Black rock band Fishbone plays anniversary show at Terminal West

Angelo Moore remembers coming to Atlanta 30 years ago to start his music career over.

The saxophonist and founding member of Black rock band Fishbone was searching for a new record deal after Columbia Records, dropped them after three noncommercially successful albums.

“They wanted us to write some pop s---, but they put us on the shelf. We’re about real music, art and not trying to water ourselves down, so we wrote some punk rock, spirited-type s---, and they kicked us off the label,” Moore told UATL this month.

Fishbone moved to Atlanta, signed a new record deal with Rowdy Records, the company founded by music producer Dallas Austin, and released “Chim Chim’s Badass Revenge,” their fourth album combining rock, ska, funk, hip-hop, reggae and R&B.

They became the backup band for Dungeon Family affiliate Joi, jammed in the studio with hip-hop quartet Goodie Mob and singer D’Angelo. Their album also sold poorly but motivated Fishbone to pursue their own creative vision.

“It was brilliant, powerful and our f--- you to Sony (parent company of Columbia Records). Dallas is a good guy, a fan of the band and likes our music but he just didn’t know how to market us right,” Moore said.

“It was still always good music, creativity around and the best introduction for us to Atlanta.”

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Fishbone’s debut album “In Your Face,” the energetic band is performing at Terminal West on Saturday. The show includes the full album released in 1986 and songs from subsequent releases.

Fishbone was formed in Los Angeles in 1979 and released its debut album "In Your Face" on Columbia Records in 1986. “They wanted us to write some pop s---, but they put us on the shelf. We’re about real music, art and not trying to water ourselves down,” says Angelo Moore (far left). (Matt Dessner)

Known for headbanging grooves and mosh pits at their concerts, founding member and keyboardist Christopher Dowd said Fishbone is proud to attract fans of all ages.

“It’s an accomplishment to have anybody acknowledge anything you’ve done in a span of 40 years. It’s been an amazing response, and I feel blessed that anybody would have anything to do with anything we’ve done. If it’s one person, I feel touched by that,” Dowd said.

Moore said the tour is an opportunity for fans to support live music.

“Even though you can hear us on Spotify and Amazon Music, they don’t pay the artists nothing. Don’t rely on somebody recording on their phone and posting to YouTube. Come and support because artificial intelligence is trying to make it so that you don’t have to get up and go out,” he said.

Fishbone also made other Atlanta connections in their four-decade career. In 1991, their music video for “Sunless Saturday” was directed by Morehouse College alumnus Spike Lee.

Moore and select members of the band appeared in the Outkast-led musical “Idlewild” as Big Boi’s band 15 years later. He calls filming the Prohibition-era period piece “a good time.”

“It was pretty fun with some Lindy hoppers that were cutting up,” he said.

The founding of Fishbone

Fishbone was started as a sextet in 1979 after Moore, who grew up in the suburbs of San Fernando Valley, California, began commuting to Los Angeles to meet musicians.

“When the inner-city buses program came into the picture, I started catching the bus because I wanted to hang out. They were around funk, and I was around a lot of alternative rock stuff wanting to mix it up with ska,” Moore said.

The band’s earliest names were Diamonds and Thangs and Megatron. They changed it to Fishbone after their founding drummer Philip Fisher’s nickname and to reflect their musical influences.

“Our first names were getting us gigs with the white boys and heavy metal bands, but we wanted something a little bit closer to Funkadelic and James Brown,” Moore said.

Band members also agreed to release music with socially conscious lyrics about race and politics.

D'Angelo and The Vanguard background singer Joi pose backstage after a stop on "The Second Coming" tour for his third album, 2014's "Black Messiah." The two were labelmates at EMI Records in the early 1990s and regularly performed with Fishbone. (Courtesy of Joi Gilliam)

“We’ve never shied away from speaking our minds, so if you have any sort of platform or microphone in front of you, as Black men, you must speak out on principle,” said Dowd, who left in 1994 and returned in 2018.

Atlanta producer/songwriter Dallas Austin signed Fishbone to his Rowdy Records label in 1996, where they released "Chim Chim’s Badass Revenge.” (Tyson Horne/AJC)

Fishbone continued to tour and release music independently for decades. They were profiled in the documentary “Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone” in 2010.

They recently closed a Kickstarter campaign to record their 10th album set for release this fall. Moore said the challenge is the band members’ availabilities.

“We’re working on the record now, but everybody lives in different places. We’ve had to do some finagling remotely to get the ideas down,” Moore said.