The Black punk, funk and ska band from South Central L.A. that broke every rule in rock. Now in production, a concept rockumentary built on Give a Monkey a Brain, telling their story from the inside.
In the early 1980s, a group of Black teenagers from South Central Los Angeles built a band fluent in punk, funk, ska, jazz and metal, often in the same song. The music industry had no idea where to file them. The musicians who came after them did.
Fishbone was never an anomaly. They were part of a radical Black musical continuum, and a central force in the sound that came to be called alternative.
Told in twelve movements inspired by the twelve songs from Fishbone's album Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe, the film weaves new interviews, archival footage, live performance and animation into the story of a band too Black, too loud and too early for the systems built to sell them.
Production is underway. Interviews with original members and current-day concert footage are in the can.
"If it weren't for Fishbone we wouldn't be making music... Truly."
Gwen Stefani, No Doubt
"They should've been the band that went way beyond any of us that were influenced by them."
Les Claypool, Primus
"Norwood is an outstanding bass player with a unique style who I've stolen a lot from."
Flea, Red Hot Chili Peppers
"I've seen them do every style... in the same song!"
Mike Watt, Minutemen
Frontman, saxophonist and cultural trickster who turned satire and acrobatics into an art form.
Guitarist fluent in metal, punk and funk, with a sharp political lens.
Bassist and bottom-end backbone, blending funk discipline with punk urgency.
Horns and a raw voice of street-level realism, bringing humor, grit and hype.
Vocals, keys and trombone. A genre saboteur whose melodic instincts let the band slip between styles.
Drummer pairing punk speed with deep funk groove, anchoring the chaos.
These voices lived this history from the inside. They are architects of the sound, scenes, and movements that shaped Fishbone's emergence and were shaped by it in return.
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The interview tapestry spans founding members of the Black Rock Coalition, artists who carried the band's genre-defying spirit into the mainstream, poets and vocalists from the downtown avant-garde, and the musicians and producers who built the sound alongside them.
These voices lived this history from the inside. They are architects of the sound, scenes, and movements that shaped Fishbone's emergence and were shaped by it in return.
​
The interview tapestry spans founding members of the Black Rock Coalition, artists who carried the band's genre-defying spirit into the mainstream, poets and vocalists from the downtown avant-garde, and the musicians and producers who built the sound alongside them.
These voices lived this history from the inside. They are architects of the sound, scenes, and movements that shaped Fishbone's emergence and were shaped by it in return.
​
The interview tapestry spans founding members of the Black Rock Coalition, artists who carried the band's genre-defying spirit into the mainstream, poets and vocalists from the downtown avant-garde, and the musicians and producers who built the sound alongside them.
These voices lived this history from the inside. They are architects of the sound, scenes, and movements that shaped Fishbone's emergence and were shaped by it in return.
​
The interview tapestry spans founding members of the Black Rock Coalition, artists who carried the band's genre-defying spirit into the mainstream, poets and vocalists from the downtown avant-garde, and the musicians and producers who built the sound alongside them.
Scenes crash into each other, genres bleed and time folds, the way bodies move in a pit.
Impact over chronology
03
Edits follow riffs. Chapters break on drum hits. Emotional turns are dictated by sound.
Music as narrator
03
A film that both explains and behaves like Fishbone: humor and rage side by side, mastery fueling the chaos.
Design in the disorder
03
DIRECTED BY
An award-winning filmmaker and working bass player whose roots run deep in the Black Rock Coalition, Juson came up in the same musical ecosystem as many of the artists in this film. Those relationships, built on years of trust and shared history, are what make this access possible.​
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She directed One Person, One Vote?, a nationally broadcast PBS Independent Lens documentary on the Electoral College. Unclassified brings together her musical lineage and her political lens.
AS FEATURED IN ARTVOICES MAGAZINE
"But the debt is real. The debt is racial. And the debt is still unpaid."
Juson sits down with original members of Fishbone to trace how the band that inspired No Doubt, Sublime and the Red Hot Chili Peppers was shut out of the success it helped create.
By Maximina Juson. Read it online now.
COMING SOON IN PRINT: the Winter issue of ArtVoices Magazine. Street date December 1, 2026.