Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Sunless Saturday (1991)
It's never been easy for black bands who play rock music. For years, they were shunned by the industry for not staying in the lane of "black music," while also getting a similarly cold shoulder from black fans for the same reason. The cruel irony of it all is rock music wouldn't even exist without the pioneering work of artists like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and later, Jimi Hendrix. Megastars like Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones got their starts covering songs by black artists.
Artists like Prince and Stevie Wonder were able to have big chart success playing rock, but they also transcended genres. But for bands who were trying to make their way playing music that wasn't funk or R&B, it was a tough slog. The bands Death and Bad Brains were punk pioneers in the '70s and early '80s. Living Colour got a lot of attention in the late '80s when they emerged playing a powerful brand of hard rock, but Fishbone was also out there getting it done. Both bands could play pretty much anything, but Fishbone was seriously eclectic, careening from ska to punk to funk to metal to soul in the span of one album side.
The band was formed in Los Angeles in 1979 by a bunch of kids in junior high school: John Norwood Fisher on bass, Philip Fisher on drums, Angelo Moore on vocals and sax, Kendall Jones on guitar, "Dirty" Walter Kibby on vocals and trumpet and Christopher Dowd on keyboards, trombone and vocals. They started playing local clubs in 1983 and would share bills with the likes of Flipper, the Dead Kennedys, the Circle Jerks, Operation Ivy and the Untouchables. They became friendly with like-minded bands such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Thelonious Monster and Psi Com (who later evolved into Jane's Addiction).
Fishbone signed with Columbia Records in 1983 and released their first single, the apocalyptic ska jammer "Party at Ground Zero" in 1985, followed by a self-titled EP. Their first album In Your Face came out the next year, as did an appearance in the movie Back to the Beach, which reunited Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello and featured cameos from Pee Wee Herman, Bob Denver (aka Gilligan), Don Adams (aka Maxwell Smart), Stevie Ray Vaughan, Dick Dale and the late not-so-great O.J. Simpson. They also opened for the Beastie Boys on the Licensed to Ill tour in '87.
The band was considered to be a ska and funk band, but they started play heavier music, including a rock version of Curtis Mayfield's "Freddie's Dead" on their 1988 album Truth and Soul. The video for the song got some airplay on MTV and Fishbone opened for the Chili Peppers, who were starting to blow up. Fishbone quickly developed a reputation as one of the best live acts going.
Fishbone reached their commercial peak with 1991's The Reality of My Surroundings, which hit #49 on the Billboard 200 chart. It was a sprawling album featuring various styles as was the Fishbone way, but it was the singles "Everyday Sunshine" and "Sunless Saturday" that got the attention of alternative rock fans. The band played "Sunless Saturday" on Saturday Night Live and the song later got a video treatment directed by Spike Lee. "Everyday Sunshine" had a joyous, Sly and the Family Stone feel, but "Sunless Saturday" was darker and heavier, both lyrically and musically.
"I see the pestilence outside my window/I see the dung heaps piled at least a mile high/I see the shards of shattered dreams in the street/I face the morning with my customary sigh/I hear the sounds of children laughing aloud/A stumbling wind has attracted quite a crowd/My breakfast finished now I brave the outside/But all the clouds have hidden all the warmth inside/Chase these clouds away/I hate this sunless Saturday."
The song is almost proggy, with long guitar and keyboard solos in between thundering drums and speed riffing that could fit on a metal album. While it's dark outside, Moore sings of hope that things will change.
"Perhaps the charcoal gray and brown around me/Is just the mirror image of my tainted soul/I think the sun will never visit my sky/Until the truth is seen by each and every eye/Chase these clouds away/I hate this sunless Saturday/Freedom come/For us now/Light our sky/Burn away these clouds."
The song made it to #7 on the U.S. Modern Rock chart, the best performance by a Fishbone song ever.
They followed up the album with 1993's Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe, which featured jazz, hard rock, punk and metal in the mix. Guitarist Kendall Jones was having mental issues and quit the band; Norwood Fisher tried to rescue him from a religious cult and was charged with attempted kidnapping (and later acquitted). The band went on to play the 1993 Lollapalooza tour; I saw them when the tour came to Quonset Point, Rhode Island. I remember them being good but it was hard to focus too closely because crowd surfers were flying past my head at regular intervals. Ah, the '90s.
The next 30 years or so were filled with multiple lineup changes, but only three albums released, the last being 2006's Still Stuck in Your Throat. The band kept touring and in 2010, a documentary called Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone came out. Fishbone released on EP last year, but just today, news broke that Norwood Fisher and Kibby had been booted from the band. A new lineup is being assembled. I'm not sure what that will mean for the band going forward, but that late '80s/early '90s lineup remains undefeated.
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