Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung: The Work Of A Legendary Critic: Rock'n'roll As Literature And Literature As Rock 'n'roll [EPUB]
E-Book Overview
The wild and brilliant writings of Lester Bangs—the most outrageous and popular rock critic of the 1970s—edited and with an introduction by the reigning dean of rack critics, Greil Marcus. Essays examine rock performers and bands including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Chicago, the Clash, James Taylor, and Iggy Pop.
Before his death aged 33 in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, passionate pieces on Barry White, Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Lou Reed: 'I always wanted to emulate the most self-destructive bastard I could see, as long as he moved with some sense of style. Thus Lou Reed'. To his journalism, he brought the talent of a great fiction writer. As Greil Marcus writes in his introduction: 'What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews'
Until his death in 1982 at age 34, Bangs wrote freewheeling rock 'n' roll pieces for Creem, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice and London's NME (New Musical Express. As a rock critic, he was adept at distinguishing the commercially packaged product from the real thing. Written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his impudent reviews and essays explore the connections between rock and the body politic, the way rock stars cow their audiences and how the pursuit of success and artistic vision destroys or makes rock performers as human beings. This collection (which includes no Rolling Stone pieces) covers "fake moneybags revolutionary" Mick Jagger, John Lennon ("I can't mourn him"), David Bowie "in Afro-Anglican drag," Iggy Pop, the Troggs, Lou Reed, Van Morrison, Chicago, the Clash, many more. Marcus, a music critic, is the author of Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music.
For rockers whose tastes demand more than Madonna and who remember back before Bruce, this is a gem. By turns insightful and hilarious, these collected essays by the late, legendary Banks (mostly accumulated from hard-to-come-by journals like Creem ) constantly astound. If your mind can embrace a shrewdly perceptive essay on the Troggs with the title "James Taylor Marked for Death," you also deserve to read the title essay on the Count Five's first album, some amazingly antagonistic love/hate interviews with Lou Reed, and so on. Add to all this a whacked-out sprung prose style (and vocabulary) that would make Gerard Manley Hopkins gasp for air, and you have well.....?. For larger music collections, this is, like, highly recommended.
E-Book Information
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Year: 2,013
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City: New York
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Pages: 386
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Language: English
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Identifier: 9,780,804,150,163
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Org File Size: 1,643,671
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Extension: epub