Fear is a punk rock band from Los Angeles, California that formed in 1977 and still performs.
Fear appeared in Penelope Spheeris' 1980 film, The Decline of Western Civilization. Their performance was one of the most memorable scenes in the film. The film showed them angering members of the audience with personal attacks and offbeat humor. Singer Lee Ving asked one member of the audience "It's 1980—can't you afford a haircut?" The bass player Derf Scratch tells the joke: Q:"Why do girls have their two holes so close together?" A:"So you can carry them like a six-pack!" The cult classic movie included other well known acts like Black Flag, X, and The Germs.
Spheeris met Ving and drummer Spit Spix when they were hanging handbills on telephone poles. After talking with the two, she abruptly asked if they wanted to be in her film. The band achieved notoriety through the movie and even attracted attention from actor John Belushi while being an unsigned act. The mixture of humor and music demonstrated in the film gave the band a unique personality, which seemed to lack in the later years with several member changes. Spheeris went on to direct two sequels to "The Decline", Saturday Night Live, Wayne's World, The Beverly Hillbillies movie, and scores of other popular films.
Their most famous performance was on the 1981 Halloween episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Donald Pleasance. The band was booked at the insistence of John Belushi who was a huge fan. Belushi initially offered them the soundtrack for his major motion picture Neighbors. The movie studio eventually forced Fear off the project and to make up for it Belushi got them the spot on SNL. Among the politically incorrect nature of Fear's songs, the band's appearance included a coterie of dancers, several of whom had been contacted for the event by both Penelope Spheeris (another avid Fear booster) and Henry Rollins (contrary to popular belief however, he was not at the taping himself); among them were Belushi, Ian MacKaye, Harley Flannagan of The Cro-mags, and John Brannon of Negative Approach, causing destruction of the set. During rehearsals the director wanted to prevent the dancers from participating, so Belushi offered to be in the episode (it had been many years since he left SNL) if the dancers were allowed to stay. The end result was the banning of all punk acts for a decade, and the eventual shortening of Fear's appearance on TV. The songs they performed were "I don't care about you," "Beef Baloney," "New York's Alright...If You Like Saxophones," and as the band begins to play "Let's Have a War" the audio and video fade into commercial. Historical moments were Lee singing "f**k you" away from the microphone, saying it's great to be in New Jersey (the audience booed), and the band saying New Yorkers were "homosexuals."
