"Ever Thought of Coming Back" is the best song ever written about Jesus Christ. No really... I mean that. I do not mean the GOP, George W Bush, mega-church, brimstone spouting Jesus... I mean the real deal: the compassionate revolutionary and subversive Christ. This song makes me feel full of warmth and like someone else gets it. The questioning of one's faith. The conversational tone. The ultimate redemption found within one's decision to look past the world's bastardization of the source material and make the brave choice to simply say: inside of me, I believe.

The Brian Wilson worship and stellar production push the whole thing over the edge into the realm of transcendent pop.

I mean just listen to that vibrato! The stuff rocks the rafters of the opera house. Latin and all kinds of hi-falutin music stuff. Imagine what she would do if she fronted a Pat Benatar rock band? Who would have guessed that such a piercing soprano was housed within our Philly football fan? Such are the mysteries of the Hess.

L.A.'s melting pot produced rich musical gold in the early eighties. There was a large sect of Southern Cali kids who were obsessed with the British second-wave ska revival. It was multi-racial, it was political, and most importantly: you could go OFF to it. It meshed well with the foundation that homegrown punk-rock heroes like X, The Circle Jerks, Black Flag and The Germs had laid a few years earlier. Hip-hop had yet to assert it's full thrust, but was building steam upon an already rich history of west coast funk and soul. Five young black men with an intense love for all of the formentioned music. Reaganomics were in full swing, Round Two. Throw that all together: Fishbone.

A crazy amalgamation of all that was around them, this first EP is far and away their most inspired work and is a picture-perfect snapshot of the City of Angels, circa 1985.

Fusing the energy and thrash of hardcore punk with their revered Two-Tone ska blueprint produced rooftearing skankfests like 'Ugly' and the Selector-like female-fronted 'Lyin Ass Bitch'.

'V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.' is a Zappa-meets-Parliment-Funkadelic full-on workout, skewered so strangely in a way that Prince could only hope for.

'? (Modern Industry),' the lyrics of which consist nothing more than radio station call letters, became a bonified new-wave dance hit on L.A.'s groundbreaking KROQ radio station. The accompanying music video was also a trendsetter.

While it's been very overplayed and featured on a few film soundtracks, 'Party At Ground Zero' is really the Fishbone calling card. Cab Calloway on speed. Lunatics running the asylum. Ready to veer out of control at any moment. This is the song that almost captured what Fishbone really was... almost.

They *never* caught it on record. It's amazing how none of the recorded documents come within any distance of what Fishbone was live. Both in terms of sheer technical chops and bounding energy, they were unending in their ability to improvise, feel a crowd out and turn in jaw-dropping performances, time after time. In their early years, absolute bedlam would ensue whenever they hit the stage. Mosh pits like hurricanes. Fans all up on stage. It was common for trombones and bodies to be thrown straight into the audience. Angelo Moore, a riveting and fearless bandleader, always with a cane in hand to pull off the dramatic gesture or to help launch himself into a crowd.

They were mentors to (and paved the commercial way for) the Chili Peppers & Jane's Addition -- and yet they never receive the noteriety and credit truly due to them as the seminal act they are. Their later forrays into metal/rock and their recent new lineups have failed to inspire -- and perhaps it's simply tied to the influence that they played in the formation of my youth that I am unwilling to judge them by any other standard -- but if any record to me represents what Fishbone is, it's this E.P. I have danced my ass off to these songs. I'm betting that you might too.

seventeen seconds is a genius stroke of songwriting that has yet to be matched in many regards - all emo bands be damned. it marks the transition of a idiosyncratic & quirky pop act into something much stranger and richer. the textured weavings of simple guitar lines and synth refrains present on every track form the blueprint from which Smith would continue to build upon for the rest of his relevant years, well before any exterior labels of goth or smeared lipstick could distract from the real deal. it is a work that is personal and gentle, yet fully representative of the punk rock DIY enthusiasm of the time. sombre. quiet. haunting. it's power lies within it's simplicity. stand out tracks: 'play for today' and 'M,' which is my all time favorite cure song.

"Marathon" has got be the one song that is guaranteed to get me up and out of my seat dancing, no matter what the occasion might be. It's great for driving, camping, playing videogames, boxing, fishing, swimming, hiking, snorkling and going to the bathroom. Damn, I love Oakland's finest -- they get me hype.