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Review Schedule:
Tues: The Agony & The Ecstasy (screening Thurs @ The Southern Theater -- 7:30)
Wed: Wheedle's Groove (screening Thurs @ Trylon -- 8:45)
Thur: Ride Rise Roar (screening Fri @ The Southern Theater -- 8:00)
Fri: This Movie Is Broken (screening Fri @ Trylon -- 7:00)
Fri: Everyday Sunshine (screening Sat @ Trylon -- 5:00)
Fri: Who Is Harry Nilsson? (screening Sat @ Southern Theater -- 8:00)
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Everyday Sunshine features a phalanx of prominent musicians talking about the myriad ways they were influenced creatively by one of LA’s best rock bands. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers says they have the best base, Gwen Stefani says they have the best style, and Ice T says they are the “OG” original. Before them there was nothing, apparently. What band am I talking about? Why Fishbone of course. Perhaps you’ve never heard of them. I hadn’t. This documentary tells the story of how one of the best live acts LA has ever seen, the musicians that musicians look to, entered the public conscience most successfully with an appearance on the soundtrack of The Mask. It tells the story of how this gifted band of performers, with the ear of the industry and LA as their stage, never got their hit, and what that does to people after twenty-five years.
Fishbone’s sound is at the heart of their creative success and also at the center of their commercial failure. Their sound could probably best be described as big band-punk, like The Sex Pistols with a horn section, but sometimes they sound more metal and at others front man Angelo Moore can sound a dead ringer for Freddie Mercury.
The documentary frames the band’s origin in terms of time and place as a way of both describing their scene and explaining the creation of their eclectic sound. This early section is pieced together from interviews and dopey animations that will leave you thinking that you’re watching an episode of Fat Albert. The band mates started playing together in high school. At the time in LA, as a result of racial tensions and as a reaction to the ongoing segregation of the disparate LA communities, children were being bused out of the largely black neighborhoods and into the white communities for school. The documentarians use a clip from a stand-up routine from Damon Wayans which begins “I went a Fishbone show last night.” It’s like a parallel universe where they are the mainstream. He goes on, mocking them, as only two black people clap, “Is that that soul food place?” they are thinking. The bit gets at the creative crucible of the group. The black kids were taken from their neighborhoods and brought to the white neighborhoods and the resulting culture clash yielded something unique, but also something that many were not yet ready for. The sound won over the white punk rock fans in the clubs but left the black culture feeling cold.
In the present the band still exists. Angelo Moore, the bi-polar front man, and Norwood Fisher the fittingly rock steady base player still perform with assorted new members under the moniker of Fishbone. The film is laced with the retellings and reactions to the milestones and pitfalls of their careers, and in their care the story becomes a meditation on what it means to live a creative life. Late in the film one of the band’s early members rejoins them for a brief period saying he’d like to play music again, just for the fun of it, saying money doesn’t matter. Angelo recounts the conversation bitterly, saying that the music is important, that creative expression is important, but after you lose your family because of it the money matters. When people show up for the reunion tour they can’t know what twenty-five years on the road feel like.
Angelo is the most interesting part of the documentary. He is a constant outpouring of emotion and extreme. It’s easy to see where the band’s explosive stage shows came from; he lends the same entertainment to the documentary that he did to his band. He is relentlessly cheerful in stage footage and music videos early in his career. In the present day his smile is as wide as ever but underlined with age, as when he drunkenly compares himself to the aging Batman of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight, “Still crackin’ skulls, still doing magic.” It’s as easy to see his charm as it is to see the personal cost he paid when his explosive personality and performance failed to translate into record sales. The cost looks like a man getting off the bus carrying a saxophone and wearing the uniform of a marching band leader from the future, imagined from the past. A soldier in Michael Jackson’s army. Rehab or no, family or no, Angelo Moore is the sunshine he sings about.
-Russell Anway
Everyday Sunshine screens Saturday at the Trylon -- 5:00
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