special introductory paragraph!

I Love Livin' In The City 7"

The Record

More Beer

Live For The Record

Budweiser 7"

Have Another Beer With Fear

American Beer

I Love Livin' In The City 7" - Criminal 1978

And perhaps Lee threw out Derf Scratch because he didn't SCRATCH enough!!? PERHSPAP!?!?? Never mind.

This early version of "I Love Livin' In The City" is good but not quite as stellar as the later LP recording: the guitar is just playing buzzy trebly chords; Lee sounds ridiculously scratchy, hoarse and uncharismatic; and weirdest of all, the guitar solo sounds like Chuck Berry!

The real highlight of the single is the b-side, a delightfully jubilant ode to the JFK assassination entitled "Now Your Dead." Here is where Lee Ving allows his personality to really shine through, tunefully and confidently rat-a-tating the rhythmic lyrics ("Must-ve-been-some-thing-you-said/Must-ve-been-bad-now-your-dead!") as if he'd grown from Damaged- to My War-era Rollins during the period you were flipping the record over.

One thing that's always made me sad though is that they didn't become a really nice band and change their name to "Dear." Or hire a bear to be their singer, and change the name to "Bear." Or replace the entire band with a big ear and change the n

* The Record - Slash 1982. *

Classics include the pounding "Let's Have A War" ("It can start in New Jersey!"), the sex blues parody "Beef Boloney," the hit single from which they made all the money "I Love Livin' In The City" ("My apartment smells just like a zoo/It's chock full of shit and puke!"), the hate anthem of a lifetime "I Don't Care About You" ("Saw an old man have a heart attack in Manhattan/He died while we just stood there lookin' at him/Aint he cute?"), and the polemic petrolatum "New York's Alright If You Like Saxophones," which presumably began as an attack on my fine hometown's tuneless "no age" music of the day, but ended up (predictably enough) as a tootinly chucklish bitchfest about every little aspect of said ville ("New York's alright if you wanna get pushed in front of the subway!/New York's alright if you wanna freeze to death!/New York's alright if you wanna get mugged or murdered/New York's alright if you're a homosexual!!!").

Eh, what's that? Oh, of course it's all in jest. Violence and loathing restructured as humor provided a nice healthy catharsis for band and audience alike. I guess it may have also influenced idiot skinheads who didn't get the joke, but we must look beyond that and enjoy the tunas anyway. 'Cause see, it ain't just a bunch of screaming. These songs are apt to catch the attention of many a fine young lad. They're catchy, see? Quick, silly, and funny. Plus, they're smart enough to annoy you musically when they want to, so that makes it even funnier (try to sit through "Getting The Brush" or "Disconnected" without fidgeting just the teensiest bit). Good stuff. Heck, great stuff.

And it should be pointed out that the warped cover of The Animals' "We Got To Get Outta This Place" does a much better job of emulating true desperation in musical form than the oregano even bothered attempting (Eric's version was sad and accepting; Lee's is wired and schizo - Ask for it by lame!).

Reader Comments

jnw@iglobal.net (Jim Hull)
Man, is this one funny sumbitch! I remember getting this thing and then hearing: "Let's have a war!..." (wangy string bending) "...so you can go DIE!" and then stopping in my tracks and sitting down and just listening and laughing...but hey, they could actually play, and Ving is literally a scream here. So memorable, I can actually recite "I Love Livin' In The City" word for word...and I haven't put this album on in years...they were John Belushi's favorite band, so that speaks volumes about their intensity and humor...

dswalen@concentric.net (Doug Swalen)
I'm not too sure how to approach this record; it's more idiosyncratic than even Dead Kennedys. I'd give it a 10 for "Let's Have A War" and "I Love Living In The City" alone, but the rest of the album is also good. "New York's All Right" is a great tune and I wonder if Ving was originally from New York since both that song and "I Love Living In The City" sound like tunes about that place. A lot of people point to Henry Rollins as having the classic punk voice, but I think Ving is better (though he doesn't scream like Rollins could).

When I heard this album for the first time (thanx Mark), the first thing that leapt into my head was DEVO! This whole album sounds like a punk version of Devo, both in rhythm and structure, only minus the keyboards. Actually a case could be made that Fear borrows a little too much from Devo, to the point of being a rip-off. Just listen to some of the tracks from Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! sometime and you'll notice some of the similarities. Both Fear and Devo were off center, and produced off center sounding music. And both Fear and Devo totally remade a classic 60's tune. Devo with the Stones' "Satisfaction" and Fear does it here with "We gotta get out of this place". Both remakes sound nothing like the originals. It takes guts to go that far out on a limb and still manage to pull it off.

