Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Architects Of Chaos: FISHBONE's ANGELO MOORE Promises Something Special

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Architects Of Chaos: FISHBONE's ANGELO MOORE Promises Something Special · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Well, my name is Angelo Moore, Dr. Mad Vibe, Fishbone
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Soldier number one.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Mad Vibe recommends that you arm yourself with a protective
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: prophylactic coating of consciousness.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: How the hell did you even get that out? Good morning.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Hey, I've been saying it and doing it for a
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: very long time now.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: You have indeed, my friend.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: And the good people of Australia get to see it
• 0:31
  Speaker 4: very soon when you hit Australia for the first time
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: in 15 years for a run of shows starting Adelaide
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: on September 21 before hitting Melbourne and Sydney and finishing
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: in Brisbane on September 25. So the big question is,
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: why the hell have you neglected us for 15 years?
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Man, every time.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: You say 15 years, oh shit, my battery's going down
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: me again.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Let me get back in here and plug this up.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Every time.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Somebody says to me, you've been gone for 15 years.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, what?
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Well, you know what?
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: If we've been gone for 15 years, it sure the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: hell ain't my fault because I didn't want it like that.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: Good answer.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: You have the powers that be to decide.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: At some capacity, when they want you to go, when
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: and where they want you to go and when they
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: want you to stay.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Plus, man, we were having a lot of, we were
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: having a lot of band lineup changes too.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: So ever since, ever since Fishbone was there before, I
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: think you may have caught us, I don't think you
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: caught the original lineup, but I think you may have
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: caught the Special Forces lineup.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: And so if it's been 15 years since then, good Lord, man,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: I guess so, huh?
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Those personnel changes, I guess they slow down momentum.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: And then you got to start over. At least that's
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: what they kept telling me.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel like I was starting over because I've
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: been there the whole time. So with me, I've just
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: been moving in the same direction the whole time, but
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: You know, when you got guys coming and going and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, well, I guess it's a point where
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: you have to, like, it takes, like, two steps, three
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: steps back, two steps forward, one step back, five steps forward,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: three steps back.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: But we never stopped. We never stopped playing. You know,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: we just had.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: We had our hills and valleys, but we've always been
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: in existence and playing music.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very nice.
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: You're going to be celebrating 40 years of your debut
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: album in your face by playing the whole album, bro.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: So was that a difficult thing to do?
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: Like, when you wrote the album, I couldn't imagine that
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: you would have ever thought you'd have to play the
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: whole thing.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Like, was it difficult learning the whole album? Well, no.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Well....
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Let me not just speak for myself when it comes
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: to that because I've known the whole– actually, it was
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: like one song on that album that– it was one
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: song on that album that.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Fishbone never played, and that was In the Air.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: We ended up playing everything else, but In the Air
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: is one, it was one new song that I learned
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: that we never learned.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Right. You know. It was pretty easy for the most
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: part for the new guys to learn it.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: At least for that, you know, we study it and
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: then we all get together. You know, the band doesn't
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: live in Los Angeles anymore.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: It's not everybody in one town anymore.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: It's you got, you have the trumpet player and the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: bass player in Queens and Harlem, New York on the
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: East coast of America. And then you have the drummer,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: which is on the West coast, but he's in Oakland,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: which is Northern California. And then you have me, Chris
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and Spacey T, which are here in Los Angeles.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Right. So when we, when we get together, we can't.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Just casually drive to, uh, the rehearsal space anymore, man.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: We got to, we got to, it started, it turned
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: into a production. Yeah. But we do it.
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: So going back and learning all these songs again or
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: freshening up on all these songs, were there any songs like,
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: 40 years is a long time in music. So were
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: there any songs that back then you sort of, you're
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: a bit, you know, they weren't too bad a song,
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: but with the benefit of age and wisdom, I guess,
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: now you're re-going over them.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: Any that you like a lot more now than what
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: you used to?
