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Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A
Lester Bangs Reader (Anchor Books) |
 Personally, I think Lester Bangs
seemed to have very little appreciation for musicians. Funny, when he
spent his entire career sticking his nose in them, infatuating with it,
fantasizing, masturbating, and then transcribing it. Everything from his
chronicles in The Village Voice to his entries in Creem Magazine
and never-before-published pieces are found in here. While he compared
most women in rock to dildos, or evaluated Lou Reed’s alcoholism,
he managed for himself to become a cult hero. It doesn’t happen often in
the music biz but every once and awhile someone who doesn’t even need a
team or tour buses makes it. If you had a band in the seventies and Lester
Bangs didn’t insult it, you obviously wasn’t hip enough. If you were a
rock legend and Lester Bangs didn’t interview you, then he obviously
wouldn’t have answers for any of your questions because you would have
plenty. Of course like most rock legends from that era, he lived and died
before any books of his were ever published. His abuse of alcohol and
valiums initially killed him. He didn’t evolve like Cameron Crowe
from Rolling Stone to directing movies, although if he did I’d
imagine they'd be full of tits, turntables, nosebleeds and of course,
they'd star Lou Reed. He interviewed the yank three times, and it’s
mystery as to why Lou kept returning. Not all of Lester Bang’s opinions
were negative, though. In fact he provided much of the truth to things for
all of the wrong reasons. He had an equally biased opinion on sexism and
assassinations as he did with the death of Andy Warhol. |
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-Smutstrutter ___________________________________________________________________________ |