Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone

Lev Anderson, Chris Metzler:
Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone (USA, 2010)
107 min. - English
age limit 16 years

The funkmetal band Fishbone is stranger than fiction. Their story with its host of weird characters and twists couldn’t have been made up. Hailing from the same neighbourhoods as Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction, Fishbone mixed together ska, funk, punk and hints of jazz into a primal soup always on the edge of boiling over. Nowhere was this point closer than on gigs where the band's physical wildman antics put them and their audience close to peril. Columbia, the record business giant that had signed them, had no idea how to market this unrestrained and indefinable ball of energy, but with a Saturday Night Live performance and a video directed by Spike Lee, Fishbone was reaching the critical mass of stardom. Things seemed promising indeed.

Everyday Sunshine is the Fishbone story in all its glorious incredibility. It is a film for any fan of energetic rock music or a LA scene specialist, but filled with such wild stories that the documentary entertains even those who’ve never heard the group’s music. This is after all a band that, for instance, tried to kidnap their guitarist back from a cult he had joined only to be sued for their efforts.

Despite many wondrous mishaps, the primal and wacky dynamos behind the band, Angelo Moore and the surfing bass-thumber Norwood Fisher, haven’t given up. In spite of aging and financial, domestic and line-up troubles they have kept on going without compromises. The relentlessness has led them to some sorry situations, including deserted signing events and equally empty concert fields somewhere in Eastern Europe.

Fishbone has never achieved the popularity it deserves and probably never will - despite the respect they hold among their peers. However, Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone is not a movie about failure. It is a movie about staying on your own path no matter how slippery slope it sometimes turns out to be.

» fishbonedocumentary.com



See also:

» Alex Hammond, Ian Markiewich: Better Than Something: Jay Reatard
» Kenneth Thomas: Blood, Sweat + Vinyl: The DIY of the 21st Century
» Jesse Vile: Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet
» Alex Hammond, Ian Markiewich: Better Than Something: Jay Reatard
» Kenneth Thomas: Blood, Sweat + Vinyl: The DIY of the 21st Century
» Jesse Vile: Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet


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Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fisbone

Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fisbone

Thu 15th Nov at 4:30pm Kerubi