Mar 11 1995 @ Vic Theater Chicago, IL

Fishbone (or what's left of Fishbone, anyway) played the Vic Theater in Chicago last night, with Weapon of Choice opening. Here's what I thought:

Weapon of Choice

What the hell is nutmeg music? Is that a pot thing? They were interesting, but pretty forgetable. Semi-funk rock stuff. Good keyboardist.

Fishbone

The only stuff I recognized was Pressure, Behavior Control Technician, Properties of Propaganda, Warmth of your Breath, and Nutt Megalomaniac. The rest was either really old or really new, and demonstrated one important point: Fishbone is going to miss Kendall Jones and Chris Dowd a LOT. The songwriting was noticeably worse on songs like "Beer Gut", "Alcoholic", and "Love and Hate", as might be guessed by dumb, trite song names. They tried making up for the absence of lead guitar, keys, and songwriting by doing a lot of mediocre but well-performed vocal harmonies and horn parts.

It wasn't a bad show, though. Angelo Moore did some very cool spoken word stuff, and was up to his usual jump-into- the-crowd-from-the-balcony antics. He also played the largest saxophone I've ever seen - bigger than a baritone. Behavior Control Technician and Properties of Propaganda were great. The crowd was into it, and fortunately noone threw anything at the band this time (they stopped the show last year for that). I am pessimistic for the future of the band, though.

Does anyone know if Kendall or Chris plan on any musical projects in the future?

Later, COZ

-- Chris 'COZ' Costello clc2 at midway.uchicago.edu

<<<

Couldn't agree more. This show wasn't very good, lots of stuff that was new to audience - ended up on Chim Chim album. I walked out thinking Fishbone might be done for good. Glad they bounced back in 1996 at Cubby Bear!!!