"Shit. Got any weed, man?"
It's Angelo Moore on the line. The Fishbone frontman is outside Fitzgerald's, an old-school rock dive in Houston, Texas, trying to take care of business. The question isn't aimed into the phone.
"I'll take care of you in a minute," another voice says. "Lemme go finish my work real quick."
Just another day on the road out of literally thousands for Fishbone, the mother-loving funk-rock bastards of the long-deceased alternative nation. In 1991 America, if you were cool, suburban, and stupid, you flaunted ink on your bicep depicting either the blocky asterisk emblem of the Red Hot Chili Peppers or the boned-fish Fishbone logo. A throwback to mod, a kiss-off to punk, an embrace of ska, and an intelligent take on sex-starved funk, Fishbone's music didn't just cross boundaries, it leg humped them into greasy submission. On top of that, the six L.A. freaks of Fishbone were black.
"Hale Junior High—that's where it all started for Fishbone," Moore says. "I lived in the Valley, and the rest of the guys got bused in from the inner city to mix the schools so they wouldn't be racially lopsided." Meanwhile, over in L.A. County, the Chili Peppers were courting George Clinton, and Jane's Addiction were strung out on Hollywood Boulevard, both on their way to massive mainstream success.
Fishbone had been together several years when they released their debut EP in 1985, highlighted by the third-wave ska classic "Party at Ground Zero." It was with 1988's Truth and Soul and 1991's The Reality of My Surroundings that they transcended their third-wave roots—and every other simple designation, for that matter. Song after song, musically and lyrically, both albums kicked violently against stereotypes, stomping through rock and funk, R&B and punk, screaming with social awareness, bursting with unforgettable songs. Hard-rock guitar scorched tambourine slaps, synthesizers bucked against elephantine bass lines, while Moore's spastic-elastic vocals railed out on the ghettofication of the American dream. Their live shows, fueled by Moore's possessed intensity, were untouchable. They toured with the Beastie Boys and played Lollapalooza, the alternative to alternative, ruling from below underground.
In the mid-'90s, things started slipping. In 1993, guitarist Kendall Jones left the band to join a religious cult. Bassist Norwood Fisher, armed with duct tape and a stun gun, was arrested during an attempt to extract him. Their albums of the day—the heavy metal Give a Monkey a Brain... and punkish Chim Chim's Badass Revenge—didn't live up to expectations, artistically or commercially. Frustrated by the band's uneven track, old members left, new members came and went. Fishbone were caught under the same glass ceiling that stymied other black rockers like Living Colour and Bad Brains.
"If Fishbone were to play R&B or hiphop, our financial situation wouldn't be a problem," Moore says. "But because we play rock 'n' roll, that definitely affects our status and income here in America. We've always wanted to take up the masses, but without having to change our music."
The band's recently released seventh album, Still Stuck in Your Throat—their first featuring new material in over five years—isn't a return to brilliance, but it is a spirited, sweat-soaked affair: Fishbone in all their dirty, genre-molesting badassitude. They've stuck to their sound in a way their peers never did, perhaps suffocating their career by doing so. Moore admits that the band did, at one point, try to play ball.
"We tried it a couple times on Hollywood Records, kind of being convinced or scared or forced into making pop arrangements and watering down our music, but nothing ever happened," he says. (Fishbone's 2000 album on Hollywood, The Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx, was grossly mishandled by the label.) "They said, 'Don't worry, you guys will be rolling in the big time and you'll have all your cake and ice cream and you get to eat it, too.' And we were like, 'You mean we get to eat our ice cream, too?!' 'Yeah, you get to eat your ice cream, too.' Next thing you know, we was wearing it just like last time," he says with a raspy chuckle.
This is the man who, midsong during a performance in San Francisco a few years back, crowd surfed from the stage to the bar, danced sax in hand across the bar kicking glasses and bottles, and then crowd surfed back to the stage. Maybe because of those 25 years of sweat and struggle, the live Fishbone experience remains one of the greatest in all of music. Savvy music fans have always known, and the rest...
"People gonna know about a band like Fishbone if they go to the underground, where the roots are," Moore says. "They say dumb it down for the masses, that's the country we live in. It's a lot harder to break through when you have the dummy wall there. Once you get through the dummy wall, there's a lot of people that are into eclectic music and culture in America. It's just hard to find." 
