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Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Five Star)

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This book is the chronicle of a great writer who never wrote a great book. Instead, Lester Bangs spent his unfortunately short life writing about rock music for magazines like Rolling Stone and Creem. He wasn't your average record reviewer, nor even your rarer thoughtful, analytical critic. He was a genius; he invented a new style of criticism, or at least brought it to its highest, most inimitable form. Casual, even sloppy; ragged, full of weird slang and weird mood swings, some obviously drug-inspired rambling, and some of the sharpest commentary any music critic has ever written. This book collects some of his work - a very small part of it - into something that may, perhaps, give us an idea of what kind of writer Bangs was, and why he mattered so much. He was one of the first rock critics to really delve into noise-rock, the art of not playing your instrument well. Bangs followed the underground (velvet) movement all through the Seventies, listening to old garage bands, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, the Ramones, free jazz, the New York Dolls, and everything else noisy and free and wonderful, while everyone else was snoozing to James Taylor and wondering when the next Beatles would come along. In 1977 the Sex Pistols tore apart the rock scene and Bangs was vindicated; but they left it in ruins and heading, inexorably, for the emptiness of New Wave and the decade-long winter of the Eighties. Lester Bangs, dead in 1982, is alive and well in this book, which opens with the title essay and his 'Stranded' review of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, two of the greatest pieces ever written about rock. It goes on through such memorable landmarks as "James Taylor Marked For Death" and that infamous, endless 'interview' with Lou Reed - actually, a whole section on Reed, including cryptically rambling notes and the hilarious 'The Greatest Album Ever Made', Bangs' review of Reed's Metal Machine Music - a double album of feedback noise - before getting to the really unforgettable, emotional stuff: a long, brilliant piece on the Clash, "Where Were You When Elvis Died?" and "Thinking The Unthinkable About John Lennon" for the two most famous deaths in rock history; "The White Noise Supremacists", a stunning attack on racism in rock; and finally the Unpublishable stuff: Lester has this bizarre fantasy about becoming the dead Elvis and rotting away in his Vegas hotel room, and then there's a fine short story based on Rod Stewart's "Maggie May." All in all, it's essential reading for anyone at all interested in rock as something beyond elevator music, something that reaches out and grabs you. Once it catches you, Lester Bangs knew all too well, it never lets go.

Some people discover Charles Bukowski when they're 18. With others it's Richard Bach, or Carlos Castaneda, or Scott Fitzgerald, or George Eliot. With me, thank God, it was Lester Bangs.

This, however, was in 1988, when this book first appeared and Lester's kind of music was about as unpopular as you can imagine. The late eighties were not really a time for howling guitars and yowling screech, unless you were buying import copies of Sonic Youth LPs for fifteen quid a time at the new Virgin Megastore on Aston Quay in Dublin, so reading that someone had charted this territory before, and had described it so well and preached it so fervently, was like discovering a cool older brother I hadn't known I'd had. (Not that my existing older brother wasn't cool in his own way.)

The main thing was not the music, however, so much as Lester's prose. He was, and is, one of the funniest writers I have ever come across. His fantasy about Lou Reed doing a version of "Rigoletto" set in a leather bar for Puerto Rican amputees made me cry with laughter, only a bit guiltily, and his surgical demolitions of an overblown Chicago album or a preposterous Bowie gig manage to combine great wit with a genuine, if subterranean, moral fervour. His Bowie piece, "Johnny Ray's Better Whirlpool", is for me up there with some of Swift's shorter works, as a bitterly amazed study of human folly.

He could do other things, too, of course; his hushed, radiantly attentive late essay about "Astral Weeks" almost (but not quite) persuades me that I like that album.

While I agree with Greil Marcus that Bangs was, on balance, better about writing about things he had a problem with than about things he flat-out adored, I quibble with the selection of pieces. Although I wouldn't wish for anything here to be omitted, I assume that it was only Marcus' pompous dread of trash that prompted him to reject something as hilariously sarcastic as "How To Be A Rock Critic" (reprinted in Jim DeRogatis' fine biography of Bangs) or reviews of heavy metal albums. Bangs was one of the very few rock writers to find anything in heavy metal, and I would have liked to read him on Deep Purple or Black Sabbath, both of which he admired but which Marcus, we can confidently assume, finds repugnant.

This is still a book I would give as a Christmas gift to any bright-eyed nephew of mine with a musical ear and a fondness for language. Bangs may have led a shambles of a life, but he wrote like an angel, and if I no longer share much with him in the way of musical taste, I'll always admire the passionate intelligence with which he wrestled his likes and dislikes onto the page. He's a model to all critics, not just rock writers.

Now can we have some more?

