The Lester Bangs Appeciation Thread

The Heyday for music critics had to be the 1970s. Preeminent amongst them all was Lester Bangs, the drunken critc/poet who worked at Creem magazine for a time. His collected works, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic, by Greil Marcus, is a must read.

He was lovingly portrayed in the movie Almost Famous by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman.


"“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.”



I hope I am not the only fan of his around here

 

...as is Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste

I think I've been through everything there is on Lester Bangs, on the net and elsewhere. If anyone has some first hand experience of the guy, that would be good.

 

He helped me appreciate Astral Weeks the right way.

 

This is a must read. Not only does it give great, unblinkered by fan worship, insight into the man, but it almost doubles as a history of early CREEM magazine.
I saw Lester around a lot back then, we haunted the same clubs (obviously) , but never interacted with him. My one enduring memory of him is from a New York Rocker Christmas party (1979) that took place in some squat on the lower, lower east side. I heard PIL's Metal Box blasting from one of the rooms, and there was Lester, doing some insane bat dance to the music. Everyone was just watching as he spun around with whatever girlfriend he was with at the time. I mean, how in the hell do you dance to a song like "Poptones"?

 

I love Lester Bangs. Don't know what else to really say about it but you can count me in. I've read all three books mentioned in this thread.


edit: I thought of a thing to say. I may be the only one, but I didn't like Hoffman's portrayal of Bangs. Just seemed off to me.

 

Reading back on a lot what he wrote...

He was never different just to be different. His opinions were sometimes uncool, but always honest and very well delivered.

In retrospect, he was basically spot on most of the time.

 

I really enjoyed the two collections of his work. Haven’t read the bio, but will make it a priority to.

 

He published my first review in Creem. Sent me a nice note which I lost, unfortunately.

 

Yep. Read Carburetor Dung 30 years ago, I’m sure. Loved it.

 

During his tenure at CREEM, Bangs was the one who wrote most of those hysterical photo captions that were a highlight of the mag.

 

I received Psychotic reactions and carburator dung as a Christmas gift

 

I saw this play based about Lester Bangs in NYC last year (or was it 2017). Very well done. As a bonus, I just happened to be sitting next to Jim DeRogatis, the author of the bio on Lester (which I had already read). I recognized Jim strictly from his voice and it caused me to ask him if he was DeRogatis (he's a co-host on Sound Ideas radio show and podcast). He was very nice and we had a good chat before the show started.

Lester Bangs and the Soul of Rock Criticism

 

You are not alone. I have a first edition of the book in fine condition and I go back to it on a regular basis. Great stuff.

 

nice link

 

His obituary of Elvis Presley is masterful: If love is truly going out of fashion, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each other’s objects of worship. I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation’s many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis’s. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying goodbye to his corpse. I will say goodbye to you.

 

Try "A Box Full of Rocks." A documentary that covers Bangs' early years.
Entertaining film and also a great soundtrack album.

 

This is one of the best things Lester ever wrote, his obituary for Pere Ubu guitarist Peter Laughner. From New York Rocker October 1977. A must read.

http://straighttovideo.org/wp-content/uploads/Peter-Laughner-is-dead.pdf

 

good stuff!

 

Love Psychotic Reactions as everyone's pointed out already. The Peter Laughner obit is great. His article about Kraftwerk is great, and prescient. The highlight of the book, for me, is the "Killing the Father" section about Lou Reed and Metal Machine Music (which he loved, natch). The article about going on tour with the Clash is great too. Also, actually, now that I think of it, the highlight of the book may be the "Maggie May" short story, a completely fictionalized account of the genesis of that song, which manages to be incredibly insightful and touching in writing about love, and then incredibly hilarious at the end (I won't spoil it). In any case, that book probably one of the top five essential books about rock music.

Over the last few years, I've been discovering more and more of his reviews on the Rolling Stone site. They're usually more serious and less outrageous than much of the writing in Psychotic Reactions, but like most of his writing, they're usually intelligent and perceptive (if not hilarious). For example: Led Zeppelin III – Rolling Stone

 

That's one thing people forget about Lester, his perceptiveness and his empathy. If he didn't get something at first (Exile On Main Street) he did his damndest to at least try and understand it. A lot of that gets lost in all the "crazy Lester Bangs" stories. Bob Christgau once said that out of all the writers he edited, Bangs handed in work that was pretty much perfect.