One of the great memories I have of seeing concerts at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrisson, Colorado (one of the top five places to see a concert in the United States, easily), is from July 4, 1991. One of the Lollapalooza-imitator festival shows, The Gathering of the Tribes, came to town and included a diversity of musical acts from small-time rap artists to John Wesley Harding, X, and Fishbone. Fishbone's performance was definitely the highlight of the show.

The band had just released The Reality of My Surroundings, a radio-friendly, MTV-video album that placed Fishbone in a category of their own and is considered by many to be the best album the band has produced. Frenetic front-man Angelo Moore kept the crowd hyped up with his trademark New Orleans Mardi Gras/funk-skank dancing, while the band rocked behind him with a power and energy that complimented and reverberated off the six story igneous rocks that ring the amphitheater.

Moore incited the crowd furiously. Fishbone took the stage on Independence Day with a shout of, "Happy Fourth of You Lie!" and proceeded to point out to the crowd that the Fourth of July is only Independence Day for white, rich males in this country's true history. This in front of an audience of thousands of predominantly white, middle-class concert goers who came to hear music, drink bootlegged liquor and watch fireworks after the show. Fishbone didn't let up from their political polemic either. Although engaging the crowd personally consistently, they also spoke between songs about the plights of blacks in America and how on Independence Day it was important to think about what true equality means and how far we have to go before reaching it.

But plenty of the people were there to have a good time, and there was a fair number of Reality of My Surroundings converts in the crowd, and people actually went with it. It was one of those moments of race-barrier destruction that can only come from a powerful charisma on a stage. Then Angelo jumped down into the crowd (much to the dismay of the hired bouncers) with a Carnival scepter and led a march-cum-conga line through the audience. I was about 50 rows up from the stage so I missed it, but he must have gone at least 20 rows up the side of a mountain, carrying waves of dancing people behind him like a Pied Piper before crowd surfing back to the stage.

by Patrick Schabe

http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/f/fishbone-psychotic.shtml