It’s Sunday night. The rest of New York Shiddy is curling up to watch either football, House of the Dragon, or for more creative potatoes, both at once. But underneath the scaffolding, amidst perpetually dirty streets and fresh graffiti tags, the family was gathering. The almighty Fishbone were coming to the conclusion of their small “Fly in the Buttermilk” tour, a familiar term for old Fishbone heads. Flies in the buttermilk are out of bounds. They defy limitations and expectations. As the band says on their Facebook, to be a fly in the buttermilk is “a badge of honor as a band of color in a stereotypical music genre. Too black for white radio, too rock for black radio.” It takes guts to be the odd ones out, no matter how radical nor earnest nor unbounded, which draws radical earnest unbounded fans. Fishbone brought along pop punk outfit Action/Adventure, a band of fellow flies out of Chicago making music only white suburban kids are supposed to make (if you answer to the machine). Together they made some beautiful noise down at the independent bastion Le Poisson Rouge.
Action/Adventure started the night off with some really solid tunes. While pop punk isn’t my flavor of tea necessarily, this fivesome rocked pretty good. Their drummer can put out some beastly clamor. They sound like they’d be at home on alt-rock radio. For all of my memories of fakery from pop punk bands two decades ago, these guys had none – they were, frankly, adorable, and mock the ye olde concept of poser-ism in their music and their own brand of hot sauce, Poser Poison. Even though these guys are clearly playing a genre they love, but aren’t “supposed” to love, they vocally stood firm in their convictions that people can do whatever the hell they want regardless of the continents in their blood. That’s as punk as it gets.
Then came Fishbone. What is there to say about your sixth Fishbone show? “Sunless Saturday,” “Everyday Sunshine,” “Ma and Pa,” “Servitude,” the classics roll off the tongue. There were old punks who were-there-when, some from the Chili Peppers tour era, which impressed Angelo and Norwood. There was new blood too. I spotted a couple kids in their twenties, and even one youngin’ out well past his bedtime, finding his joy in the morass of whirling bodies. Go get ‘em, kid.
Of course there was a pit. A Fishbone pit is a high impact high velocity hug-a-thon for the seasoned rock kid. One older pro in a pork pie hat started the surf, and before I knew it, I was holding up Angelo’s thigh while he sweat-dripped Sunshine on our faces. I took a pit edge position, playing defense for a photographer and trying to keep sturdy against the onslaught. Of course there were moments the pit took me off my feet, but there was no fear, because this Fishbone pit felt less like elbows and shoulders and more like jumping the waves at the beach. I must have wrapped my arms around dozens of fellow meatbags, and they around me. A sea of flies, wing in wing.
It was gorgeous and I am exhausted. Here are some other thoughts, in no particular order:
- More women than I have noticed before
- Sweat
- HORNS ON HORNS ON HORNS ON HORNS ON HORNS
- Dr. Madd Vibe laying down poetry
- Norwood in tie-dye still looking good
- Happy Birthday Norwood with special guests
- Dirty Walt’s very dirty microphone
- Chris Dowd being a ham
- A series of almost comically larger and larger saxophones
- Angelo Moore’s delicious asscrack
- I hope Angelo saw my Thumpasaurus shirt because that would be a mind-blower lineup
- John Steward keeping rhythms tight
- Mark Phillips with the shred
- I don’t know who I took that picture with but I love you too
- The bartender was cool as hell
- Family of strangers
- Fishbone being now and forever red hot
Music-Survival-Guide 