Glice^^Hacks, to a large degree are scum, but you're talking about a time when access to information was far more limited than it is now. The fact that someone somewhere was writing about this stuff at all made them far more significant (and welcome) than they could ever be now.

Your generation hasn't rejected the hacks, so much as found no real use for them anymore.

Word.

Christ, I hope Cantankerous isn't reading this, otherwise I'l have to send her another goddamn cheque for me ripping off her SY Gossip response lines.

Um, William Bennett, anyone?

I'm just tired, is all. Hacks are still Oracles to the many. However they manifest theirselves. I remember that time, and [non-{?}]tragically I still live there (just not for music).

Actually, I'll go one farther and say that half of the problem with blogs is that it's merely one cunt's opinion - I still want someone who's at least a substatiated [for which read: published in tangible form] writer to tell me what their opinion is.

HELLO!!! *leaps around with Whitehouse wank card set*

EDIT - good response, Sir Glice.

i find that the Stool Pigeon can often provide a voice of sanity... however they did love all over the new liars album... why?

my favorite writer ever, even if it makes me sound illiterate; and as much as i read great writers from all over history and the world, i still think lester was the best.

i don't idolize him, i actually think of him as a regular loudmouth yob who had a gift for words and a frenzied passion for music, which is why i love him. he sounds like he would have been a riot to hang with (at least through his writings, it seems he was more in the depressive/self destructive side of the coin).

there's tons of great writers in rock, not many lately though; it's difficult with the way the media is nowadays.

Lester Bangs makes me want to try my hand at record reviews.

I'm in a massive reading slump now, but I keep coming back to Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung.

I think that's my favourite book of rock-journalism. I like his writing style; its clear and measured, and he always chooses the exact 'right' word to describe something. The interviews with Brian Wilson and Lou Reed stand-out for me.

I think Bangs is too rambling and uses too much hipster slang (I know that's his appeal to some): it always takes me a few re-readings to understand what he's actually getting at, and then it's something that could have been said in a few lines. I liked his writings about The Clash though.

I don't like that style of journalism where everything is written in the first-person, where the writer is the subject rather than the subject itself. I guess that's why I dislike Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas (and gonzo in general) so much.

I agree, and tend to think of Lester (at his worst) as a kind of music-journo equivalent to someone like Hunter S..

i disagree, hunter s wrote way more nonsense into his style than lester.

I agree, but you can see a connection, surely.

definitely, burroughs and kerouac are in his writing too.

With a dash of Charles Bukowski of course.

ahh yes, i always forget bukowski.