Lester Bangs - Classic or Carburetor Dung?

I'll call him a classic, without any sort of justification, because someone else will provide my proof for me!

But I wonder if Psychotic Reactions is such a good anthology, as we speed away from the 70s it's becoming harder to decipher. Always hope someone puts together all his reviews in one 1000-page anthology a la Pauline Kael.

The Astral Weeks piece is actually one of my least favourites by him - I'd not read it until recently because I don't know AW well and also just through laziness. And I thought "well, OK". Maybe it's because the web is shifting the baseline of music criticism more towards that kind of personalisation (Good Thing!)

but most of his admirers do say that he had insights they found important, I'm sure he did, and I know his work suffered from his own drug heroism wrote it at 3am the night before bla bla and perhaps I should just believe everybody and persist until I encounter the insights. Is it the case, though, that we forgive him for not editing because of his biography? That's very sentimental.

It's also tricky because, since he exposed so much of himself in his writing, it's like I'm attacking him 'in himself' by not liking it. I guess that means he was brave.

I was going to type something about Bangs' enthusiasm, but Omar beat me to the punch. However, I wish that more people emulated his enthusiasm more than his introspective-to-a-fault prose.

I'm all for personalization, as long as it's either complementary to the subject at hand, or more interesting than the subject at hand. The latter doesn't happen too often, unfortunately. Neither does the former, really.

I think his lack of editing is part of his whole "literature as rock & roll" schtick. Which, like the whole "jam session" mentality in general works best for the wasted.

I would love to have read what he'd written if he'd lived. Though I have a feeling that the 80's would have killed him one way or another.

IMHO, this was what made Lester Bangs great, or at least unique.

the kraftwerk review was cool though. and he gets serious points for recognizing lydia lunch's greatness (which i suspect she never quite recognized, giving up the guitar so soon).

that said, i didn't mean that i thought lb liked mmm because it was extreme or because it pissed people off. the impression i got from the review was that he didn't actually like mmm much at all, that he thought it was entirely devoid of emotional depth or even any sort of affect. ("quick-job exploitation number" was his terminology of choice when he mentioned mmm in the kraftwerk review, right?) i remember the review being basically sarcastic and backhanded. he did seem to think it was more radical a record, and not just for a rock star, than i think it would have been even for 1975. lots of people had been working with drones and noise and feedback through the 60s, often less pretty-sounding than mmm, without meaning it as some sort of statement of emptiness and coldness. this is all i meant by genre context (an unfortunate term, probably) -- an awareness that this stuff is going on and that it means something. sure, you could just review feedback drones by your own rock-centric context but it would be like that wire feature where stockhausen criticized every techno record they gave him for being repetitious, overemphasizing rhythm, etc.

the stuff he said about xenakis was in another, smaller article.

again, i don't know these pieces well. this was just the impression i got when i read them a long time ago.

P.S. I wasn't nearly as impressed by Psychotic Reactions as the original poster. Too much (as typical with him and Christgau) personal baggage for my taste to be effective as a music journalist or reviewer/critic or essayist, etc - writer of non-fiction. Not that I want "Just the fact ma'am", but still. I nice mixture of the two, is what I look for in effective non-fictional writings on art.

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)

If Lester Bangs was alive today he'd probably have a smartphone :O

Post under “technological/practical backwards steps……”!

If Lester Bangs were alive today he’d be frantically scraping the inside of his coffin.

Anyway, reflective/humanist Bangs is what elevates him into one of the greats.

are the things that made him cool to boomers even legible to zoomers who aren't steeped in rock mythology?

trying to imagine him as a youtuber doesn't work for me because there isn't an equivalent kind of cultural fixation - even people who love marvel movies don't think they're changing the world or anything. maybe he could get into crypto

even people who love marvel movies don't think they're changing the world or anything.

They absolutely do.

Without wanting to be too Chuck Klosterberg about it, I sometimes think that someone like Blindboy, building a huge audience by riffing on Limerick streetwear, Greek mythology, mental health and Westlife is the closest thing to LB today.

I get what draws some people to him but (after trying a few times) he wasn’t my bag, so to speak.

They absolutely do.

that's a real shame and speaks to the extent to which we've come to believe that change can only ever be handed down from on high

it strikes me as *much more* delusional than someone in 68 thinking rock is the revolution

i saw lester bangs once! he was promoting his blondie book in some bookstore. don't remember much about it except lenny kaye was there and they were trading some barbs back and forth. how could you not like lester? he gave me the ears to hear 'raw power' back when. he had a way of sharing his excitement.

trying to find a way to finesse that earlier energy into something more thoughtful and humanistic

What I meant about signs of him adapting later on. (Which makes it sound contrived--it wasn't.) But I think there'd always be a part of him that would cross a line and end up saying things that would cause him trouble today, especially in view of how Christgau and Marcus still get taken to task for things they write. Not like some of the more egregious things he wrote, but I don't see him doing a lot of self-censoring or second-guessing himself.

I think I'm less interested in thinking about him today (which let's be honest he'd be another writer with a substack and a twitter account trying to scrape by like anyone else, hopefully able to trade off his name like marcus and xgau to get enough work), i don't think any kind of fan fiction about oh my god he'd love l'rain and PC music or whatever...that's just fantasy stuff, he'd be old and probably not super engaged with modern pop culture -- i wouldn't rule out a later in life jazz turn either

i'd be more curious how he would have engaged in the late 80s through late 90s, the second flowering of the American underground stuff he'd be so obsessed with (Matador, Drag City etc etc) through the post-Nirvana alt explosion...a real mass culture explosion that was explicitly rooted in punk and post punk. i wonder if he would have been excited about it or think it was a perversion of or second rate copy of the stuff he loved?

"How would Orson Welles have directed Ant-Man?" is not the kind of slash fic we should read.

xp Yeah, that’s OTM… I wonder too.

What would (person who died decades ago) be like today always less about the person themselves and more about whatever axes the poster has to grind with their era, so kinda useful on that account.

i wouldn't rule out a later in life jazz turn either

i mean, his favourite album was The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady and he attacked James Chance for trying to (racistly) paper over his debt to Ayler

oh yeah i just meant like retreating into old jazz and stuff like that and not really engaged w/anything modern - that's not uncommon

there's days i feel like doing that lol

oh yes indeed, same!

my dad used to drive us through london pointing out the tiny basements where he saw hendrix play, the last year of his life he was dead into cassettes of oscar peterson playing verrrrrry quietly, and celine dion. it's the arc.

I remember Lester did an article summarizing various drugs. I was about 12 at the time, it felt so subversive.

Yeah that might have been the cover story of the circa 1973 Creem issue with a giant quaalude on the cover. To everything turn turn turn, there is a season etc

I do wish Lester would've written his proposed version of Four Lives In the Bebop Business, which included Brian Eno, Lydia Lunch and I forget who else.

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