Fishbone Funk Around in 'Everyday Sunshine'
The story of a band whose time hasn't quite come...yet.
Dear Moviegoers,
To call Everyday Sunshine a story of destruction wouldn’t be entirely accurate, but it also wouldn’t be completely incorrect either. The unclassifiable band Fishbone, who fused multiple sounds and genres to become something truly exciting to see live, indeed suffered from wild attitudes and wilder obsessions, which perhaps hindered the forward momentum of their potential success. The members aren’t presented as terrible people, but rather as free spirits who found common ground in an uncommon world. For brief moments, their music blares louder than much-needed internal conversations, and their conversations tend to lead to more music. The solution to any issue can be found in a jam session.
As a documentary, Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone is fair. As a concert film with more film than concert, it’s an earnest blast of personalities and punk. Now, Fishbone isn’t just punk. It’s funk, it’s jazz, it’s experimental. Ska comes close as a proper label, but even that doesn’t truly fit. None of the band members ever felt as if they truly fit in, from their childhood to their present days. As young African Americans growing up in Los Angeles, each with a need to express themselves most uniquely, it was almost destiny that they found each other and began to play together. To watch their evolution from the school system to the music scene is almost breathtaking, and to view their performances through archival videotape footage is nothing short of tense. When they played, they preyed. In this manner, they were more punk than punk.
It may not break new ground in the field of filmmaking, but Everyday Sunshine doesn’t have to. Where the members of Fishbone represent themselves as a one-band revolution, this film represents itself as a fine depiction of its subject. By letting these real characters play their sounds and live their lives, Everyday Sunshine goes more for honesty than for answers. Who was Fishbone? Who are they now? Just listen. Just watch. There’s something very flattering about that. There’s something very freeing too.
Grown-up but not as mature as years prior, Fishbone’s lead singer Angelo Morris takes center stage. He’s all smiles and all passion, but just can’t quite crack adulthood. He lives in the home of his loving but conservative mother, his thoughts are always on the band and the music, and to him, his younger days were just last week. Time keeps on slipping, and that’s the real story of Fishbone. They should’ve reached the top and certainly deserved that recognition according to their peers. Instead, they sometimes play in front of small crowds in tight spaces, still known more in the L.A. area than on the world’s platform. Angelo’s vision? Angelo’s desire? Of course not, but his story makes for a greater band story overall.
A typical documentary in some sense, about a group of rockers who were and still are very atypical in all senses. So comfortable about such chaos. 3.5/5
Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone is available for rent or purchase on Prime Video and Apple TV.
Sincerely Yours in Moviegoing,
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