Fishbone Delivers Fast, Furious Message 

ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL 

Friday, May 5, 1989

By David Staton JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT - 

Junk-funk band Fishbone sent out a mixed message of equality and injustice to a predominantly under-21, set during its Wednesday night performance at the University of New Mexico Ballroom. 

Prefacing the message was a taped recording of shock-schlock comedian The Dice Man. The audience learned that the right mood for the Los Angeles-based sextet is established by raunch. 

The Dice Man's brand of comedy, as it were, is filled with expletives and scathing insults during the 10-minute diatribe he managed to deride everything from Mother Goose to homosexuals. This guy is so vicious he makes Don Rickles look like Mother Teresa.

Fishbone, the self-described coalition against tradition, walked on stage calmly. Ten seconds later, the acrobatic antics of the troupe set the audience dancing. As the trendoid crowd pogoed, skanked and attempted a few body passes, Fishbone raced through "Ma and Pa'" The song was delivered with anger by Angelo Moore, who packed the energy of a downed power line sparking near a pool of water. His blond dreadlocks curled down the sides of his shaven head, matching a persistent curled-lip sneer on his face. Moore delivered the raging' song about divorce from a child's perspective.

Next up was an effort at consciousness creating that went astray. The song "Dark Glasses" plays off a familiar Fishbone topic, the battle against racism. The dancey number with a roaring horn section tells of a black man who feels more comfortable behind the tightly veiled disguise of dark glasses.  Without the glasses he fears he may be mistaken for a thief. 

Fishbone's apparent message of equality was sung with conviction and played for fast and furious dancing. Noble and repeated attempts to convey that message would fall short, though the music didn't, throughout the remainder of the hour-and-a-half performance.

The equality-for-all messsage took a hypocritical turn on a song about "fat chicks." Discrimination based on color is a terrible thing, the group seemed to say, but discrimination between the sexes and against overweight people is laughable. The song indicated that the members of Fishbone like having sex with "fat chicks," and they described the act in graphic terms. Next up was the condemnation of media bias on the speed-rocker "Subliminal Fascism." Bass player John Fisher dropped the Boosty Collins licks to drive this rollicking tune that points: People got problems that they can't work out So there (sic) sense cracks I read the paper and I watch the news It don't give me the blues It just gives me the blacks." Then came a slow-down number, "Pouring Rain," on which Moore rambled invectives decrying racism and salted the diatribe with street-talk and racial epithets. 

What followed should have been titled "How To Humiliate an Audience Member." Moore said he wanted to see where people's heads were on racial issues.  One audience member, whose head was fixed on dancing, told the band to shut up and play. The band then invited the man to stage side to further espouse his views. He did, and by doing so displayed more guts than the sweaty bunch who prided themselves on maintaining their dancing space on the cramped dance floor. Moore directed several derogatory remarks at the man before concluding: "When you come to see Fishbone, you come to hear the music and get aware." 

Moore also made the audience aware of the gutter-language euphemism that some people use to refer to blacks. He repeatedly used that synonym and its slang Caucasian counterpart. By using such language, Fishbone is propagating the stereotypes and inequalities that it claims to be fighting. The band presented its concluding hip-hop, bouncing beat songs with the saxophone-powered "Everyday," the raucous hit "Party at Ground Zero" and the highlight, a funk 'n' junk number, "One Day." An extended version of the acoustic "Change," sung by trombonist keyboardist Christopher Dowd, provided a change of pace to end the show.