You have to understand where I'm coming from. I had been subjected to other people's music all my life when I finally discovered Fishbone. I'd had to suffer through the 50's revival, hearing Elvis Presley ad nauseam and "Rock Around The Clock" a thousand million billion gajillion trillion times. Then came the sixties craze, maybe it's "The Big Chill"s fault, and Kevin Costner is to blame for this also, but sure enough every movie and TV show featured CCR and you couldn't avoid the Stones' "Satisfaction".
I vowed that when I growed up, I'd listen to contemporary music, not the music of the past. So I actively sought out new music, and discovered the funk-rock fusion bands like Bootsauce, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Living Color and Fishbone. In these bands rested, I thought, the future of rock'n'roll. They would take the energy of rock and add in influences from Funkadelic and rap and take it to new heights.
Instead, the Seattle sound wrestled rock back into the Aerosmith/Led Zeppelin sphere of influence, white boys playing straight-ahead arena rock of their dads, and throttled rock for another decade.
Fishbone released a monumental album in "Truth and Soul", track after track of pure gold and varied sounds that all came with incredible energy and musicianship. Except it got little to no airplay.
So imagine my pleasant surprise when their next album came out, titled "The Reality of My Surroundings", and it actually got some commercial attention. Not much, but it was a start. And the video to "Sunless Saturday" actually got rotation on MuchMusic and MTV.
With its irresistible combination of an acoustic guitar intro, driving beat and spot on vocals and harmonies, "Sunless Saturday" parted the clouds of mediocrity which prevailed in the early nineties, and augured a new beginning, a promise for a new, better day. And that's why, for kids forced to listen to crap all through the eighties, "Sunless Saturday" was The Best Song Ever.
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