Is this shit serious? Of course not. But since when did you have to be serious to be punk?

zorak143@aol.com
I love this album, and not just because it came with 2 inserts, though that's no reason to like an album or, uh, yeah, it's cool and stuff. Cool sounding guitar, too.

Zackie23@aol.com
I really hate this band. The songs on here are unbelievably sloppy, especially towards the end of the album. It seems like they don't even care about playing that way, and it makes every song fall flat on its face. "Let's start a war" is a prime example. I have no idea why everyone is so high on FEAR. They have to be one of the most overrated bands in the punk genre.

Billsangry@aol.com
Relentless rhythm and funny as hell!

res056rz@gte.net
As someone who was actually alive and into punk rock at the time this band played live with its original lineup, I have to say that I was disappointed with this record. But only because Fear is one of those bands that cannot be captured on record. The intensity of their life performances is something that is difficult to describe. Each member was so gifted, that when combined in a live setting, I was filled with awe and a sense of power. Their humor and sarcasm was lost on a lot of people in the beginning. But they were my very favorite band to ever see live. I feel very fortunate to have had the chance to see the original Fear band many times, and I do miss the raw energy and explosiveness of those early days.

jdecuir@satx.rr.com (Uncle Buzz Records)
The Sex Pistols Turned me on to Punk. The Ramones made it my favorite music. Fear made it my only music. The Record is amazing. Brilliant, sarcastic sense of humor, subliminals ( Listen to "We Destroy the Family" with headphones), an album cover that encourages you to use it as a stencil to commit vandalism, razor sharp playing, vocals that hit you like brass knuckles, every song more desperate and outrageous than the one before, until finally the whole thing explodes, and "No More Nothing".

It took me a while to get back some of the records I sold after hearing Fear. At the time, I felt I didn't need them anymore. The Record was the only thing I listened to for about a year straight. It truly was THE record. Nothing else came close. Not even the following Fear albums. However, live, they will kick your ass.

100 stars forcefed into 10 with a jackhammer. Plus 10 more stars for Lee Ving's live banter on the Decline of Western Civilization soundtrack.

procha@optonline.net (Pete Rocha)
I always thought these guys were like the pinch hitters for the Angry Samoans. If for some reason your best hitters need to be taken out of the lineup (ie. your ex-girlfriend stole your copy of "Back From Samoa" when she took off), you can bring out those sawed-off, weak approximations of your best batters and once in a while they'll get a nice hit ("Bomb The Russians", "Let's Have A War", a few others). But most of the time they bat .220 and touch each other's nuts on the bench.

TamiSCRATCH@aol.com
This is the only album FEAR ever really recorded. After the original line-up left (Derf, Spit, Philo), everything else went downhill. Just how many damn songs about beer can you write/sing/play/believe????? C'mon Lee, let's face it, you sold out. Your ego got in the way of the music. You should not have forsaken your music for your "acting" career. HUGE mistake! You dumb ass, don't you know how much freakin' money you guys could be making right now if you'd stayed together? At the very least you guys should all get together and do a tour. Chicken? You must be! Gee, I guess I'm pissed off at Lee. Don't know him, but have heard all the truths from a good source. Don't buy any of these new "Fear" albums. THEY STINK!

bri.hyndman@sympatico.ca (Brian Hyndman)
Halloween night, 1981: A young, unsuspecting 15 year old returns home from a lame party at his church youth group in time to catch the opening credits of Saturday Night Live. At the time, SNL was a total garbage dump, the original cast having departed a year or so earlier...the show was even worse than the present version, which is saying something. But I digress.

Anyhow, the opening credits featured a cameo appearance by John Belushi, who raised a coked-out eyebrow whilst gazing into the mirror as the audience erupted in cheers. The only thing that kept me from changing the channel was the promise of seeing more Belushi -- maybe he'd get on stage and reprise a Blues Brothers number, or do the Samurai, or something. Plus there was a guest appearance by this band I never heard of......Fear?

