What a bunch of jokers. Fear wanted a war and thought New Jersey would make the ideal place to start it, compared their cocks to cheap lunch meat, and called NYC a swell place if your tastes run to reed instruments. At the dawn of the eighties they were good for a couple of laughs
Los Angeles’ Fear are credited as being the first hardcore band to inspire audience ultraviolence at their shows, and the first to inject heavy metal crunch into their music. Notes Dez Cadena (Black Flag, D.C. 3) in Steven Blush’s American Hardcore: A Tribal History, “Fear were probably a metal band before they were a punk band.”
He also notes “They really knew how to play their instruments,” which is why they arrived on the scene with a metal edge in the first place. Metal requires a modicum of musical proficiency, which couldn’t be said of most punk bands, whose basic MO was to pick up their instruments for the first time and play a show a week later. (And good for them.)
Outliers or not, Fear–who are best remembered for their appearance on Penelope Spheeris’s 1981 film The Decline of Western Civilization and their infamous performance on the 1981 Halloween night episode of Saturday Night Live–did a good job of summing up the hardcore ethos with “I Don’t Care About You.”
Fear may have specialized in snotty sarcasm, but when Lee Ving spits out that “Fuck You!” he isn’t joking. If the best of the remaining songs on Fear’s 1982 debut The Record (the only Fear LP that matters) have tongue at least partly in cheek, “I Don’t Care About You” is the real deal.
The Record is by no means a masterpiece, but it’s an essential musical document of the first way of LA hardcore. “New York’s Alright if You Like Saxophones” is self-explanatory–Ving’s sneering dismissal of NYC as a breeding ground of effete jazzbo snobs is a lark, and pretty much sums up the rivalry between Hollywood sleaze and Big Apple sophistication.
“Let’s Have a War” is one of punk’s best (and funniest) songs–its opening “There’s to many of us (repeated 12 times of so) establishes its basic premise, to wit war would thin the herd (space is limited) and also be good for business. “Beef Bologna” opens with some David Lee Roth blues jive, boasts a memorable chorus (“Beef! Beef! Beef bologna!”) and is a low rent retort to Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Meatman.” It’s not nearly as subtly crude as “Meat Man,”mind you, but if your significant other’s on a tight budget and isn’t particularly choosy, Ving’s product will probably do.
“I Love Livin’ in the City” is a nationwide celebration of urban filth, squalor, poverty, starting with my old stomping grounds of South Street Philadelphia. Favorite line:“I spent a night in jail/At the Wilcox Hotel.” The herky-jerky “Camarillo” is a paean to electro-convulsive therapy and California’s most notorious mental hospital (Charlie Parker did a stint there). “Gimme Some Action” is a one-minute kick to the solar plexus and came as close to the last fast rules of hardcore as Fear ever got.
“Foreign Policy” is metal by another name, and “No More Nothing” is “I Don’t Care” with details, too many details for that matter. Black Flag was content to poke fun at hardcore kids who do nothing but get drunk and sit around watching the tube; Ving runs through a laundry list of grievances that run from nuclear disarmament to Playboy magazine. Focus, Lee, focus!
The reaming songs on The Record are filler. Songs like “Fresh Flesh” (all metal, no hardcore, and boring metal at that), “Getting the Brush” (look at what the cat dragged in wannabe Black Sabbath), Animals cover “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (seriously?) and “Disconnected” (hate the way the chorus drags itself along like a slug on Mandrax) could be kicked off The Record and I wouldn’t notice their absence. And the same goes for ”We Destroy the Family.”
As was true of so many hardocre punk bands Fear had a short shelf life, but unlike many (if not most) their songs have remained lodged in my skull. Lee VIng may have been a major league asshole, but for one brief moment in time he was front man of a band that mattered. So hate ‘em if you want–hating Fear is a popular pastime–but they left their mark. Let’s have a war!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
