Fishbone on the Rocks Off Manhattan Boat Cruise

The sun was setting on a beautiful day. I had a beer, a beautiful date, and was about to see Fishbone for the third time in less than eight months. Why wouldn't I be smiling?


Looking back at last night's performance on "The Temptress," here's Melanie posing before the show with Angelo Moore, the lead singer.


We boarded the boat at Pier 81, at West 41st and the West Side Highway. The venue was small. Indeed, there was no stage, just one end of a floor where the equipment was set up. At the other end of the floor was the soundboard and stairs to the top deck.


We watched the show from above. The main floor's ceiling went to the top of the boat. There was a railing that allowed people above the support from which to look down at the band.

This vantage point afforded a place above the mosh pit from which to view and listen to the concert. It also allowed a sense of participation as those that crowd surfed seemed to utilize the bottom part of the railing as a benchmark for a successful ascension from the main floor. If you could hang on to that railing, you could launch yourself back down into the crowd below. Mission accomplished.

The drawback from viewing from above was the limited view of the stage and the other musicians. Still, this was acceptable to Melanie and me since we have seen the band two other times in the past year, and we had a much better sense of time and place, with greater visibility to the exterior: seeing the Manhattan skyline on a clear, moonlit night, as we rocked and rolled in the Hudson, past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Being above the fray allowed me greater use of my camera, as I was barely jostled (as opposed to the beating I would have surely taken on the floor). Of course, the pinnacle of the evening, early on, when lead singer Angelo Moore climbed the railing during "Everyday Sunshine,"

(Angelo right below us as he climbed up to the railing)

and was right in front of us, inches away,


as we sang the refrain when he thrust the microphone in our faces, then did a back flip into the crowd below. The photo above shows his hand gripping the railing right in front of me. Alas, I too excited to do anything more. Here's Angelo right after landing in the crowd:



Before the show started, I was able to photograph and read the set list (partial)

that was on the floor at the foot of the stage. I live-blogged the list in groups, which can be seen in last night's posts, but here is the set list in its entirety:

"Unyielding Conditioning" (from Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe)

A segment of "Unyielding Conditioning":



"Everyday Sunshine" (from The Reality of My Surroundings)

"Faceplant Scorpion Backpinch"(from Still Stuck in Your Throat)

"Beergut" (from Chim Chim's Badass Revenge)

"Premadawnutt"(from Still Stuck in Your Throat)

"Freddie's Dead" (from Truth and Soul)

Watch: a minute and fifty seconds of Freddie's Dead. Note, at the very end, Angelo displays some stellar crowd surfing technique, all without missing any lyrics.



"The Suffering" (from Fishbone and the Familyhood Nextperience Present: The Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx)

"Party with Saddam" (from Still Stuck in Your Throat)

"Skank 'n Go Nuttz" (from Still Stuck in Your Throat)

Watch:



"Ugly" (from Fishbone)

"Karma Tsunami" (from Fishbone and the Familyhood Nextperience Present: The Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx)

"Drunk Skitzo" (from Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe)

**"Alcoholic" ((from Chim Chim's Badass Revenge)

**"Date Rape" (from Still Stuck in Your Throat)

"Let Dem Ho's Fight" (from Still Stuck in Your Throat)

"Bonin' in the Boneyard" (from Truth and Soul)

Bass Solo - The Star Spangled Banner

**They played these, but I must have missed a live post. Will correct once I can verify. I may have missed some titles to short spoken word segments, but I did get all the full songs.

The band was tight and didn't seem to be burdened with a lot of the technical issues that plagued the CBGB and Knitting Factory shows. The crowd was great and rowdy and moshed so ferociously at times that the Temptress rocked in the water significantly more in response to the
movement on the boat.

This one guy, in the following three photos, shows the proper crowd-surfing technique. He started the night in a Green Bay Packers Reggie White jersey, and ended in a Fishbone shirt. This is the middle stage. The third shot, despite its disturbing nature, is classic.

Going . . . .

Going . . . .

Gone!

Of note was the absence of the song "Behind Closed Doors," which we had heard them playing during sound check while we waited to board. Of course, today, Melanie and I text-messaged back and forth naming songs we wish they'd played.

This was the first time we had seen Fishbone recently without a slew of opening acts, so the band played early and stopped as we docked, just around 11:00. Thus, it was a shorter set, and a short night, than we had been used to. Although this morning I am appreciative of the fact that I was in bed by 1:45 A.M., when we have usually been still "in concert" at that we hour in the earlier venues.

I can't recommend enough for people to see Fishbone play live, at least once. It's always a fun crowd, a hard-working band, and a suitcase full of awesome music.

More cool pics:

Angelo before:

and after:

To see a slideshow of all of Somegal's concert pics on Flickr, go here.

There's also (as of May 5), a bunch more great concert photos here on the Fishbone Live website. Here's Angelo playing the theremin:



If you look closely in the background, you can see a certain bespectacled blogger watching from the wings.