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll put it to you like this. There were
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: songs that I wrote from a victim's point of view.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: One of them was Ma and Pa. That's just one,
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: for example. That's the best one I like to use.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: So when I wrote that song, I wrote it from
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: a victim's point of view because my parents were going
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: through a divorce and I was just saying, well, Ma
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and Pa, what the hell is wrong with y'all and
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: what the fuck am I supposed to do now? Later
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: on in life, I learned how to sing that song
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: from a storyteller's point of view as opposed to the
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: victim's point of view.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: So I can come at it.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: So you got to be able to learn how to
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: come at different songs and musical pieces from different perspectives
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: in order to keep it new.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: For you and new and fresh. Yeah.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: You don't want to be singing and playing the same
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: shit for the rest of your life. The people who
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: come to the show to see and hear their favorite songs,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: they don't care what you're going through. They wanna hear
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: their favorite songs, right? And so even though I might
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: be tired of playing a song or I might be
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: over with it, I'm like, well, okay, there's a way
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: around that because there are many different perspectives.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: To come at one thing.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And so when you consider those different perspectives, on interpreting
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: a piece of music or art, then you're able to
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: do it again. So even though it's like Party at
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Ground Zero is one of those songs. Or Skanking to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: the Beat is one of those songs. I got my
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: daughter singing Skanking to the Beat, by the way.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: She's beautiful. Yeah, wow, that's beautiful.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Proud dad moment.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: So I got her singing Skanking to the Beat and
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: a couple of other tunes in there.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Which is a whole nother perspective.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that's how I, that's how I do that, man.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: You know, you gotta be able to come from a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: different angle if you want to be able to reinvent yourself.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It makes sense.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: That album is considered by many as being a groundbreaking
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: album in music. Like the benefit of hindsight is a
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: beautiful thing, but going back to the time when you
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: made it, like, did you feel that there was something
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: special about it or was it just The best you
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: could do at the time.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: What, in your face? Yeah. You mean when we first
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: recorded it?
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: When you first recorded it. Did you have an inkling
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: that you had something special there? Or was it just
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: another bit of music that you recorded?
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: We were just playing music and we recorded it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: We were just doing what we were doing. We were
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: just making music, man.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: I think it takes people....
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Like people like you, to come back and say, hey man,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: what you're doing is this, that, and the other. You know,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: it may be, you know, a special or prophetic, you know,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: because to Fishbone, we were just, we were just making music,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the music that was coming to us at the time.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: I did read an interesting quote about that album, though.
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: They said that it helped redefine the possibilities of punk
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: and ska music.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Would you agree with that statement?
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Sure, why not?
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah. From your point of view, how do you think?
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Well, man, you know what? If it did, then that's good.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: If it redefined, what did you say, redefined?
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: The possibilities of punk and ska.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: It redefined the possibilities in punk and ska.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: But what way?
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: Well, that's what I wanted to know.
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: Like, the general gist of it I got was that
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: you opened up the possibility that you could do whatever
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: you wanted within that genre, you know, and you could
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: make it your own and you could paint outside.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: The lines, I guess, a little bit.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Paint outside the lines. Yeah. Yeah, well, you can paint
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: outside the lines.
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: As long as you do it with a purpose and
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: a plan.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: As long as you have.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: A vision that you want to get across. Instead of
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: just covering your eyes and just going like that. You
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: want to be able to have a plan, man.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's all art. You know, and if you are,
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: like I say, if you have a purpose and a plan, you.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Can color outside the lines if you want to, as
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: long as you know how to color inside the lines
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: as well.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very cool. I mean, it's all music.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Man, you know what?
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: I discovered the punk rock in gospel. Because I love
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: myself some gospel, man. I like Shirley Caesar. I like
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the Clark sisters. I like Reverend Horton Heat.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: That's rockabilly.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I like Reverend Horton Heat, man. So all that gospel
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And I don't know why Reverend
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Horton Heat came up when I mentioned gospel.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Because he's religious. Because he got the name Reverend.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: Damn straight.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Don't listen to all those songs. You hear the elements
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: in that, man.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: You hear a lot of elements of punk rock in gospel,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: especially in the drums.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: The high tempo, the fast tempos. And in punk rock,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: you have the aggression, but you don't have too much melody.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: In gospel, you have way more melody and some aggression,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: but not as much as aggression and edge as you.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Do in punk rock.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: But in gospel, you have a lot of musical chops
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: and jazz sprinkler and a little bits of jazz in
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: gospel too.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: So it's all intertwined.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: If you have the ability and the imagination enough to
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: be able to see how it all connects, because it
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: does all connect.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: Along those lines, though, mate, you raise an interesting point.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: There's so much musically going on.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: I hate defining music by genres, but you've got so
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: much going.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: On in there, man. In the creative process, how do
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: you find the balance?
