Everyday sunshine

Fishbone were a huge influence on my old band, Hallelujah Picassos. Our former manager Lisa hipped me to this film, a documentary on the band. Fishbone formed in1979 when the members were in junior high school in South Central Los Angeles. From the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Fishbone might be the only African American punk band you could name. It has always stayed a bit underground, but that's the way the band members want to play it. They broke stereotypes, exerted wide influence, yet refused to play by recording labels' rules and paid a heavy price for it. There was also a bit of self-destruction as well.

"In the '80s, there was this kind of Hollywood scene of people that were huge fans of Fishbone," said San Francisco documentarian Chris Metzler, whose film "Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone," makes its Bay Area premiere this month at the Mill Valley Film Festival and DocFest in San Francisco.

"John Cusack, Tim Robbins, Chris Rock, David Arquette. We found out that Laurence Fishburne was the closest to the band. He'd let them crash at his place in LA or New York. The way he knew of the band is he was a bouncer in this club in Hollywood, and heard Fishbone onstage and was like, 'Who are these brothers?'

Among the down periods was in 1993, when founding member Norwood Fisher tried to help a band member succumbing to mental illness, and ended up being tried on kidnapping charges. Another original member, Angelo Moore, was forced to move in with his mother.
So did the band like the film?

"They came and saw it at the Los Angeles Film Festival, where we debuted" in June, Metzler said. "I think seeing it in front of the audience, seeing people laughing, being emotionally wrenched at the end of the film - Norwood likes the movie, but Angelo loves the movie. He's just like, 'That's my life! That's what it is.' This is the trials and travails of trying to be an aging punk rocker into your 40s."

Mike Park has seen Fishbone 173 times.  He talks about the first time he saw them and the impact it had on him here.