A few weeks back, I went to a concert in San Francisco that was the most fun and heart-filling show I’ve been to in a long, long time. Fishbone was in town.
Fishbone showed up on my mixed tape masterpieces I made as a teenager — Housework was one of my favorite bops — but it was a recent social media post from the band that recaptured my attention.
The band was responding to a spontaneous outpouring of internet love that came forth after W. Kamau Bell gave an impromptu testimony about the band’s legacy to LA’s KCRW, in which he declared them “the greatest band to have never made it as big as they should have.” Fishbone wrote, in part:
the truth is, we were together, growing and making your favorite albums and songs…had a lot of opportunity, but didn’t break. This not only was a bummer for us professionally, but personally, it takes its toll. You see your friends blowing up, the bands you took on the road as openers blow up, buy houses, not have to worry about paying rent. …We were never jealous, just envious we didn’t have the same success…
Anyway, the other thing you need to remember is we were kids when we started and we grew up on the road. A real family, brothers, business partners, wives… every cliche you can think of… and a lot happens between 16 and 60… Sharing the same air, space and finances. Splitting a dollar 6 ways at the end of a tour. Not having anything to show for all we did….
So here we are, as good as ever, new album this past year, celebrating our history and new album in the works. We are working to end in a high note, give it all we got, ask you to continue to support by coming out when we play and walk away saying we still kick everyone’s ass.
The team and I read this and thought: that sounds like a Death, Sex & Money episode.
And I was honored to sit down for a long interview with Fishbone co-founder and keyboarder/vocalist/trombone player Chris Dowd to hear more. We talk about the early years of Fishbone, when he jammed with fellow classmates who were bused from South Central to the Valley, and getting signed to Columbia Records right out of high school. Chris also told me about his close friendship with the late musician Jeff Buckley, his trouble with alcoholism after Jeff’s death, and what it was like to leave and rejoin the band he grew up in.
Emma Maris has a lovely piece on the changing thinking about conservation and the role of human management to strengthen biodiversity. “The idea of keeping people out of nature to preserve it is making less and less sense,” she writes, “but who will do these jobs?” Read her piece in Biographic, “Tending to Paradise.”
Both The New York Times and Bloomberg reported on Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wellness influencer girlfriend leading a new surge of political giving from Silicon Valley in response to a proposition campaign to tax billionaire wealth, though only Bloomberg included this dishy detail about a run-in at a Christmas party: “Newsom, who opposes the wealth tax, was still telling people about the lengthy exchange at the party months later, complaining of a lingering cold the pair had given him.”
Big Lives, the new podcast from the BBC and Pushkin, is a really rich, satisfying listen. I appreciate its inviting, conversational take on the classic documentary podcast form from hosts Kai Wright and Emmanuel Dzotsi. Check out the episodes on Richard Pryor and David Attenborough.
Ten years after it came out, I’m finally reading the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It’s grueling, devastating, and with 100 or so pages to go, I’m going to slog to the end. I loved the world it built around young adult male friendship, showing how it can both curdle and deepen in middle age, and the novel’s depiction of trauma, pain, and assaults of all sorts is exhausting. Or as Andrea Long Chu wrote in her Pulitzer-winning criticism, “one can get the impression that Yanagihara is somewhere high above with a magnifying glass, burning her beautiful boys like ants.” Back when the novel came out, I guess I was pregnant and distracted, so I thank friend producer Matt Collette for getting me read in on the backstory.
Until next week,
Anna
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