Introduction
When I was around fifteen, I owned an album by the punk
rock band Fear. I didn’t much like Fear,
but I liked to listen to them. There was
more fascination involved than aesthetic pleasure. (A one-star reviewer of the album recently
wrote, “I used to like this band until I had the misfortune of seeing this band
live. The whole time I thought the singer was going to croke over and die. That’s
the only reason I stayed.”)
Years later, in college, I came across the tape and played
it again for old time’s sake. The only
song that still intrigued me was “Getting the Brush” (you can hear thirty
seconds of it here). I
wrote a little essay about this song.
Here it is.
(If you read my previous post about rock covers, or
even if you didn’t, you may be interested to know that Fear, though a relatively minor
band, sparked nineteen covers, including versions from mainstream bands like
Guns N’ Roses and Soundgarden.)
Getting The Brush – March 18, 1992
Getting the
brush
Getting the
brush
Life seems so
Futile
Getting the
brush
Getting the
brush
I call my baby
But she never
Picks up the
phone
You know what I
mean
She just leaves
me there
Standing all
alone!
Getting the
brush
Getting the
brush
You can do
anything
But I can’t
stand
To be ignored
anymore
Getting the
brush
Getting the
brush
getting the brush
getting the brush
I have quoted in entirety the lyrics to a song which is
(not surprisingly) called “Getting the Brush,” sung by a wonderfully heinous
punk rock band called Fear. The song is
actually far more complex than it might appear on paper. Try as it might, it cannot get beyond the
utter despondency of its main theme: “getting
the brush.”
The song begins with this chorus; then, the opening
lyrics seem to promise something more complex, but ultimately cannot
deliver. This “life seems so/futile”
inspires the question, “Why? What is
your sad story?” but no explanation of the singer’s dilemma immediately follows. Instead, he goes back to lamenting his plight: “getting the brush.” And then—suddenly—the drum strikes loud,
accompanied by a hard pluck on the electric guitar string, and for a fleeting
moment we feel the music is on the verge of finally breaking out into its
normal head-banging, fast-paced, harsh style. But the drum and guitar have only
teased us: they vanish, and we’re left
with nothing but another stagnant “getting the brush.”
Finally, the full lyrical theme is tackled: “I call my baby/ but she never/ picks up the
phone.” This long-awaited explanation of
the pitiful theme is a blatant cliché.
Its very intention of being a cliché is openly announced with a stock
phrase: “You know what I mean?” Of course we do, we’ve all been dissed before—but
that’s not the point here. The point is
the struggle to overcome despondency:
and in another ignis fatuus, the drums and guitar kick up louder and
more defiantly than ever as the singer finally raises his voice to yell, “Standing
all alone!” At last, the headbanger gets out of his seat
and the hair stands up on his spine, his heart races, he may even begin to
drool in anticipation of the angry and abusive lyrics he has come to expect
from Fear (from songs like “I Don’t Care about You” and “Let’s Have a War,” for
example).
Perhaps surprisingly, but in retrospect quite appropriately,
the promising crescendo loses all momentum and dries up into lifeless curls of
ineffectual sound: the band simply
cannot transform the singer’s sorrow into real anger. The nightmarish recurring theme is back: “getting the brush”—twice more. At this point we realize that the song is
clearly nothing more than a repetitive cycle of utter despair. What more is there to say? Clearly nobody is listening to this
voice: he is, quite simply, getting the
brush.
The singer has given up explaining the circumstances
behind his distraught condition. But
before he ends his song, he makes a simple point: he can’t stand “to be ignored anymore”—and he
seems to have a final flicker of anger as he says these words. But alas, even his band has become too
despondent to back him up, and for a brief interval all is silent before a pair
of drum beats tries a final time to conjure up some fury. By now, alas, the singer has lost all drive,
and submits completely to his emotional ruin:
“getting the brush/ getting the brush/ getting the brush/ getting the
brush”—without any suggestion of rebellious fire. Finally even the rhythmic, ever‑ steady thud
of drum accompaniment dissolves, and the song ends in an echoing of bells in a
clock tower. The singer is trapped in an
eternity of despair.
dana albert blog
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