Nov 01 2003 @ The Ballard Firehouse Seattle, WA

I drove down to see Fishbone last night in Seattle at the Ballard Firehouse. Fishbone took the stage shortly after 10pm as Angelo walked out in a black and white striped prisoner's uniform, carrying a cardboard tombstone with a Fishbone logo drawn on it. He proceeded into a poem about what a 'bitch' the music industry is. This had me pretty worried that the show might end up being a real down...

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This show was scheduled to begin at 8 PM so I arrived a few minutes prior to that time. After finding out that there would be a couple of local openers I went back to my car to sleep for a while as I had a very long day at work and was very tired. I got back to the venue shortly after 10 PM just in time to work my way up front before Fishbone was set to come on.

I've never really been a Fishbone fan but had heard a lot of rave reviews of their live performance so I was eager to check them out. Angelo Moore came on stage and began with a spoken word piece that centered around the lines "living the lifestyle of the rich and famous without getting rich? aint that a bitch" that seemed to be based on the band playing and touring together for so long without seeing any financial gains. The words seemed to be straight from the heart; one could easily tell that he meant everything he said. When his mike went dead Angelo continued on, raising his voice so that his words could still be heard. He then let it be known that this performance would be the last Fishbone performance as the band was calling it quits before the rest of the band came on stage to begin their sonic assault. They tore through a fairly lengthy set with what seemed to be great precision and the intensity of the band and the tightly packed audience grew with every minute. At approximately the midway point Angelo began crowd surfing with his mike, which spurred the audience on to stage dive and crowd surf as well. Once the bigger people started with the stage diving I decided to move back to protect my equipment and allow myself to enjoy the show without having people come down on top of me all the time. After "Sunless Saturday", Spacey T's guitar effects pod was knocked over and broken, causing the set to end before the band could play their scheduled encore of "Party at Ground Zero" and "Fishbone is Red Hot". To sum this set up, Fishbone played a very entertaining set of music that sounded like a cross pollination of punk, ska, rock, funk, and jazz. Each musician displayed a heck of a lot of skill with their instruments, from the many different saxophones of Angelo to the pocket horn of Walter Kibby to the blistering bass lines of Norwood Fisher. Angelo is hands down one of the highest energy frontmen I have ever seen, I hope that he will be able to find another group of musicians to perform with as it seems like music and entertaining is his life and something he truly loves. It's too bad that that Fishbone decided to call it quits but I am happy I was given the opportunity to see them play before that happened.

Review by Chris Slack (http://www.shadows.com/gravemusic/live/kingsx-fb110103/review.shtml)

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It's official Soldiers. Saw Fishbone last night in Seattle at the Ballard Firehouse. After getting a little elbow from Angelo, he told my partner and I that this is their last show. They've cancelled the tour. Angelo was walking around with a Halloween style tombstone that stated plainly, Fishbone RIP. The show was electric. Walt looked really happy, Norwood just played, Angelo was mani...

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