Fishbone
Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia
1009 Canal St.
Philadelphia
April 24, 2026
In the mid-1980s, the late author and music critic, Greg Tate, famously proclaimed: “I have seen the future, and it is Fishbone.” As cofounder of The Black Rock Coalition — a collective dedicated to promoting Black musicians — Tate’s finger rested firmly on the pulse of Black American music at the time. In 1986 — a year after Tate and company formed the BRC — Fishbone stormed out of Los Angeles’ wildly creative underground rock scene with their debut album, In Your Face, an uproarious mixture of punk, metal, and funk with Jamaican ska. By combining the jaunty rhythms of ska with contemporary rock music, Fishbone prefigured the rise of third wave ska and its takeover of American pop culture by more than a decade. Forty years after the release of In Your Face, Fishbone has more than made good on Tate’s ambitious prediction.
On Friday, April 24, Fishbone rolled through Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia for the latest stop on their In Your Face 40th Anniversary Tour. The venue was packed as the ghostly echoes of dub reggae riddims flickered from the house sound system. The opening act, Planta Industrial, a Bronx-based rap/hardcore duo, hit the stage first, accompanied by a DJ and hypeman. Their set was a unique hybrid of punishing hardcore drums and riffs, hip-hop vocals, and bachata-influenced Spanish lyrics. Planta Industrial’s blast beats, distorted Amen breaks, and old-school NYC hardcore chants offered a unique vision of punk rock that is a clear progeny of Fishbone.
From there, Fishbone took to the stage with manic laughter and a short but dramatic brass fanfare. Here, In Your Face’s soulful opener “Problems Arise” is anchored by the fury of guitarist Tracey “Spacey T” Singleton’s gnarly licks. “A Selection” and “Cholly” take the band’s Jamaican influences and inject them with scorching punk intensity. As lead singer and saxophonist, Angelo Moore bops around onstage; the energy is infectious. These 40-year-old songs still have the power to ignite a party on stage. At age 60, Moore is inexhaustible as he skanks, sings dramatic, gospel-style runs, and conjures transmissions from the heavens with his theremin. While keyboardist/trombonist Christopher Dowd should get major props for holding it down as Fishbone’s co-leader, the set should remind all of us that Moore is deserving of a spot in the pantheon of rock’s greatest frontmen. When In Your Face came out back in 1986, it was not only a unique amalgam of genres, it was a vital scream coming from the margins of culture and the music business. Much like the BRC, Fishbone set out on a mission to reclaim rock as a Black art form, and 40 years later, the vitality of that mission was evidenced on Brooklyn Bowl’s stage. While there is still much work to do, we fortunately live in a world that has been enriched by a few Black kids from LA who sought to make punk rock their own.
