Lester Bangs, music journalist, author & musician (penning record reviews for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines) is even more famous for his notorious tendency to insult and confront his interviewees…
”Well basically I just started out to lead [an interview] with the most insulting question I could think of. Because it seemed to me that the whole thing of interviewing as far as rock stars and that was just such a suck-up. It was groveling obeisance to people who weren’t that special, really. It’s just a guy, just another person, so what?”-Bangs
yes, Bangs was gonzo before Hunter S. Thompson was even a flicker on the radar of cool, in fact, the two had a profound hatred for each other, but if you still don’t know who he is and call your yourself a music journalist…for shame…he was the know-it-all Rolling Stone disser in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous who gave the kid advice, played by actor-extraordinaire Phillip Seymour Hoffman. enough said…on with the money-making….
a lesson from the master hater: (fill in the blank, change where necessary)
HOW TO WRITE YOUR VERY FIRST ORIGINAL RECORD REVIEW:
1. Pick a title for the album
A. Oranges in Exile
B. Outer City Blues & Heavy Dues
C. Cajun Sitar Dance Party
D. Hungry Children of Babylon
E. Eat Your Coldcream
2. This latest offering from…
A. Harmonica Dan and His Red Light District
B. The Armored Highchair
C. Ducks in Winter
D. The Four Fat Guys
E. Arturo de Cordova
3. Is…
A. a clear consolidation of the artistic moves first tentatively ventured in his/her/their/its last album.
B. a real letdown after the masterpiece album and single that carried us all the way through the summer and warmed us over in the fall.
C. important only insofar as it will delineate the contours of the current malaise for future rock historians, if there are any with all the pollution around now.
D. definitely the album of the year
E. a heap of pig shit.
4. Choose one of the following for the next sentence…
A. In dealing with such a record, the time has come at last to talk about the responsibilities, if any, which any artist making rock ‘n’ roll bears to his audience, and specifically how those responsibilities relate to the political situation which we, all of us, and perforce rock ‘n’ roll, are compelled to come to terms with by dint of living in the United States of America today.
B. I don’t really think these guys/this dude/the chick in question/a singing dog can defend musical output which has proven increasingly shoddy by referring to such old handles as “personal expression,” “experimentalism,” “a new kind of artistic freedom,” or any other such lame cop-out.
C. It’s such a thrill that this album finally came, that I am finally actually holding it in my hands, looking at the fantastically beautiful M.C. Escher drawing on the the cover whilst trembling all over to the incredible strains of the music on the record from inside it which even now are wafting from the old Victrola, that I really don’t know if I am going to come or cry.
D. It’s so goddan fucking boring to have to open all these pieces of shit every day, you waste your time, your break your fingernails, half the time it’s just a repeat of an album that came yesterday, that I can hardly bring myself to slit open the shrink wrap once I get ‘em outta the cardboard (which pies up in a big mess all over the house after it gets dragged outta the corner by all my asshole friends!), and I really can just barely stand to put the goddam things on the turntable after that, I wish it would break anyway so I wouldn’t have to listen to ‘em anymore. (Good one, huh, more than one sentence in this one!) But anyway, I put this piec3e of shit on just like all the others except the ones I never get around to, and right now I’m listening to it and you know what? I was right. It is a piece of shit!
E. I don’t remember how I got here, whose house this is, or where this typewriter came from, but anyway this new album is by the greatest fucking rock ‘n’ roll band in the whole wide world/most talented, sensitive balladeer of his generation whom many of us are already calling the New Dylan/sweetest songbird this side of the Thames has saved my life again just like all the others did, so I don’t even care where I am, I don’t care if I got rolled last night, I don’t care if this place gets busted right now, I don’t care if the world comes to an end because the cosmic message of truth and unity which this music is bringing to me has made me feel complete for the first time since 1968.
5. The first song on side one…
A. “Catalina Sky”
B. “Death Rays in Your Eyes”
C. “I Wish I Was a Rusty Nail”
D. “Lady of Whitewater”
E. “Nixon Eats”
6. Choose again…
A. is a rousingly high spirited opener in march tempo.
B. starts things off at an extremely high energy level.
C. sets the pace and mood of the album most atmospherically.
D. won’t win any Grammies this year.
E. reminds me of my Grandmother puking up her sherry into the bathtub the night we had fish that had gone bad for dinner when I was three years old.
