everyday is halloween

on halloween night 1981 the punk band fear performed on Saturday Night Live.  the host was donald pleasance who played dr. samuel loomis in the great john carpenter helmed movie halloween [1978].  why the fuck was a punk band on a not-ready-for-primetime broadcast?  the story is well known by now but in a nutshell the actor john belushi was a fan of the band fear.  belushi tried to get the band work doing the soundtrack for a movie.  the movie deal fell thru so in recompense belushi pulled some strings to get fear on SNL.  the result is this perfection of chaos.  fear, lead by lead singer lee ving, was no stranger to art brut & violent provocation.  the band, along with belushi, brought in some slamdancers, including ian mackaye of minor threat & fugazi [you can hear mackaye shout 'new york sucks' in this video] & belushi himself.  hard to fathom that once upon a time a subgenre of pop music scared the living shit out of the squares.  but it did.  fear was permanently banned from SNL forever.  i don't know what the rest of america thought of this performance in 1981.  it was a little before my own foray into punk rock.  my first gig was in 1982.  but man! what art!  what a performance!  what the hell was SNL thinking to okay the national broadcast of this band?!  i dunno, but i love it.  

boo