The legendary punk band, FEAR, is playing this Saturday night, August 11, at Alex’s Bar, headlining with Duane Peters Gunfight, Sidepipe Motorbike, and Mania.
Lee Ving is Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, founder and leader of the band FEAR. Ving (not his real name) came up in the Philidelphia blues scene but, within a few years of his arrival in Los Angeles, FEAR was born.
“We’ve been fucking together for over 30 years,” Ving says. “For close to 40 we’ve been FEAR, touring the world, touring the country, releasing records, and we’ve been at it all this time, without interruption.”
FEAR was an important part of the LA punk scene, but they shot to national prominence after being featured in the 1980 documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization. This led to a legendary appearance on Saturday Night Live where millions in the TV audience got their first glimpse of a mosh pit.
Ving, though, does not see FEAR as a nostalgia act and of the songs, he says, “It feels perfect. They still apply in every way. They apply to the current situation as well as they applied to the current situation at the time they were written.”
He equally dismisses the notion that teen angst was a part of the scene then—or now. “It may have been posing and posturing and looking cool for the scene by wealthy kids from the suburbs trying to look disenfranchised and underprivileged,” Ving says. “There’s people looking for causes every day that haven’t found them, yet decide to produce anyway, and [it ends up] being purposeless and meaningless.
“People took each other seriously enough, I suppose,” Ving muses, “if they had something to take each other seriously about, but there were a lot of people who didn’t take anything seriously and were looking to do something on a Friday night because they were bored.
“That never changes,” Ving opines, “but the whole world has changed. The economic powers, the political environment, all those things are vastly different so they affect what people have to say about the time they live in, however some of the things that were wrong at that time continue to be. The things we were saying that had something or nothing to do with what was going on with the outside world still have some application, just as much.”
With a career that spans four decades, Ving sees his audience as ageless.
“They seem to regenerate themselves,” says Ving, “and produce an audience that looks virtually as they did a long time ago at this point right now. People who came to see us as younger folks now have kids, and bring them, so the audience looks identical.”
Ving confessed to a special affinity for Long Beach. “The 405 Freeway goes through it,” Ving said, “and I use that to get where I’m going many times.”
FEAR has celebrated beer in song and in album titles but, according to Ving, this came from a very real place.
“We weren’t searching, lost, and finding something about which we didn’t know,” Ving recalls. “We had depth of experience, depth of knowledge, and intimite contact with beer. It was something we knew quite a bit about, something we felt everyone could relate to, but that was just coincidence. We didn’t care if anyone could relate to it or not. We just thought it was something we liked, something we knew about, and something we related to, figuring if that were the case then the people who liked what we’re doing would do the same. But if they didn’t, tough-ky shits-ky, if you know what I mean.”
Ving still embraces opportunities for new discoveries. “We don’t want to be closed minded about beers that are there to be sampled,” Ving says, “but I still believe that Guinness Stout is the best brew in the world, and that Budweiser is no longer the King of Beers, as it is now owned by foreigners. It is not brewed and bottled by an American company, or here in America for that matter.”
Ving explained that this show at Alex’s Bar is in preparation for a full blown year long tour in support of a brand new studio album, The FEAR Record, which is due out in two months.
“We’re going to play several shows locally here to give ourselves some stage time and prepare for a huge onslaught international tour,” Ving says. “If we could get extra-terrestrial about the tour, we would do it. We expect to be in every Middlesex village and farm throughout the universe in this next year.
“First,” Ving admits, “we’re going to have to invent a propulsion system that will take us to the outer galaxies, so we have some theoretical physics to accomplish before our emancipation from the earthly orbit, if you will. I’m telling you, man! Music, cosmology, the whole deal all wrapped into one.”
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To keep up on all things FEAR, visit FearLeeVing.com, or “like” them on Facebook.
To purchase tickets, and find out about upcoming shows at Alex’s, visit AlexsBar.com. Just a head’s up: Tonight, Crystal Antlers; tomorrow, Dumb Love; Sunday is Shonen Knife; and Monday is Avi Buffalo! That’s an amazing line-up!