7. The first thing you notice is…
A. the vicious, slashing guitar solo.
B. the deep, throbbing bass lines.
C. how mellowly the sensitive, almost painfully fragile vocal is integrated with the mesmerizing Spanish chords from these four fine hollow-body Gibson guitars.
D. the cymbals aren’t miked right.
E. that the entire mix is a washout and this album has what is probably the worst production of the year.
8. The full impact of what’s going on in this cut may not reach you the first time, but if you keep listening a couple of times a day for a week or two, especially through headphones, it will come to you in a final flash of revelation that…
A. you were wasting your time.
B. you are listening to such a masterpiece of rock which so far transcends “rock” as we have known it that most people probably won’t recognize its true worth for at least ten years.
C. the instruments are out of tune.
D. you should have bought The Band instead.
E. you’re deaf in one ear.
9. Cut two is…
A. a nice change of pace
B. more of the same phlegm
C. a definite picker-upper
D. interesting, at least
E. insulting to the human ear (my dog didn’t like it either)
10. By virtue of that fact that…
A. it was produced by Phil Spector’s cousin from Jersey.
B. it’s only two seconds long.
C. the lyrics say more, and more concisely, about what we have done to our natural environment than anything else written in the past decade.
D. Bobby Keyes, Jim Price and Boots Randolph sit in for a real old-time “blowing session.”
E. I spilled Gallo Port in the grooves and it made it sound better.
11. In spite of that, I feel that the true significance of its rather dense and muted lyrics can only be apprehended by…
A. a purchase of a hearing aid.
B. reading the sheet enclosed with the record.
C. going back and listening to “Memphis Blues Again,” then come back to this and see if it doesn’t blow you out the door.
D. taking a course in German.
E. throwing the incoherent piece of pig shit in the trash and going out for a beer, where something good is probably on the jukebox.
12. The record has inspired such…
A. ambivalent feeling
B. helpless adoration
C. bile and venom
D. total indifference
E. a powerful thirst
in me that I can’t bring myself to describe the rest of the cuts. Track-by-track reviews are a bore anyway, just download it from iTunes, Rhapsody or whatever music site your pillaging these days, and find out for yourself whether you’ll like it or not. Who am I, who is any critic or any other sentient being on the face of the Earth, to tell you what a piece of music sounds like? Only your ears can hear it as only your ears can hear it. Am I right or am I wrong? Of course I am. I do know that I will…
13.
A. go on listening to this album till I drop dead of cancer.
B. walk out into the backyard and toss this offense unto mine eyes into the incinerator soon as I finish typing this spew.
C. never forget the wonderful chance I’ve had here in the pages of Fusion to share this very special round, and my own deepest dredged sentiments about it, with you, who whether you know it or not are a very special person whom I love without qualification even if we’ve never seen each other, I don’t even know your name, and am so righteous that I don’t even care if you look like a sow.
D. break this elpee over the head of the very next Jesus Freak or Hare Krishna creep I see in the street, just for thrills!
E. go to sleep now and awaken upon a new morning in which I may be able to appreciate this unabridged poetic outpouring with fresh ears.
14. So before I sign my name at the bottom of this page and pick up the check from the cheap kikes that run this rag that will never pay me anyway, I would like to leave you with one thought…
A. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
B. There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
C. The red man lost his land to you and me.
D. Rock ‘n’ roll is dead. Long live rock ‘n’ roll.
E. Since these assholes that’re stupid enough to print this stuff don’t pay me anything, why don’t you? I’ve probably turned you on to a lot of good records over the years, and what do I get out of it? Nothing but a lot of grief! A lot of abuse from cretins who can’t understand that rock ‘n’ roll IS the Revolution! A lot of cheap bloodsuckers like hell hounds on my trail! I got “Yer Blues”! I’ve paid my body and soul! So send me some $$$, god-dammit, or I’ll never write a word again as long as I live!
Your faithful correspondent, ….
1 Comment
February 25, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Favorite Lester Bangs entry, was from a New Years Eve show @ the Olympia in Detroit. He took his date to see Barry White I think.
If I remember correctly, his date wouldn’t kiss him because of bad breath. I recall him saying something to the effect “write a song about that Barry.”