise is in performing. No surprise then, that their best song is a cover, a punk remake of Curtis Mayfield's Super Fly classic (and the inspiration for Nightmare on Elm Street 6). Fishbone is often credited with connecting punk with soul, and by reaching back to Mayfield they showed how closely the two were already linked by reality-based lyrics and anthemic choruses. Channeling their live energy and ditching the silliness of their earlier albums, "Freddie's Dead" finally gave Fishbone the song that they deserved.

Song of the Day: Fishbone, "Sunless Saturday"

No one still needs to learn that happy music isn't written by happy people. Yet there's something shocking about all the misery in Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, the Laurence Fishburne-narrated documentary about the world's most transcendent ska band. 



Onstage, Fishbone are a jubilant blast of acrobatics, stage dives and and singalongs, sons of James Brown and fathers of Andrew W.K. Watching peers (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus) and followers (Sublime, No Doubt) find the success that eludes Fishbone is sad, but seeing middle-aged Angelo Moore move back in with his mom, bassist Norwood Fisher charged with kidnapping the band's Rapture-pushing guitarist and nearly-empty record store signings for a band that once performed on SNL is downright disheartening. It's funny to watch no one show up to an Anvil show, but only because Anvil got a second chance.

Before Kendall Jones started believing that his bandmates were demons, he wrote one of Fishbone's best songs, "Sunless Saturday."



Fishbone were on a major label (but not for much longer) and had the budget to get Spike Lee to direct their music video. To Lee's credit, it catches some of the frenzied excitement of a Fishbone show without ever looking like a concert movie.

"Sunless Saturday" is heavy, in the way that something with horns and major key progressions can still sound like helter skelter. The melody's controlled chaos makes me wonder how the band lasted ten years before someone went insane.

It's isn't punk, funk, metal or ska--Wikipedia calls it "alternative," which confirms that no one really knew what to do with Fishbone. Everyday Sunshine interviewees argue that they "were too black," "weren't black enough," "were too ahead of their time" or "should have been less of a democracy," the latter point being the only one that Fishbone's records back up. But everyone seems to agree on "Sunless Saturday."