So Fear opens. The first thing that struck me about the scene was the audience. Instead of the usual Manhattanite yuppies in the front row, a crowd of skinheads clustered around the stage. I was a little perplexed about the slow, blues guitar opening (what I later learned was the intro to 'Beef Baloney') A punk act doing blues? The bluesy chords droned on as the lead singer opened up, with a faux-redneck drawl:

"MAH BABEEEE. TALK ABOUTA LOW-DOWN SKANK -A-DOO"

I didn't know what to make of that. From the looks of things on TV, neither did the skinheads. They mulled around the stage, restless and menacing. Some of them looked like they were getting ready to jump the stage and pound the shit out of Fear if things didn't speed up real soon. They weren't disappointed.

Words cannot capture what happened next. The bluesy chords came to an abrupt end. The guitar got all hyper, staccato, like a 33' played on 45' setting. The skinheads began to slam into one another with total abandon. All those bald heads attached to bodies jerking around spastically reminded me of a safety film I'd seen with crash test dummies. At this point, my memory gets a little hazy -- disjointed images of the lead guitarist jumping around in a dress (?!), the lead singer leaping into the waiting arms of the crowd (to truly appreciate the visual impact, keep in mind that this was 10 years before the invention of the grunge-inspired 'mosh pit'), someone throwing a pumpkin, a skinhead jumping the stage and screaming into the mike...

That night brought about a sea-change in my musical outlook. I had thought that the limits of musical rebellion extended to AC/DC, Van Halen, Iron Maiden and the other staples of an all-heavy metal diet. But now my eyes had been opened to new possibilities. Any red-blooded teenage boy could not help but become a devout hardcore fan after witnessing that spectacle

Mehenwe@aol.com
Absolutely, one of the finest albums created. Musically, the musicianship is well played. These guys, at the time, knew how to play. Of course, punk rock was more interesting musically, as well as visually, in those days (1977-1986). From start to finish very, very listenable. In fact, I'm going to play it now...those are my thoughts. Thank you.

sleeve@efn.org (Steve Bouton)
I would like to add my thoughts about the incendiary and legendary Fear Halloween '81 show on SNL. Like the above writer, I was young (15) and not fully clued in to the punk rock vibe. I was spending the night with a friend of mine, an aficionado of such 80's classics as Aerosmith, Def Leppard, and (his favorite) the mighty Angel. Me, I liked my parent's bluegrass, The Beatles, King Crimson, The Cars, The Clash, AC/DC, the Floyd and such. Already into some variety... but whoa! Those punks are going crazy all over the stage! What the hell? For some great anecdotes about this clearly influential evening check out the book "Banned In DC".

Sometime during the blazing incandescence of Fear at their best, my friend turned to me. "You know what I really hate about this?", he said, gesturing towards the punks stagediving off of the NBC platform during "New York's Alright".

'What?" I said, not fully engaged with the real world.

"I know my parents are watching this show in their bedroom right now. They're gonna see this, and they're going to think that THIS IS WHAT ROCK AND ROLL IS ALL ABOUT!"

Needless to say, we soon went our separate ways and I became weirder than words and a full-fledged punk freaker who always tried to get my '84 hardcore buddies to listen to Eno's Another Green World. But those words stay with me as perhaps the greatest reality gap I have ever faced in my musical life. This TV performance, hearing The Necros on the radio in '82, and seeing the Combat Rock tour were the three pivotal high school events that tipped my scales towards the punk community when I hit college, with results that continue to reward me 20 years later.

Unfortunately, this band's career is a disgrace. While this record and the movie stand up OK (I remember Gregg Turner reviewing The Record in Creem magazine saying something about "a finger caught in the chainsaw of life"), everything else is unspeakable. Yeah, get "Back From Samoa" first.

texasfireguy@gmail.com (Patrick McCorvy)
Having actually been alive when the band was touring the first go-round, I may have a slightly skewed perspective (due to way too many drugs) but I like all of Fear's albums. I still listen to all my old Fear, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, and Husker Du albums. And getting to see Circle Jerks and Fear on back-to-back Saturdays a couple of years back made my decade.

deancl@peoplepc.com
the first album is one of the best records from that era.

loreneemt@windstream.net
I was there! The Wiskey a Go-Go on Sunset! A band named Fear and a crowd ready to "slam". It was awsome! To this day, Fear is one of the most memerable bands (live and recorded) I have had the pleasure to experience. Between Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Fear and Chanel 3...what more could a punk want?

yoda87960@comcast.net
I guess this is worth posting anywhere Fear related, but there are some dang awesome myspace pages for former band members. For example, the failed Philo Cramer 1986 project King M'Butu at http://www.myspace.com/kingmbutu Or Philo Cramer's new band the Fighting Cocks at www.myspace.com/mightyfightingcocks Not the best songs I've ever heard, but if I could play guitar like that, I would have a much higher self esteem. From there you can hear Derf Scratch songs at myspace.com/derfscratch which are also pretty good. I don't know if Lorenzo Buhne has a myspace page yet, but it would be awesome if he did.

