Fishy Swa Ska
The one time I ever actually considered getting a tattoo in my entire life was embedding the Fishbone logo -- you know, the fish skeleton in the circle -- someplace on my temple of a bloated, pock-marked body. Of course this was back in 1988, when I was young and dumb and completely devoted to all things Fishbone. Now that I'm old and dumb I do just fine immortalizing their heyday as a band by remembering how Joe first introduced me to them back in college. Or in turn introducing them to my friends back home. And the first time I saw them live when I was nearly crushed to death in the front row, but I had a pair of drumsticks up my nose which made one of the guys in the band laugh. When lead singer Angelo Moore passed me the microphone to sing but the song that they were playing at the moment was "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." which is almost totally incomprehensible so I just made "bluh-blup-blup-bluh" noises. How I passed out on the hood of Just Dave's car at the Open House Diner shortly after the show from a combination of extreme heat and collapsed lungs. How Joe and Just Dave and I tried to drive down to Chapel Hill to see them the next night (gluttons for punishment we were) and asked every person on the street but could never find out where they were playing. When I saw them a few years later in Richmond and I was able to get in early when the venue was empty and watch Angelo expertly swing dance with his wife to Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" alone on the dance floor. How hard I laughed when I saw Bruce Hornsby in the mosh pit, walking around and looking perplexed.
Too many great memories of a band that I once followed religiously without question. That is, until their albums shortly after Truth And Soul started dripping in quality a smidge. But vivid memories trump a tacky "ass antler" of Angelo Moore's rictus grinning face right over my heinder.
Did I say tacky? I meant the other T-word.... TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!
Party At Ground Zero by Fishbone
(m4a file, available for 7 days)
posted by Melissa at 10:28 AM
3 Comments:
Love Fishbone! And that logo is awesome, but glad you didn't get it permanently inked.
But I'm not here to talk about Fishbone, but Mr. Bruce Hornsby.
I've only run into celebrities 2 or 3 times in places I totally didn't expect to run into them. It's one thing to go to a convention, or you see them after a concert, but Bruce Hornsby was one of my man on the street (actually man in the store) run-ins (other was Neil Young).
I'm thinking this is early 90's, actually it was probably 1987 because I was on a family vacation in Virginia and we went there in the summer of '87 to go to Busch Gardens (The Big Bad Wolf Roller Coaster had just opened and it was awesome, one of the best I ever rode). Anyway one night we're at the hotel and my older sis and I go to a local Shop Rite Supermarket to buy some snacks.
We're walking by the aisle with the magazine racks and I probably wanted to see if they had the newest issue of Circus, Hit Parader, Metal Edge, Rip, Rolling Stone or any of the other multitudes of rock mag I bought each month. We're walking towards it and there's a guy standing there reading a mag and I stop and whisper to my sister "Isn't that Bruce Hornsby?" So we stop, probably 20 feet away and she's like "yes it's him".
Now this was late at night...so the store is pretty empty and a normal human will tend to notice someone out of the peripheral vision that has stopped suddenly and is staring at them.
Hornsby uncomfortably looks up, sees us gawking and puts the mag back and walks away.
We being someone star struck (although we HAD met Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall about a decade eariler when they filmed a TV movie on our block when we lived in the Bronx...so I'm not saying we weren't celebrity savvy), start following Bruce around the store.
I think back now and I think we thought of possibly asking for his autograph, but at the same time kinda realizing neither one of us really wanted his autograph. So for a couple of minutes we stalked The Hornsbyed one through the store much like Ishmael and the Great Whale. I think he caught site of us and just ended up splitting without getting anything.
We then bought our chips and soda and realized even those who appear on MTV need to hit up Shop Rite at times. A lesson well learned
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That's so funny that you saw him in Virginia! Bruce still lives here in nearby Williamsburg so he still haunts the place, and folks see him from time to time, usually by himself, doing his own little thing. My friend used to work in a grocery store in Williamsburg (which of course is where Busch Gardens is) and saw Bruce shop there several times. Actually a few weeks after seeing him at Fishbone he showed up at my boyfriend's venue in Hampton and he let Bruce in free to see this band called Mommi I'm Scared. Bruce is always where it's hap'nin', baby!
And The Big Bad Wolf is pretty rockin'. That first year it opened it had so many problems it was closed almost every time I was there. Once I went with a school trip and some of the girls in my class were riding it when the train stopped at the top of the second dip, and the train coming up behind it rammed intot he back of their train and pushed it down the dip! Some scared shit, yo.
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