Lester Bangs Redux

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    Lester Bangs Redux
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    These days rock critics don’t like rock and (mostly) don’t criticize. They are too busy enjoying the cozy symbiosis with the hand that feeds them. Mostly they do wash too and they don’t drink cough medicine to ease their alcohol problems. In short, they, just like rock n’ roll, are less fun than they used to be.

    This wasn’t true of Lester Bangs who wrote it like he saw (and felt) it.



     



     

    Lester wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone when it mattered and is honoured in “Almost Famous” (a cameo role I had forgotten until I rewatched it recently) as the “true honest spirit of rock n’ roll criticism” advising the kid “never to buy into them (the artists) or believe them, just listen to the music”. Lester may also (perhaps) of coined the phrase “punk rock” to describe garage bands.

    Lester has recently been honoured in THIS great piece in the New Yorker magazine for you to read about.

    But if you haven’t time to check it all out just read from his great piece “James Taylor: Marked For Death” (now there’s a title) and get a flavour of how it ought to be done:

    “Number one, everybody should realize that all this “art” and “bop” and “rock-’n’-roll” and whatever is all just a joke and a mistake, just a hunka foolishness so stop treating it with any seriousness or respect at all and just recognize the fact that it’s nothing but a Wham-O toy to bash around as you please in the nursery, it’s nothing but a goddam Bonusburger so just gobble the stupid thing and burp and go for the next one tomorrow; and don’t worry about the fact that it’s a joke and a mistake and a bunch of foolishness as if that’s gonna cause people to disregard it and do it in or let it dry up and die, because it’s the strongest, most resilient, most invincible Superjoke in history, nothing could possibly destroy it ever, and the reason for that is precisely that it is a joke, mistake, foolishness. The first mistake of Art is to assume that it’s serious. I could even be an asshole here and say that “Nothing is true; everything is permitted,” which is true as a matter of fact, but people might get the wrong idea. What’s truest is that you cannot enslave a fool”

    You could do a lot worse than dig his vibe and at the very least you’ll have plenty of fun.



     

    -Tony H

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    Almost Famous, Rolling Stone,
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These days rock critics don’t like rock and (mostly) don’t criticize. They are too busy enjoying the cozy symbiosis with the hand that feeds them. Mostly they do wash too and they don’t drink cough medicine to ease their alcohol problems. In short, they, just like rock n’ roll, are less fun than they used to be.

This wasn’t true of Lester Bangs who wrote it like he saw (and felt) it.



 



 

Lester wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone when it mattered and is honoured in “Almost Famous” (a cameo role I had forgotten until I rewatched it recently) as the “true honest spirit of rock n’ roll criticism” advising the kid “never to buy into them (the artists) or believe them, just listen to the music”. Lester may also (perhaps) of coined the phrase “punk rock” to describe garage bands.

Lester has recently been honoured in THIS great piece in the New Yorker magazine for you to read about.

But if you haven’t time to check it all out just read from his great piece “James Taylor: Marked For Death” (now there’s a title) and get a flavour of how it ought to be done:

“Number one, everybody should realize that all this “art” and “bop” and “rock-’n’-roll” and whatever is all just a joke and a mistake, just a hunka foolishness so stop treating it with any seriousness or respect at all and just recognize the fact that it’s nothing but a Wham-O toy to bash around as you please in the nursery, it’s nothing but a goddam Bonusburger so just gobble the stupid thing and burp and go for the next one tomorrow; and don’t worry about the fact that it’s a joke and a mistake and a bunch of foolishness as if that’s gonna cause people to disregard it and do it in or let it dry up and die, because it’s the strongest, most resilient, most invincible Superjoke in history, nothing could possibly destroy it ever, and the reason for that is precisely that it is a joke, mistake, foolishness. The first mistake of Art is to assume that it’s serious. I could even be an asshole here and say that “Nothing is true; everything is permitted,” which is true as a matter of fact, but people might get the wrong idea. What’s truest is that you cannot enslave a fool”

You could do a lot worse than dig his vibe and at the very least you’ll have plenty of fun.



 

-Tony H

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