More Beer - Restless 1985.

Sophomore slump. Three years since the last record? Why? Did the band break up and reform or something? Whatever's going on, Derf Scratch has been replaced by someone named "Lorenzo Buhne" (unless that's some sort of alternate spelling or something), and all the rough edges that made Fear Fear have been wiped away by a crafty little elf who has transformed the former threatening street boys into a stupid parody of their former selves. Some of the melodies still hold water ("Bomb The Russians," "Waiting For The Meat" and "Hey" are adorable dinky punkers, and "I Am A Doctor" has the craziest and most innovative guitar line they ever wrote), but the lyrics are annoyingly offensive instead of biting ("Gonna have a few fits/Gonna chop off her tits" just doesn't work the same way the last record's "Piss on your warm embrace/I just wanna cum in your face" did - don't ask me to explain why), the production sheens the sound to a warm fuzzy, and Lee's voice is pumped WAY too dang loud in that there mix. Makes 'em sound like a hick band from Georgia or some other silly Southern province!

Pass it up unless you see it cheap. Just buy The Record - you owe it to me and to hardcore as a genre.

Reader Comments

dswalen@concentric.net (Doug Swalen)
No. Mark was right the first time. Sophomore slump. The wangy guitar bends that made the first album so cool are mostly gone from this album. The mix on this album is lame too. The guitar is buried behind the vocals and drums and the riffs are difficult to pick up.

I'm severely tempted to not call this album a punk album. It sounds more like ZZ Top on Crank. The songs aren't nearly as memorable as the first album. "The Mouth Don't Stop", "Null Detector", "Bomb The Russians", "Waiting For The Meat" and "More Beer" are good but the rest just don't grab me.

The CD release also includes some bonus tracks. One's called "Now You're Dead" which isn't that interesting. The other is a different version of "I Love Living In The City" which is perhaps the best illustration of just how lame the band is on this album. I give it a 6.

cphillip@openface.ca (Catherine Phillips)
Lorenzo Buhne is "real" - as Laurie Buhne, he has played bass with the Dickies since Stukas Over Disneyland (1983).

Billsangry@aol.com
From what I understand, this album took a pretty long time to make. The band spent MANY hours making sure everything sounded just right and in the end, that may have lead to this album's somewhat neutered sound.

TamiSCRATCH@aol.com
THIS ALBUM SUCKS! THE RECORD WAS GREAT

nowheremang@excite.com
Although you're right in saying that this album is not the classic that "The Record" was, there was always something strange about it that made it my favorite Fear album anyway. That's why I was surprised when I read your review, as I had never even heard of the song "Strangulation," and I know "More Beer" practically by heart.

I have the 1992 Restless CD edition, and although includes Fear's debut 1978 single ("I Love Livin' in the City" and "Now Your Dead") as bonus tracks, "Strangulation" is nowhere to be found. I proceeded to "find" (cough) that missing song online, and I gotta agree with you, it's pretty lame. That being said, I'm still disappointed that some record executive decided somewhere along the way to delete that song off the album. I'd rather figure out for myself if a song is without merit rather than have someone else make that decision for me.

The 2001 Hall of Records reissue (which I never bought and is now out of print) mirrors the 1992 "censored" version, though a quick google search indicates that there might have been an earlier Restless CD which had "Strangulation" but no bonus tracks. I still like that debut 7-inch a lot, so I guess I'd rather have that version.

Anyway, 8 stars out of 10. I like it more than I should.

Live For The Record - Restless 1991.

Oh! Also, apparently Lee Ving gathered together a bunch of nobodies and recorded a new record in the mid-90s called Have Another Beer With Fear. I hate to seem prejudiced, but I can't imagine that it's all that good.

Reader Comments

dswalen@concentric.net (Doug Swalen)
Well shoot, I guess I'll give it 7. I'd give it an 8 but one point must be deducted for the abscence of profanity. What's the point of singing "Fuck Christmas" if all Lee Ving can say is "Christmas!.......Christmas!......Christmas!"???

