Fishbone and George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic would seem a match made in funk heaven– especially since the members of Fishbone grew up as devotees of all things P-Funk.
“There was a time when there was nothing else I listened to,” says keyboardist Christopher Dowd. “Playing with these guys every night, it just reminds me of being 14-year-old-Chris who would freak out at the very thought of hanging out with George Clinton. I don’t mean to diss any new music but the process for creating art is so different now; all people want is faster tempos and more volume. There’s a certain attention to detail that I feel is missing, and to me George Clinton is the last beacon.” Fishbone appear as special guests at the Clinton/P-Funk show at the MGM Music Hall on Thursday.
In fact the members of Fishbone all managed to get into a landmark P-Funk show at the Beverly Theater in Hollywood in 1983. That show became a live album and solidified the young band’s musical direction. “That became our first entry into funk and had us saying, ‘Hey, this isn’t too far off. Maybe we can do this thing too.’ At the same time, being in Los Angeles, the punk thing was really bubbling up; we’d see thousands of kids filling venues for the Circle Jerks. When the punk kids saw us, we were the first Black kids that were really into the same music they were. They expected us to be like the Gap Band or Cameo and we said ‘No, man. We’d rather see the Specials and Devo’.”
Fishbone wound up being one of the originators of punk funk (with ska added to the mix), and they’ve since been namechecked by everyone from OutKast to Lenny Kravitz. “It’s been a trip,” Dowd says. “But I’ve been surprised by my entire career. I feel that music manages to do what it’s supposed to.”
Dowd returned to Fishbone five years ago after a long absence; and with the return of trumpet player “Dirty Walt” Kirby (joining long-timers John Norwood Fisher on bass and frontman Angelo Moore), Fishbone now has two-thirds of its classic lineup back in place after many personnel changes. “I just felt like it was part of my artistic legacy to come back and try to make some good music with my friends. But it’s complicated, because you always want to evolve, but you’re also thinking, ‘Wow, I’m back to this thing that I did when I was at the height of my powers.’ You evolve and your tastes change, what you want to accomplish changes. There are some complicated feelings there, but I’m grateful that we’re as close to the original thing as we can get.”
For all that, the band’s new five-track EP does hark back to classic Fishbone. The lead track “All We Have is Now” recalls their uplifting hit “Everyday Sunshine”; and “Estranged Fruit” (an update of the classic Billie Holiday song about lynchings) maintains their political edge. The EP paired the band with a strong-minded producer, Fat Mike from the band NOFX, and for Dowd that took some getting used to. “I was sitting on the sidelines saying ‘You mean I can’t touch it?”. My problem is that I’m such a perfectionist; the guys in the band were saying ‘Man, you’re worse than (rap producer) Q-Tip’. So I was probably one of the reasons why it took so long.”