Fear and Whiskey

The Mekons | Format: MP3 Download

Product Details

• Original Release Date: November 30, 1984
• Label: Quarterstick Records
• Total Length: 35:13
• Genres: Alternative Rock/Hardcore & Punk, Alternative Rock/Indie & Lo-Fi, Alternative Rock/New Wave & Post-Punk, Pop/Pop Rock
• ASIN: B000TENN6A
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,917 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "...it's a teenager's curse.", December 7, 2002

By 

chuck d marr (MADSION) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fear & Whiskey (Reis) (Audio CD)

Down in the deepest, darkest and ickiest parts of your belly there live little elves. There are good elves and bad elves. The bad elves represent all the bad things: your secret hidden desires, your sinful guilty pleasures, your slothful and idle inclinations towards pleasure and enjoyment (these elves play country music, are paunchy, and sport strange facial hairs).
The good elves represent all the things that attempt to keep you straight: your lingering regrets, your beleaguered conscience, your rose-colored pipe-dreams and aspirations (these elves, constantly anxious and fretful about they day everything ends, cannot sit still and so play every kind of music imaginable; they look like bald-headed straight edge/post-rock kids except they, you know, laugh once in a while).
The bad elves and the good elves in your belly hate each other. Every once in a while they get together (buy each other a few drinks) and then fight fight fight.
What happens when they do is exceptional, it sounds like a battle and it sounds like a dance. This (minus the goofy "elves" nonsense) is what "Fear and Whiskey", and Mekons in general, sounds like. Three cheers!

Buy this one, and then, with that big goofy grin on your face, get your hands on everything else the Mekons have ever done.
And stop reading music criticism.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was up late the other night..., April 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Fear & Whiskey (Reis) (Audio CD)

One of the great records of its era or any era.
The 2 star review above can only be a product of that reviewers genre bias. That reviewers recommends the mekons' more straight-forward rock efforts. Fear and Whiskey is not such... What it is is tremendously fun and painful at the same time.
Think Hank Williams at 6 AM after too much whiskey filtered through punk aesthetic.
The mekons have many amazing records in a number of genres. Rock and Roll is a great album in, well I bet you can guess that one, and So good it hurts is a wonderful slanted synth album, but Fear and Whiskey and its partner The Edge of the World are beyond genre and beyond tremendous.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important albums ever, the birthplace of country-punk, May 30, 2009

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fear & Whiskey (Reis) (Audio CD)

Robert Christgau in the early nineties wrote an aritcle in which he claimed that the Mekons were the greatest band in the world. Not greatest unknown band, just the best. I wouldn't go quite that far, but having seen them around 10 times (I live in their unofficial second hometown, Chicago, where leader Jon Langford now resides--Leeds, England is their official home) and owning nearly all their albums, I can attest that they are an unjustly neglected treasure. For a long time this album was only available as part of ORIGINAL SIN, which contained the entirety of FEAR AND WHISKY, as well as a couple of other EPs. The full album is absolutely essential for any serious rock and roll collection (though that is redundant, since if you have a serious rock and roll collection, you already own this album).

I must add that one of the great tragedies in music at the moment is that their greatest album, ROCK 'N' ROLL is available only as a hard-to-find German import. If my memory serves me correctly, Christgau named this his album of the year when it came out. And this time he was correct. ROCK 'N' ROLL and FEAR AND WHISKEY (or ORIGINAL SIN) are the two-must-own albums by the Mekons, though there are in addition many other ought-to-own albums.