Though Fishbone's home turf -- South Central L.A. -- may not have been a typical rock and roll breeding ground, plenty else about the band's birth was fortuitous. The band's early musical brew, heavy on ska, reggae, and a liberal helping of rock, was largely created in an incubator. (These were the early '80s, when underground music news traveled through fanzines on actual, you know, paper.)Photo by phivephotography.com
Still, it unwittingly dovetailed with the genre-bending post-punk and so-called "Two-Tone" ska revival over in England, which eventually washed back to the shores of mainstream-ish America through bands like the Clash. This, in turn, musically fortified Fishbone other like-minded Southern California acts, including a pre-stardom No Doubt, and helped to touch off what was later known as the "third wave" of American ska.
By the same token, as the '80s progressed, Fishbone itself, never one to have much truck with stylistic complaints, later veered in another direction. Out went most of the straight Jamaican rhythms, in came a new distortion and heaviness, as well as a marked funk. Again, the band found itself at the crest of a movement -- the so-called burgeoning "alternative" scene spearheaded by fellow SoCal scenesters like Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Later funk-rock acts like Incubus point to this era of Fishbone's output as particularly influential).