Most of the songs are pretty sloppy too. Philo gets pretty wild at times with his string bends, but dammit! The idosyncracy of the studio recordings is all gone. Some songs come off pretty bad, like "Let's have a war". On the other hand even though Fear massacres "We've Got To Get Out Of This Place", I find myself really liking the song and Ving's off key singing is a hoot. I really like "Null Detector" and "Foreign Policy". Yes the crowd banter is pretty lame, but Ving does muster up this little spiel before "Foreign Policy"...

Ving: "This here's a song about politics"

The crowd: "No BEER! Sing a song about Beer!"

Ving: "Well the song is really about beer, we just said it was about politics, we thought it might do us some good, heh heh"

ViTeaches@aol.com
Fear was great. I went to go see them play 2 years ago and I had a great time. Yeah I'll admit that the new album isn't really that great (it kinda sux) but man, did I have a blast. Ving is so fucking old and frail. he's got like white hair and shit. he was coughing a lot also. In their younger days they produced some good shit though.

chris@intown.net (Chris Schwarz)
Now this is what a live album should sound like! (Unlike Crass' Christ - The Bootleg!) Every song, every note, every lyric is discernible (pretty much) and the production is very clean. Usually, I tend to stay away from live albums because the production usually blows and brings the band and the songs down. But not Fear's Live...For The Record. This one works because, as live records often fail to do, it actually captures the live intensity and feeling of the band, and it's listenable, damn it! Plus, it has a lot of songs (mostly good ones from the first record) and the background noise from the crowd is pretty entertaining -- another thing live records often fail to do. Fear's "hit" songs, "I Love Living In The City" and "I Don't Care About You" are both on here, too, which is kind of neat. This is an excellent, well-recorded live document of Fear (minus the profanity, which does suck a little), and is generally just a good live album for a fargin' change. It's about time somebody did one right!

Budweiser 7" - Bootleg 1993

Side two is a much more interesting affair (though not as interesting as the one I'm having with your wife, you cuckolded asshole!), featuring the nowhere-else-available tracks "Hank Williams Was Queer" and "Waiting For The Gas," both recorded live in Eugene, OR in 1982. The former is a slow sloppy rednecky country drinking ballad with hilariously obnoxious lyrics sung as a duet by Mr. Ving and a male member of his band pretending to be a Southern woman. It's unlike anything else in their discography and probably should have been included on an actual non-bootleg release, but hey I don't make decisions for bands in 1982.

"Waiting For The Gas," on the other hand, is best described in the words of Mr. Derf Scratch, in conversation with Mr. Mark Prindle way back in Mr. 2004: "...the song is in A and it goes, 'We're waiting for the gas/We're waiting for the gas/We're standing in the showers/And we're waiting for the gas.' And Philo would sing, 'Where are a we-o? We are a home-o. Where are a you-o? You are a homo!' 'We're waiting for the gas/We're waiting for the gas/We're standing in the showers/And we're waiting for the gas.' And that was the whole song." And indeed, that was the whole song. The strange thing, though, is that it doesn't sound a BIT like "Waiting For The Meat"! I'd assumed it was just an early version of that song with different lyrics, but such is not the case. "Waiting For The Gas" is midtempo rather than hardcore-speed, features actual lyrics rather than gibberish, and is distinguished by Philo's vocal part, which he sings in the manner a yodeling woman! Was Philo actually a yodeling woman, and not a man at all??? These are scary issues!

Here's a "great" band name I thought up the other night: Elemental P. Cue

Do you like it? Read it out loud. Then read it as if you were a Disc Jockey saying, "'k, Elemental P. Cue are performing tonight at the etc..." Isn't it great and hilarious? So name your band "Elemental P. Cue" and have 'em laughing in the aisles!

But on the topic of Fear, I'm gonna bring it down a little for this next bit so put on your Serious Pants:

The Virginia Tech school shootings. The whole situation is very, very sad (obviously) and I feel great sympathy for the victims' parents, as I'm sure you do as well if you're not a complete asshole. But here are a few other thoughts I've been having, not that these are unique to myself:

(1) "The Virginia Tech Massacre": Awesome name for a slasher film; soulless branding for a national tragedy. Someone alert the media.

(2) He did it hoping to be remembered as a martyr, but nobody will even remember his name. It's too hard to spell!

