Sep 09 2001 @ Wetlands New York, NY

At 8:15pm, the Nutt-sanctifying funk of FISHBONE (from the planet of NUTTMEG) started their set with a little bit of Jimi Hendrix's "Power of Soul"........Spacey T's lethal guitarisms smoked the speakers in the Wetlands (which will be soon be "condo space", unfortunately). After the Hendrix tribute, it was on to "AIDS and Armaggedon". From there, it was off to stuff like "Cholly", "Ma and Pa" and ...

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Missed Mary Prankster, but got there in time to catch most of Maximum Penalty. Relatively boring generic hardcore. Funniest moment of the evening came when two shaven headed behemoths attempted to start a pit by themselves and succeeded in scaring the living shit out of anyone near them. Oh well, they had fun anyway...

Ari Up, formerly of UK punk band the Slits was next. ...

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Yes I was there and I loved it!! It reminded me of some of the first times I saw them. Small place, got real close to the band, lively crowd.

I was in heaven. Songs that stick out:

Cholly - one of my all-time favorites Sunless saturday ma and pa just allow bonin alcoholic

they ended with a rockin servitude

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I forgot the guset guitarist's name. He came on for Servitude, the last song, which they extended the end of with long guitar solos (think they've done that the past couple of shows I've seen of them).

New songs were really cool, but I don't think they're completely up to speed on them. There were a couple of times when it seemed they weren't quite in synch with each other durring moments for some of them (mostly when there were tempo changes in the songs). Nothing horrible, just not quite the normal Fishbone tightness I've come to expect from them over the years (but hey, they're new songs so its to be expected).

Show opened with Armagedon & Aids. Crowd for the most part waited until the second song Cholley to get moving (Angelo jumped into the crowd for this one). They mixed up the set quite nicely between new songs and old ones. For the most part though the crowd was pretty mellow for the new songs, though its wasn't a vibe of "I'm not moving to this cuz its weak" but more along the lines of "I don't know this one, let me just listen". Heads bobed but nobody got stomped when they were played.

Overall a good show, but not the best I've seen from them. Then again, I've seen them around 40 times or so (I've lost count) and some of those shows are just hard to top (the Ritz in 88 where they ended with Change but extended the song by throwing in lyrics to the Who's My Generation, Halloween 88 at Stony Brook, Someplace called World Stage upstate just prior to Reality comming out, and the show at Tramps a couple of years ago were they played "Black Box" durring one of the encores were probably the tops in my book).

The opening bands were mixed. Ari Up I found boring (the band behind her was good, but her and the backup vocalists were just too loose and all over the place for me. Overall not tight enough as a unit). The hardcore band that was before Ari was also very boring imho, though they did pull off an exellent reggae jam in the middle of their set (seemed improvised to me, singer sang the lyrics to My Girl through it), and the two songs that followed were also really good, but didn't care for the rest of their stuff (think they went on long cuz a number of times they anounced that they were playing their last song, but they were friends with the people who run the place and were just allowed to keep going). Mary Prankster was fun, which surprised me. Mostly fast songs with very graphic lyrics about being a slut, but done pretty tounge in cheek (well I found them amusing). Announced one song as "the greatest love song in the world, and its called Mercy Fuck". She and her band were pretty tight too. I'll see if I can catch them again.

Fun show overall, and still was able to get home in time to go to bed and wake up for work the next day (think it was shortly after 10:00 when the show ended). I can kinda get into these 4:00 shows. Or have I just shown my age?

chris...

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I rolled into Wetlands around 3pm and immediately met up with Alex Poppas who was one of the camera people at the Temple Bar shows 2 weeks ago. He flew out with the band and he, my friend Dan, and myself were filming the show for the documentary. Just to give you an idea of how cool Wetlands is and why it's such a favorite of musicians: Alex told me that the club actually paid to fly the band o...

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i believe the guest guitarist was Byron West. he also played on sunless saturday.

matt mckee

I caught up with an old friend last weekend. He lives in New York so I told him that he had to see Fishbone at Wetlands. I thought his take on it was pretty interesting:

you'll be happy to know that i followed your advice and saw fishbone. they played this past sunday. it was funny because i returned from MA, hopped on the net, and found out that they were playing that ni...

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this was a good show. the wetlands was a great club, nyc misses it. there was great energy and everyone was dancing, i broke a 7 year hiatus from stage diving and got a good ride. i have to say it was maby the best i have seen fishbone since all the changes. there were a bunch of people videotaping, they said for the band so maby we will all get to see this show sometime, or maby not, it was ...

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there's a great video of Cholly on this website: http://punkcast.com/93/index.html

I wish someone would post the entire show!