Consumer Guide Album

Fishbone: Fishbone [Columbia EP, 1985]
Looking like postmodern vaudevillians who've just signed themselves in at the mental hospital, with sartorial details appropriated from the Specials, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimi Hendrix, Stepin Fetchit, and whoever, these six black L.A. teenagers show a flair for visual outrage worthy of George Clinton himself, though funk is far down on an equally eclectic list of musical influences that subsumes metal, new wave, and cool-jazz finger-pop into a ska Prince Buster never dreamed of. It's all too scattered, without much songwriting focus beyond the Devo-meets-Clinton "? (Modern Industry)," but in a world of of Prince clones and ugly presidents these guys are cause for hope. B+