Album: The Reality of My Surroundings
Year: 1991
Who says a funk band can’t play Rush?
That’s actually kinda flip, but it was one thing that I always found interesting about a lot of the hard-rock songs that Fishbone and their Black Rock Coalition brethern Living Color did: songs like “Cult of Personality” or “Sunless Saturday” were much closer to the art-rock of Led Zep or Rush then they were to the punk rock or the glam-metal bands they were ostensibly competing against.
I guess it was one of those deals where to get noticed for playing the “wrong type of music,” they had to show they could play it with more chops than just about anyone else.
So you got a song like “Sunless Saturday,” with galloping drums and extra-long keyboard and guitar solos at every possible turn, almost overshadowing a lyric that was basically the opposite of their previous single:
I hear the sounds of children laughing aloud
A stumbling wino has attracted quite a crowd
My breakfast finished now I brave the outside
But clouds have hidden all the warmth insideChase these clouds away
I hate this sunless Saturday
Of course placing “Sunless Saturday” after “Everyday Sunshine” on both the album and the sequence of singles brought the wish fulfillment aspect of the previous single into full relief: they might wish for sunshine everyday, but the reality of their surroundings was that Saturday where the sun was long long gone and there were only clouds as far as the eye could see.
And the music backed that up: it was as hard and as punishing as “Everyday Sunshine” was light and full of joy.
So as the song broke down into a trumpet obbligato over a shimmering acoustic acoustic guitar, all you could do was hope that the sun would come out eventually.
“Sunless Saturday”