Lester Bangs - Classic or Carburetor Dung?

Nick Kent's Bangs piece was run-of-the-mill, as far as "the fragile-hearted, drunken bozo word-magician who took rock criticism to a giddy height of vicarious readability" type articles go, but he had one poignant insight that never crossed my mind before: people who read his articles thought he was fab and wrote him fan letters, but the people Bangs really idolized and wanted to like him (Lou Reed, Iggy Pop) thought he was just an irritating prick, and this was devastating to him. I can't decide whether this is pathetic (who in their right mind would CARE if a snake like Reed didn't like you?) or horribly ironic and sad. Probably both.

RIP Glen Buxton. RIP Lester Bangs.

"Van Morrison's Astral Weeks was released ten years, almost to the day, before this was written. It was particularly important to me because the fall of 1968 was such a terrible time: I was a physical and mental wreck, nerves shredded and ghosts and spiders looming and squatting across the mind. My social contacts had dwindled to almost none; the presence of other people made me nervous and paranoid. I spent endless days and nights sunk in an armchair in my bedroom, reading magazines, watching TV, listening to records, staring into space. I had no idea how to improve the situation and probably wouldn't have done anything about it if I had. "Astral Weeks would be the subject of this piece - i.e., the rock record with the most significance in my life so far - no matter how I'd been feeling when it came out. But in the condition I was in, it assumed at the time the quality of a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk; what's more, it was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction. (My other big record of the day was White Light/White Heat.) It sounded like the man who made Astral Weeks was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison's previous works had only suggested; but like the later albums by the Velvet Underground, there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work."

I don't understand why Lester Bangs has quite such a grand reputation: this is certainly interesting, but he doesn't resist such obvious things as making yourself the subject of the piece - or at least, if you're going to do this, not being cliched about it - and all the observations are only ever slightly outside of being cliches - I have to go but I think he makes the point better than I could, can someone tell me, maybe I just haven't read the right stuff?

-- maryann (tedium200...), June 25th, 2001.

Because read that quote again. Because screw that its cliche, or has been done, or done better. Because he has such an ENGAGING style of writing. Because he writes with such ease and grandeur without ever getting bogged down in the references and allusions, and mathematical doublespeak that makes most modern criticism read like stereo manuels. Because it's impossible to not relate to him on some level, and want to love it just as much as he does, even if you've never heard it.

th reason is this: "We are all shit but at 3am with a head full of bad speed, cheap dope and warm beer, Young Americans become the most sincere song ever written and The Day John Kennedy Died ring like a book in the New Testement. Lester Bangs changed my life and if you have an issue witth that then mount it on the hood ornament of a '71 Mustang Mach 1, put Jonathon Richman's "Roadrunner" on the 8 track, rev it up to the redline, dump the clutch, and drive that sucker up your uptight ass. "

see also 'dance music is shit' - reason: "we were listening to banco de gaia and sitting in crookes valley park and the sun was coming up and we were tripping on acid and everything was crazy colours and it was so spiritual etc etc etc"

Put crassly, some old guy liked some other old guy's music. So?
What's it to me?

i lke LB but not that piece; VM can eat a bag of dicks

(VM must have a voracious appetite)

-- mei (meirion.lewi...), July 31st, 2003.

Then why give a shit about anything?

-- David Allen (en@senbm), July 30th, 2003.

Many reasons to give a damn, but LB doesn't convince me to.

greil marcus's agenda pushing amounted to including two pieces on elvis and nothing on black sabbath. that and calling bangs "the best writer in america." gee, what a rotten guy. let it blurt, meanwhile, includes about a million "wow, what a slob lester was" anecdotes and next to nothing about his actual writing. conclusion: jim derogatis is a twat.

I still kill him with gun tho'.

I'm not going to read more just to check I'm as uninterested in it as I am in what I've already read.

I _am_ intrigued as to why he's so revered though.

I _am_ intrigued as to why he's so revered though.

Gee, so I guess you just want someone to explain it to you? If you're not interested enough to try and find out for yourself . . .

I don't want someone to explian LB to me, but rather why they like him. In fact there are a few good answers like that above, so I think my question's answered.

While we're on the subject can someone explain the appeal of REM or U2?

was it Arto Lindsay and Adele Bertei

non-joke answer: it was eno, lunch, marianne faithfull, and screamin’ jay hawkins or robbie robertson or danny fields

Ah Danny Fields definitely. But your first answer sounded plausible. Bangs championed DNA and cf her recent memoir, Adele has lived a full life in and outside of the music business.

There's an extensive version of his Eno article online: https://www.furious.com/perfect/bangseno.html

i just liked the idea of a "four lives in the NO WAVE business" potboiler quickie

loving that Eno piece, thank you!

dying @ this:

"As many critics have pointed out (and as Eno himself noted in the liner notes to Discreet Music), this is very close to Erik Satie, who wanted to make music that could "mingle with the sound of the knives and forks at dinner." (Perhaps this is why Pierre Boulez once wrote an essay entitled "Erik Satie: Spineless Dog.")"

V early bobbins usage too

this is a little off topic but i've never quite understood what ilm "bobbins" meant? (outside of its sewing meaning which it must mean something else?)

I've assumed it means dance music that makes you "bob" your head up and down, but I might be wrong? It did take me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what "challops" meant

ahhh okay yeah i'm bad a catching things like that

I don't know what it means on ILM but...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bobbins

a little bit of this and that

derives from the Lancashire cotton mills, I think.

Psychotic Bobbins and Carburetor Challops

fascinating linguistic evolution - a technical term from the mills is generalised to mean rubbish in lancs dialect and in this vein used to refer to techno(?) in a thread title on an online message board and this definition sticks for years among people who have never seen a bobbin or been to manchester

bangs is using it literally I assume

something similar could be said about challops where the ILM usage (roughly hot takes?) is closer but still different from the definition I was familiar with (balls) but idk what the original meaning is or where it comes from

a little bit of this and that

That sounds more like gubbins than bobbins tbh.

Challops = challenging opinions

Yeah that might have been the cover story of the circa 1973 Creem issue with a giant quaalude on the cover.

It is entirely possible that I am conflating articles, but in the one I am thinking of he said of cocaine, "It will make you feel like the greatest person in the world. Yes, even greater than Erik Estrada." That would put it in at least 1977, although I am not sure how much sense that makes, since he left Creem in 1976.

it’s more that the person posting thinks they’re posting a challenging opinion, isn’t it? Like, “there, I’ve said it”

re challops

i can't really read lester anymore. he's better when you are young and dumb and reading bukowski or whoever. and he's very dude. i do like that eno thing! but he could be really dense in a cringey way. or it seems like that now. like people have said, he was young when he died. i think i was older than 33 when i STARTED writing rockcrit. i definitely stole from him. couldn't help it really. i grew up with creem. and the voice.
cool thing: i read at nyu at one of those conferences and jim miller was the moderator and after he said to me "i used to edit lester bangs and i know how hard it is to do what you just did." !!!! i thought that was cool. (i didn't have the heart to tell him that it wasn't THAT hard. but i did work the thing i wrote pretty hard.)

And his drug of choice was fuckin' cough syrup, ferchrissakes.

OG lean addict! he probably would have been a big dj screw fan if he had lived.

I don’t know what it’s particularly a sign of, but someone has to cite or write their own version of the The White Noise Supremacists article every so often. I remember that happening 20 years ago, and recently a guy who was in a popular band at that time wrote his own! Carlos D didn’t even bother to mention Lester despite hitting all the same notes