(3) He was a psychopath. You know how every day in life your thoughts and beliefs are influenced a little bit by those you interact with? He was incapable of interacting with people, so he was only influenced by movies and videogames. He was also stuck in a state of arrested emotional development, hence his childish 'manifesto' that sounds more like a 14-year-old's baby angst than the rational thoughts of a 23-year-old man. I'm not putting the guy down; he was a psychopath. They're not like us.

(4) How did he manage to kill and injure so many people? He shot 21 people in a class of 25. How is that possible? Were they all sitting politely at their desks as he went from person to person? Did nobody think to pick up a desk or some textbooks and hurl them at him? I realize that I've never been in that sort of intense life-or-death situation, so I don't know how I would react either. But I don't understand how he could have gotten away with firing bullets into 84% of the people in the room. Once it was clear that he wasn't going to stop firing, couldn't somebody have shouted "LET'S KILL THIS ASSHOLE!" and have everyone all charge him at the same time? I realize they didn't have time to plan a response, but I was hoping that post-9/11 we'd be less willing to die as separate victims rather than banding together in retaliatory self-defense.

(5) What I'm even more confused about is how he was able to actually kill 32 different people without using bombs or automatic weapons. How much experience did this guy have with guns anyway? And if the answer is (as it probably is) "very little," then what the hell kind of guns are we selling here in America!? Why can a psychopathic child easily murder dozens of people without even needing to know how to aim? There's no way he fired clean shots at all 32 of his running, frantic victims, so again - what the hell kind of guns are we selling!? And WHY!?

(6) "How can we prevent future school shootings?" We probably do so every day without even knowing it, just by being nice to people who might otherwise go off the rails. But this particular guy was unreachable. People tried to reach him, and he blocked them out. He was simply a "Psycho," like the top-selling motion picture by Alfred Hitchcock.

(7) This is yet another reason I never want kids. I never had to worry about some Chow asshole gunning down my sweet Henry The Dog at Puppy Kindergarten! (Dogs don't have opposable thumbs) (Or fingers)

I'll stop at 7 because it's a lucky number. That's also why I had 6 additional penises grafted onto my underbelly.

Uh-oh! A naked woman! (*pants bunch up hilariously in the front*)

Reader Comments

princess_vachtangov@yahoo.com
Hey, have you ever noticed that BOTH of the two biggest search engines have two O's in their name? I can see where they're going with Boobs.com, but Yahoo? Anyway, on a less observational humor note, I've randomly googled these USA suicide statistics for the year 2001 (take a dozen or so off for the Muslim terrorists and stuff): about 4000 among the 15-24 age group, plus 272 for kids younger than 14. I don't know if the what's-his-name Choo-Chow will be added to this list, but I'm fairly sure that the number of people killed in school shootings and other sorts of mass murders is a good deal smaller, probably some 100 times smaller than the number of kids who killed themselves. Plus, if you get killed in a school shooting, it's just a few minutes of fear, then bang, you're dead; if you have the luck to die in a suicide, it's several years of suffering, then several months of really really bad suffering, and only THEN bang, you're dead. My point is, given that the person we're talking about, besides being a mean fucker, was also a suicidee, it's stupid to ridicule him or categorize him in an insensitive manner, thinking that you might prevent someone else from becoming a school gunman (which is relatively rare), when at the same time you're probably hurting a lot of the people who end up killing themselves without ever intending to cause any harm to others (which is really frequent). How many of the young people who commit suicide would be able to write down what they feel without it sounding like "14-year-old's baby angst"? Does that mean that they're morons and we should laugh at them? I bet there are several thousands of kids in the States right now who are being freaked out by the media with their bright idea "socially maladapted=potential mass murderer". If you're a kid, and you're so screwed that you're seriously thinking of killing yourself, there is really nothing like knowing that what the other people are thinking is "Hey just don't kill US, psycho!"

