POP MUSIC REVIEW : Fishbone Sprawls at UCLA

Hearing Fishbone perform with a muffled sound is like watching Michael Jordan play a stall game. It doesn’t really bring out their best.

At UCLA’s Ackerman Ballroom on Thursday, the frenetic hometown heroes mounted their usual display of impressive musicianship, but the sound had no crispness or definition. No matter what territory they entered--funk, punk, hard-rock, psychedelic--they sounded generic.

When they added horns to the rumble (the brass came flying into their hands from the back of the stage and was returned the same way), the music took on some shape and established some edges, but it’s possible that Fishbone is doomed to sprawl, no matter how sharp it sounds.

The band (which also plays the Roxy on Sunday and Monday) jumps from one mode to another so quickly that it never plants its feet and takes hold, and Thursday’s set kept going in and out of focus. That willingness to experiment--along with its virtuosity, social conscience and party spirit--has earned Fishbone good will and respect in the alternative rock world, but its talents and ambitions are better showcased on its new album “The Reality of My Surroundings” than they were on stage.

On the other hand, no one conducts the charged-up, post-punk rock-show ritual quite like Fishbone, and they kept the Ackerman dance floor at a boil. Singer Angelo Moore spent a lot of time swimming on top of the crowd, and to end the show he rode the upraised arms all the way to the sound-mixing platform at the rear of the hall, where he choreographed the audience into a huge circle that surged around the room like a mass of hopped-up roller-skaters.