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: How do you know when you've gone too far in
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: one direction or not far enough in another or it
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: needs a bit of this? It'd be a melting pot
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: and so many ideas, it'd be difficult to keep up with.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Well, usually it's somebody else in the band that's that
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: might tell you you're going too far. Or maybe you're
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: a producer, manager of a record company, and it's up
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: to you whether or not you want to believe that
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: or you want to cater to it, as long as
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: it's in the best interest of the music. I would
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: like to consider myself boundaryless. when it comes to music
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and art. At least that's how I'm thinking. Whether it
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: comes off like that or not, that's how I'm thinking.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know, man.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: That's a hard one because I'm always told that I'm
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: thinking outside the box.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: That's fine.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be I'm not trying to be
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: prey to, uh, being restricted in my music or art
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: or lyrics or concepts or theories.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Man, I got a book. I got a couple of
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: books out, man. Yeah. A couple of books.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I got the Olegna phenomenon as my social studies book
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: that comes with an audio book. That's on my website.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try to bring some of that stuff
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: down there when I come down there. And, um, I
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: got this other book called Sky Do, uh, Sky Don't.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And that's, uh, that's another project I have where it's
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of words and mute songs and music.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Lots of songs and music and stuff like that. So,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and I have a couple of comic books that come
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: with music too. I got some CD, I got CDs,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: and I have these thumb drives, these thumb drives I
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: put together that have a couple of my projects on
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: there as well. So I always like to keep it diverse, man.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: You know, diverse and full of merch.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: Why not? You're very self-assured with your music, which is great,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: but do you ever.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: Second-guess yourself when you've created something that's so far outside
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: the box? Like, do you sit and think, like, Nah,
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: maybe that is a little bit too far.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: Is there a limit, personally?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure I have stopped and said, well, maybe
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: I need to make a U-turn and fix that or
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: readjust that or whatever, but I don't... I try my
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: best not to let that happen too often. I try
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: my best not to not see the vision through. I
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: like to be able to see it all through, man.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Your ideas are important, man. They're important and it's important
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: to get your ideas.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Out, man.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Once your idea is out of your head and manifest
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: into something that you can hold or hear, who knows?
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: You might be helping somebody else out.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: You know, we want to be able to help out
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: our brothers and sisters, man.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: You know, no matter what kind of setback or prison
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: they might.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Be in, music frees. Music frees and educates. It's called
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: the Escape America Tour. Damn, I totally forgot. So that's
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: the name of this tour coming up, man. Fishbones Escape
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: America Tour.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Well, there you go.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: If we could have started off with that, we wouldn't
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: have to say anything else.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I know, because we know what America's going through right
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: now with this dumbass in the office. And so a
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: lot of people are wanting to escape this motherfucker right now, man.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was checking that out before, man. I could
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: probably spend an hour looking at that and laughing. That's
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: just awesome, that photo.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Oh. That last upper.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, man.
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: Try not to check it out over your shoulder before
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: because it would have been rude, but that's fantastic.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: There we go.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: So that's me, yours truly, in the middle. Right to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: my left, that's Screamin' Jay Hawkins. To my right, that's
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Pauline Black of The Selector.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: That is just awesome.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Then you got Darby Crash right there.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Right above my head. Then you got HR, the bad brains,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: right there. Right over my head. Who we got down here?
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, we got Jackie Wilson right in the middle of
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: those two apostles. And then the rest are the apostles.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: That That says everything you need to know about you
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: right there in one painting, brother.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: That is truly a work of art.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. That was one of my projects, man, called
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: The Last Opera.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: I did with this group called Scene 4.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: And then I have this other project that I did
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: called Avant Presidents. And the presidents include Obama, Lincoln, and Kennedy.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And so if you go to my website, drmadvive.com, D-R-M-A-D-V-I-V-E.com,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: you can see a lot of my art pieces on there.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: And some of those art pieces, if you press the
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: right ones, they have performance art pieces that go with
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: them of me displaying the art, talking about it. You
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: got my music going on behind it too.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: You are certainly an enigma, my friend. You're a very
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: rare human being. I like it.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: That's a good description.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: I like that.
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: All right, I'm going to have to let you go, bro,
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: so someone else can have the pleasure of your company.
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: But Fishbone hit Australia from September the 21st. There's still
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: a handful of tickets left from Destroyer Lines, but I
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: suggest you get in quick because it's going to be
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: one hell of a show, brother.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Thanks for your time.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you, man. Thanks for talking, brother. Peace.