Releasing a new song about a presidential candidate days before the election—and calling that song “Racist Piece of Shit”—is a surefire way to get noticed. But Fishbone has never really had any difficulty attracting attention.
The band formed in Los Angeles in 1979 has made a career out of confounding those who would try to categorize its music, and the lyrics have never shied away from social commentary. Fishbone comes to the Rio Theatre on Dec. 18.
When Fishbone came on the scene, there was no other band like them. An all-Black lineup of musicians playing a stylistic mashup of ska, punk and hardcore metal, Fishbone confused some but won the devotion of others. “We were just playing music that we liked,” Angelo Moore says with a shrug. “We weren’t really caring about what other people thought.”
Moore name-checks some of the artists who inspired Fishbone: “Funkadelic, James Brown, Sly Stone, Louis Jordan, John Coltrane, [Charles] Mingus and Sun Ra,” he says, implicitly challenging the notion that his group fits neatly into any one genre.
Another hot band of the era, the BusBoys, gave the group its first break. “Our very first gig was at Madame Wong’s,” Moore says. The L.A. club was a hub for the city’s punk, new wave and power pop scenes, and exposure there gave acts a foot in the door to bigger audiences. But an opening spot for the BusBoys was no guarantee of success. “I felt like we had to win over a lot of the audience,” Moore says, “because the color of our skin didn’t match with the stereotype.”
Moore says that Fishbone impressed the concertgoers with their music. “We didn’t have too much trouble winning over white people, because we were playing a lot of rock and fast-tempo stuff,” he says. Paradoxically, with audiences of color it was a different story. “We weren’t playing the kind of music Black people were used to hearing,” he explains. “You’ve got the whole Black rock scene—Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles—but it’s small compared with the overall Black scene of R&B, funk and hip hop.”
Somehow, Fishbone found a way to earn fans across the musical and racial landscapes. Four of the group’s albums made it onto the Billboard 200 charts between 1988 and 1996, and two Fishbone singles—“Sunless Saturday” and “Everyday Sunshine,” both from 1991—reached the upper registers of the U.S. Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Moore has remained quite busy inside and outside of Fishbone. Under his own name and/or using his alter ego moniker Dr. MadVibe, he has released six albums since 2000; his latest was released just this year. Moore has also collaborated and/or guested on numerous tracks by other artists, variously providing vocals, sax and Theremin for acts as diverse as Ugly Kid Joe, Avenged Sevenfold, Gwen Stefani and Bad Brains.
But even those projects can’t contain his creative impulses. Moore’s Brand New Step project has three albums to its credit, and his description of the music makes it clear that his eclecticism knows few bounds. “It’s electronic dance music on the poppy side,” he says. “We’ve got guest rappers; we’ve got all kinds of stuff on there. It’s a whole ‘nother world I’ve created, man.”
Yet Fishbone remains Moore’s primary focus. Over the past decade-plus, Fishbone has continued to tour, but the group wasn’t heard on record for some time. Fishbone’s most recent studio album, Still Stuck in Your Throat, was released more than 18 years ago.
But the group hasn’t taken the route of becoming a nostalgia act, touring on the strength of decades-old material. “Racist Piece of Shit” is merely the latest in a resurgent release schedule from Fishbone. In 2023 the group released a self-titled five-song EP, highlighted by “Estranged Fruit,” a collaboration with NOFX. Earlier this year, Fishbone debuted another collaborative release, the single “Growing Up Punk” featuring MC Homeless.
Those releases are the sound of Fishbone getting warmed up; at the time of our conversation, Moore is in the recording studio making final tweaks to the mixes of a clutch of new songs. Tentatively set for release in early 2025, the new material will take the form of not one but two Fishbone albums. “We’re going to call it Son of Fishbone: The Stockholm Syndrome,” Moore says.
Fishbone’s major-label era ended in the mid ’90s, but the group pressed on with a constantly shifting lineup, taking on additional musical styles and continuing to earn critical praise. Today Moore and fellow founding member Christopher Dowd front a six-man lineup of younger players. The through-line that connects Fishbone’s body of work is its social perspective.
“From where I’m standing as a visionary and a creative, I make sure that [people] hear and see my opinion,” Moore says. He tries to stay positive but observes that the United States is in an evil time; that’s reflected in the lyrics of Fishbone’s latest single, a song about a familiar orange-hued real-life character. “We all know that the Joker is funny, and he’s colorful,” Moore says. “He’s one of my favorite characters in Batman. But you don’t vote for him for president!”
Fishbone plays at 8pm on Dec. 18 at the Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz, 831-423-8209. Tickets: $42. riotheatre.com
PULL QUOTE:: When Fishbone came on the scene, there was no other band like them. An all-Black lineup of musicians playing a stylistic mashup of ska, punk and hardcore metal, Fishbone confused some but won the devotion of others
