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Lester Bangs

Lester Bangs Quotes

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Famous Lester Bangs Quotes

“Like almost all of Beefheart's recorded work, it was not even "ahead" of its time in 1969. Then and now, it stands outside time, trends, fads, hypes, the rise and fall of whole genres eclectic as walking Christmas trees, constituting a genre unto itself: truly, a musical Monolith if ever there was one.”

MusicCreativityGeniusCriticismOriginalityRock MusicRolling StonesRockBeatlesHard RockBob DylanPop60sCaptain BeefheartTrout Mask ReplicaBeefheartRock CriticismElectronica
Author:Lester Bangs
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“They're events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment. So it's not exactly that records might unhinge the mind, but rather that if anything is going to drive you up the wall it might as well be a record.”

SexMusicFannishness
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
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“But since death is inevitable we don’t have to deal with it (it’ll deal with us when it decides to). What we do have to deal with is the psychic, physical, and fusion diseases wrought during our so-called lives as byproducts of the elemental clash. In other words we’re all terminally psychotic and no doctor, hospital, pill, needle, book or guru holds the cure. Because the disease is called life and there is no cure for that but death and death’s just part of the set-up designed to keep you terrified and thus in bondage from the cradle to the crypt so ha ha the joke’s on you except there’s no punchline and the comedian forgot you ever existed as even a comma.”

Talking HeadsFear Of Music
Author:Lester Bangs
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“The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there's precious little to be seen.”

IfsThinkingLittlesLifestyleCharismaExtravagantOstentatious
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“What all this posturing and fake glamor results in is a vast detachment and cynicism on the part of the artists. Since it's impossible to have respect for an audience that'll take just about anything you care to dish out, and the impassive demeanor is so central to the role, a general numbnose is all that can be expected.”

CareArtistResultsRolesAudienceImpossibleExpectedFakeCynicismDishesDetachmentDemeanor
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman - I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.”

IfsYearsArtStudentsTaughtCollegeAimExpertsJust SayingCollege StudentsUndisputedPomposity
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“All the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the "fifties" or "sixties," as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix.”

IfsKnowsBookDecadesSixtyArbitraryConvenientHistory BooksFalsification
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“... the twin concepts of nihilism and the antihero have had it. What began with The Wild One and James "nobody understands me" Dean, ran with increasing vehement negativism up through the Stones and Velvets and Iggy ... [I]t may be time, in spite of all indications to the contrary from the exterior society, to begin thinking in terms of heroes again, of love instead of hate, of energy instead of violence, of strength instead of cruelty, of action instead of reaction.”

ThinkingMayActionHateEnergyTermViolenceHeroConceptsStonesContraryReactionsCrueltyRanSpiteTwinsNihilismIndicationDeanVelvetExteriorUnderstand MeVehementAntiheroesWild OneNobody Understands Me
Author:Lester Bangs
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“if the main reason we listen to music in the first place is to hear passion expressed- as i've believed all my life-then what good is this music going to prove to be? what does that say about us? what are we confirming in ourselves by doting on art that is emotionally neutral? and, simultaneously, what in ourselves might we be destroying or at least keeping down?”

IfsFirstsDoeArtReasonMightPassionProveDestroyingListening To Music
Book:Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader
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“Sexual chaos reigns currently, but out of chaos may flow true understanding and harmony, and either way Elvis almost singlehandedly opened the floodgates.”

WayMayUnderstandingFlowHarmonyChaosReignTrue Understanding
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“The whole point of American culture is to pick up any old piece of trash and make it shine with more facets than the Hope Diamond.”

WholeCulturePiecesPicksShiningDiamondTrashAmerican CultureFacets
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“I'll probably never produce a masterpiece, but so what? I feel I have a Sound aborning, which is my own, and that Sound if erratic is still my greatest pride, because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ass to boogaloo inside my head, and perhaps reach only readers who like to use books to shake their asses, than to be or write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows toward its last raving sooty feedback pirouette.”

IfsMenWorldFeelsWritingStillsBookUseLastsPastReadingSoundMy OwnProduceHe ManPrideReaderWindowAssDancerShakesClosetsMasterpieceFeedbackShakingErraticPirouettes
Author:Lester Bangs
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“Personally I feel that real rock 'n' roll may be on the way out, just like adolescence as a relatively innocent transitional period is on the way out. What we have instead is a small island of new free music surrounded by some good reworkings of past idioms and a vast sargasso sea of absolute garbage.”

WayFeelsMayRealPastSeaRocksPeriodsAbsolutesInnocentIslandsRock N RollAdolescenceGarbageIdiomFree Music
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“Look at it this way: There are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack. I do not subscribe to this point of view 100 percent, but I understand it, have lived it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.”

WayLooksMayForceViewsAnxietyPercentPoint Of ViewScalesNervesAffirmationAdventurousChainsawTwitchingAnxiety Attacks
Author:Lester Bangs
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“They wouldn't be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn't be heroes if they weren't miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again.”

IfsReasonFactsEarthDogTearsHeroMiserableIdolsWretchedInfalliblePariahs
Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“Good rock 'n' roll is something that makes you feel alive. It's something that's human, and I think that most music today isn't. ... To me good rock 'n' roll also encompasses other things, like Hank Williams and Charlie Mingus and a lot of things that aren't strictly defined as rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock 'n' roll, or a movie can be rock 'n' roll. It's a way of living your life.”

ThinkingWayFeelsWritingHumansTodayFormAttitudeAliveRocksMusicalDefinedRock N RollLive Your LifeStrictCharlieHank Williams
Author:Lester Bangs
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