Unsung: Everyday Sunshine

Unsung is a new feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated.

In the early '90s, I discovered the joy of buying used CDs. First off, they were cheap and if you waited a few months after an album came out, you could usually find it because someone who paid full price had either tired of it or taped it and sold it to a record store. I had two favorite sources of used CDs: The Record Exchange in Salem and Rockit Records in Saugus (R.I.P.).

A particularly good haul from Rockit in late '91 resulted in my introduction to two great bands. One was Soundgarden, whose Badmotorfinger simultaneously kicked my ass and freaked me out. That album introduced the band to a lot of folks, getting them on Lollapalooza the following year and setting the stage for the commercial success of Superunknown.

But the other album I picked up that day wasn't quite as successful, although it did fairly well on rock radio and MTV: Fishbone's The Reality of My Surroundings. Released in April 1991, the album reached #49 on the Billboard top 200 chart and was the band's best critical and commercial success by far (they're still at it). It followed up 1988's excellent Truth and Soul (which I only heard years later). The band got its start as teenagers with 1985's Fishbone EP, which featured an emphasis on punk, funk and ska (the band's members played sax, trombone and trumpet), but as it progressed, the sound grew harder-edged.

By the time Reality came out, Fishbone had incorporated a healthy dose of hard rock/metal guitar into the mix, no doubt inspired by fellow black rockers Living Colour and 24/7 Spyz. As a fan of both those bands and so-called "punk funk" acts like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More (and ska acts like the Specials and Bim Skala Bim), I was intrigued by Fishbone. So when I saw the CD at Rockit, I grabbed it.



Stylistically, the album's all over the place, a big pot of rock jambalaya, mixing all the aforementioned ingredients. The standout songs are "Everyday Sunshine" and "Sunless Saturday," both of which were released as singles and represent the band at their best. "Everyday Sunshine" is a funky Sly Stone homage, upbeat and energetic, while "Sunless Saturday" is darker and heavier, with its lyrics describing inner-city despair. Frontman Angelo Moore is adept at bouncing back and forth between all these styles, often within the same song.



The band's heavy side comes through on songs like "Fight the Youth" and "Behavior Control Technician," while "Pressure" is a classic punk-funk hybrid. Drug dependence is explored in the spoken word piece "Junkie's Prayer" and the reggae of "Pray to the Junkiemaker."



Fishbone went on to play on "Saturday Night Live" and developed a reputation as a killer live act, appearing 0n the 1993 Lollapalooza tour. That was the only time I saw them play, but unfortunately I couldn't enjoy the show because I was too busy getting kicked in the head by all the stupid crowd surfers at Quonset Point, R.I.

After that, I kind of lost track of the band. In the subsequent 19 years since Reality came out, Fishbone has released four studio albums and a couple of live albums and has toured like crazy, but has never reached the peak it did on Reality. It's too bad, because those first few albums were pretty great. The band ended up going through a rotating cast of members; currently, only three of the original six are in the band.

My interest in the band rekindled with the news that there's a new documentary about Fishbone called Everyday Sunshine that's been screening around the country. There's a terrific look at the band and the film in the latest episode of The Field Negro Guide to Arts and Culture, a podcast from Living Colour's Vernon Reid and comedian W. Kamau Bell (which is an excellent podcast, BTW).



Fishbone has influenced everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Living Colour to No Doubt, but alas has seen nowhere near the success of those acts. Hopefully the documentary will shine a little spotlight on the greatness of this band.