The Lester Bangs Appreciation Thread
 

I've spent the past month re-reading his writings, and love his style and criticism - a sane voice in the void of 70's rock criticism (where EVERYONE loved the Eagles and fucking Emerson, Lake and Palmer :rolleyes:). Anyone else here a fan of his?

Obviously a big fan of his writing. But sometimes wonder if his influence on Rock 'thinking' has been entirely for the best. His overtly self promoting style does grate on me a bit now too.

I tend to prefer Greil Marcus's more sober style. Still haven't read anything in the field equal to the brilliance of his Mystery Train book.

there is no way you can compare any critic to lester. everything about him was ahead of his time, he was backing the godz when others were still stuck on the beatles. favorite lester article is 'coltrane lives'.

demonrail - I know what you mean - he kinda propagated the "journalist as story" style of writing. I have to admit I tend to overlook that side of him, and concentrate on the meat of his writings. My faves? His review of Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks", the Lou Reed "fight" interviews, and his journals of being in Jamaica.

'Of Pop and Pies and Fun' is probably the one i go back to most.

I won't knock LB for his contribution to music writing, and the impact that an essay like 'Of Pop and Pies ...' has had on me personally - in ways beyond just looking at music. However, I do feel that his hipster escapades have gone a long way to help solidify his legend over, for me, far better writers like Marcus and Stanley Booth.

LB is great at nailing a sensation he gets while listening to a certain record (as with his 'Astral Weeks' review). Marcus seems far better at placing that record into some kind of epic historical context and is easily the best writer on early rockabilly and RnR that I've read. Mystery Train is among the best books i've read about America full-stop, let alone its music.

Didn't Stanley Booth write a Stones book - on the tour up to Altamont??

Yes. The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. It has some of the best accounts of Keith ever written.

The other good one by him is Rhythm Oil - a kind of musical travelogue around the American South. Features some amazing interviews.

"Rhythm Oil"? Fuck yeah, I got that out of Battersea library years ago. That's a good 'un, for sure. The whole scene of the Stones in the Booth book is great - indirectly a total hatchet job on Mick Jagger, but a great write up on Keith - in spite of all his drug and women issues, Booth could see that Richards was the driving force behind the Stones.

Nick Kent's The Dark Stuff, although massively overblown and derivative of Lester, has some great stuff in it too. The essay about Guns N Roses gives an incredibly vivid insight into the LA Rock scene of the 80s.

Personally though, I still think Ian MacDonald is the best of the British writers. His book The People's Music has some brilliant stuff about a whole range of artists. And, of course, his book about the Beatles, Revolution in Your Head, is just ridiculously brilliant.

I've only read a bit of "Revolution..." - I must buy the damn thing. Kent's "obituary" of Sid Vicious is particulary cold...why does he keep pushing the thing of getting clobbered by SV, when more reliable accounts say that it was Jah Wobble who actually smacked Kent around in the 100 Club? I suspect Kent liked the idea of Vicious, but not the reality...

Yeah, clearly SV made it a better 'story'.

LB is great when read by fans, a disaster when read by musicians:


"Quickly Bobby, shout "Well C'mon", like it says Iggy did, in that wee book"

Simon "I am more black than Bobby Gillespie" punted that idea around in the Melody Maker in the late 80's (he called them "aural Ajax"!), but his thang was more psych related...to be fair to him, though, at one point, he was the only "major" journalist who stuck up for Big Black, These Immortal Souls and World Domination Enterprises (he attended a WDM gig in fucking Croydon in 1986,and said "WHERE WERE YOU?" - he still has my respect for that, if nothing else).

Ah, it'll always be the Stud Brothers for me, I'm afraid. No one could pen a finer Stupids review than they.

Are you talking about Simon Reynolds?

Yes, I am. The Stud Brothers used to live in Croydon - Dom (?) Stud used used to walk around Surrey Street Market with a "For all the fucked-up children of the world" Spacemen 3 T-Shirt on - I know this cos I saw him in said get up once. Unfortuantely, I was way too shy to say "Respect due!" to him :(

Wow, cool story.

I remember how excited I used to be if someone walked past in a Loop T shirt. And we're talking the West End of London here. You young uns with your messageboards. Don't know you're born.

I used to walk around London in a Throbbing Gristle "Prostitution" T-shirt, and how I didn't get arrested, I'll never know. (dr666 - this predates me knowing you).

You hear that, young 'uns? Listen to Herr Rail and Uncle Smelly - we know what it was really like back in the day.

Two Live Skull vinyls and enough change for a copy of Fangoria.

Hacks are scum. That is what your generation made mine realise, for those that were listening. The rest of them are welcome to their idiocy, and the younger 'uns are lucky enough to still be fit.

GOod writer, but he's written some of the most idiotic statements I think I've ever read.
He was something of a frenzied hack in his later days.
But like I said, good, and interetsing writer.

is any one else a member of http://www.rocksbackpages.com/? Its pretty dang good but does lean a bit to far down the middle of the road sometimes...

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.