Oh yeah, and as regards the guerilla resistance, when a guy with a gun comes through the door shooting, I'm dead, regardless of the number of textbooks I have. REASON 1: textbooks have an attack value of approximately 1, and that's with the God cheat turned on. REASON 2: Basic nature of human nervous system. Because it goes like this approximately: here I am trying to remember how mr Planck spelled his name, checking my watch, thinking about what's on TV this evening, and hey, there's a guy at the door shooting at people! Hey, um, ah, WHAT? What are you doing?!? Uh, am I going to die now? Why? *gets killed* *10 minutes pass* Hey, let's throw textbooks at him!

dbseven777777@yahoo.com
Regarding number 4 on your list, I've wondered the same thing. I hoped that kind of resistance was possible, but you can't really know what something like that is like without experiencing it. It would make me feel better to think I wouldn't be helpless in that kind of situation, but I'm guessing I would be.

soul_crusher77@hotmail.com
I haven't heard this release at all, but I have a "hillarious" addition to your Elemental P. Cue idea: The name could eventually be lengthened to Elemental P. Cue Arrestee, so that the following exchange could take place:

DJ: 'k, Elemental P. Cue are here in the studio with me, and-
You: That's Elemental P. Cue Arrestee, you VW!

(the DJ is actually an adorable talking Volkswagen driven by Lindsay Lohan, I forgot to mention that part)

Have Another Beer With Fear - Fear 1995

Reader Comments

hatefux@msn.com (Karl Kangeiser)
I bought Have Another Beer With Fear right when it came out, & for some reason I was all excited to hear it, I think I listened to it twice, both times forcing myself to finish, hoping to find a gem somewhere on the tape, but there wasn't. So after I was done listening to it I covered the wholes on top & recorded my band's at the time demo tape on it & gave it to some kid at a show later that night....punk rock!

TamiSCRATCH@aol.com
Don't you think we''ve had enough? And what's all this crap about using Derf's picture on these albums when he didn't even play on them!!!! Outrage! That's what I'm thinking. That, and L-A-W-S-U-I-T!!!

erroneus36@msn.com
the bass on the 95 have another bear with fear record kicks ass. It is very powerful. With some good fills. I think that dude played with Frank Zappa. It sure as hell is not as good as the original line up. But people get older and move on. You have to give them credit for doing what they could.

American Beer - Hall of Records 2000.

UPDATE: LATE 2006 -- I WAS CRAZY. THIS IS LEE VING REPEATING THE SAME OLD THUMPA-THUMPA SCHTICK AGAIN, WITH A FEW GREAT CHORD SEQUENCES AND A GIGANTIC CAR FULL OF OBVIOUS CHORUSES. HIS VOICE IS PARTICULARLY AWFUL, ALL GRUFF AND PHLEGMY. NOW BACK TO THE ORIGINAL REVIEW, WHEN I GAVE THE ALBUM AN INSCRUTABLE 8!?!

The Fear thumpa-thumpa-thumpa drumbeat is in full effect, there are lots of interesting musical changes of pace (sudden switches from punk to lounge or jazz or christmas music or warped wank blues), the energy is high-level from beginning to end, a lot of the riffs are catchy and Lee's singing some really interesting lyrics at points, especially in the last three songs as he details his feelings about having his wife leave him (temporarily or permanently, I'm not sure which - he's upset though!). Plus, there's lots more songs about beer! It's still not vintage Fear, what with no Philo Cramer doing his weird shit. But the drummer plays just like Spit Stix and Lee is and always will be LEE VING!

Reader Comments

Hitchhker2795773@aol.com
I've seen them live and they are great. FEAR is one of teh greatest punk bands ever. Their lyrics are funny as hell and great and their shows are even better. Unfortunately, when I heard tem play, they wouldnt let us drink so we couldnt have a beer with fear, but It still kicked ass

TamiSCRATCH@aol.com
Yes, there is no original band members. The new one's can't play like the original band members. Lee you are an idiot! Where's Derf? Wouldn't you like to know!

lupeguy@pe.net
i luv fear jmore than anyone jk but they kick ass luv athena

simmonds.allison.b@edumail.vic.gov.au
im a huge fear fan from australia and think that this album was good but no where close to the fear that we all loved from the 80s but with that said u can still tell its fear and thats more thaan most bands that have been playen for that long and it beats the shit outta most of the so called american punk bands of today

youreout@strato.net (Ellen)
I am trying to reach TamiSCRATCH@aol.com who posted on this site. She is searching for her younger sisiter Melanie Ann Dunson. Melanie is also searching for her but we have been unable to reach her at the email address TamiSCRATCH@aol.com TamiSCRATCH had posted on adoption.com her search for her sister Melanie Ann Dunson. If anyone has additional information on this person posting as TamiSCRATCH@aol.com will you please email me at youreout@strato.net Thanks

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