I never actually met the guy. But I devoured every published word of his between 1974, when I first discovered his work in CREEM , to his untimely passing in New York in 1982. He was the last of a sorely-missed breed, a writer who played the English language like a honking saxophone, launching into soaring solo avalanches of prose and jamming all over the place like John Coltrane on a good night. Through his work in CREEM and later Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, he influenced and inspired me to create my words with a rock & roll attitude, with my mental amp turned all the way up to 10, operating with total disregard for the niceties of style and conformity and making a big noise on paper. Lester taught me that a guy with a typewriter can jam just as well as a guy with a guitar and a Marshall stack. I remember laughing my ass off at Lester's legendary "feud" with Lou Reed. I remember being slightly pissed at his negative reviews of ELP, but the sheer exuberance in his writing more than made up for it. He taught me how a tune by Miles Davis could be just as musically valid as one by the Sex Pistols. I remember snatching the latest issues of CREEM when they hit the newsstands, eagerly flipping through them for the latest anything from Lester. On two occasions they actually published my letters in the letters section, which just made my day and gave me a taste of what it was like to have one's words in a national publication. His witty replies to reader's letters were of Oscar Wilde quality, and he was largely responsible for the demystification of rock stars, providing my star-struck generation with our first clues that rock stars were fallible humans just like the rest of us. Lester claimed to have invented the term "punk rock". He certainly had his own laundry list of personal failings too, but don't we all? He was a critic whose lifestyle was similar to his audience's, speaking TO his readers like confidantes rather than AT them, often at a level of unexpected personal intimacy. He refused to be swayed by record-company hype. Reading a Bangs review was like hearing somebody discussing their favorite band in a bar. He made a point of listening to the records he reviewed on regular crappy K-mart stereo systems, the better to connect with how the regular folks heard them. Musical genius, he realized, would shine through any playback medium. His level of integrity and honesty in his writing will not be seen again. All I have left of Lester's work now is a stack of ancient yellowing CREEM magazines and a hard-cover collection of his best work, edited by Cameron Crowe, entitled Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung, which I highly recommend to anyone who realizes rock & roll can exist in a place other than an audio recording or a stage. The title is borrowed from the Count Five's ("Psychotic Reaction") debut album. It is a glimpse inside the soul of a man for whom rock & roll was the fuel of life. To read it is to be transported to a higher level of understanding and enjoyment of the sounds coming out of your speakers, much the same way you feel when you're in the presence of a band which is really cookin' onstage. The links below are to pages containing the reviews and articles which made Lester so much more than just another hack PR scribe. He died in New York City in April of 1982 of the flu (of all things) checking out of this life at the eerily prescient age of 33, just ahead of the advent of MTV and CDs. You have to wonder about the timing, but one thing is for sure: he left us much too soon.

I can't judge whether this tome (or the newer release, "Mainlines") is a truly comprehensive and accurate portrayal of Lester Bangs, since I only became aware of his work long after his death. What I can say is that "Psychotic Reactions" is an endlessly fascinating, hilarious, depressing, sardonic, joyful, frightening, and unique collection of material from one of the greatest non-fiction writers of our time.

Greil Marcus, faced with the incredible task of creating a compendium of Lester's thousands of works, arranged them in a way that tell a story, and provide an autobiographical arc. Lester was a rock and roll fan in the purest and most heartbreaking sense - he romanticized it completely, and idolized those who took the most romantic (read: tragic) rock and roll stances. People like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Richard Hell. As a writer who was a fan, he was destined to be let down, but he knew that, and saw the humor in it.

More importanly, though - the man could WRITE. His articles, and even fragments, are thorougly entertaining, and stand up to multiple readings. And while Marcus has been knocked for his arrangement, he should be praised for presenting the growth, and growing sadness, of a fan as he became alienated from his love of music.

"Psychotic Reactions" gets my strongest recommendations. I have two copies, because I'm always loaning one out - and it never gets returned, which doesn't surprise me in the least.

that this tome gets five stars from everyone. Lester Bangs turned rock writing into a respectable craft. Critic, philosopher and party animal Bangs praises his heroes to the skies-The Velvet Underground, Iggy and The Stooges, The Troggs(!)- in gargantuan essays with the glee of Kerouac, and vilifies the artists who he feels are wrecking rock and roll with incisive precision, slaughtering sacred cows like Elvis, Elton John, James Taylor and John Lennon. Bangs clamors for the reckless spirit of rock to save humanity, who is sinking in a muck of pretentious hucksters and egotistical carnies masquerading as rockers. Lovingly compiled by Greil Marcus, we get to see some of Lester's more personal essays where he reveals much about his own troubled psyche and his attitude towrds what he did. The guy got banned from Rolling Stone for "disrespect to musicians"-how cool is that, to expose a so-called rock/revolution magazine for the establishment pig it truly is? All fans of noise and fire and unpredictablity in music need to read this onomatopoeia of the sound of rock and roll.

It's not a little ironic that Lester Bangs died in 1982, the year of the final (real) Clash album. Did passion in rock die the same year as passion in rock criticism?

The great thing about Bangs - much like the Clash - is that it's blatantly apparent in everything he does that he cares deeply and fundamentally about the power of music. He's not just doing this for the paycheck; he's doing it because even though he knows it's totally irrational, it really does matter to him. So you've got politics, humanity, compassion, wit, and some damn fine writing masquerading as "mere" rock n' roll reviews. There are loads of revelatory, eye-opening passages in here: the brilliant dissection of why the Stooges were an important rock band, the hilarious review of Lou Reed's unlistenable Metal Machine Music, the touching reflection on racism in punk, and of course, the 40 pages about the magic of touring England with the Clash. Only about half of the article is really about the Clash, but it doesn't matter. The other half is a sad and telling commentary on the very society bands like the Clash were supposedly raging against. Fantastic stuff, a real page-turner. You'll nearly be convinced that Count Five were a better band than Led Zeppelin.

Everyone who writes music reviews for a living should be required to read this. It's a shame he's not still with us, it would have been fascinating to hear his thoughts on rock in the 90's. Has this decade been another hideous rock drought akin to the one he condemns in the early and mid-70's?

I love Lester Bangs' unrestrained style: the passionate torrents of words, the extravagant metaphors and the unique insight. Above all, his contagious enthusiasm serves to drive one back to the music - to listen, enjoy and appreciate again and again.

Apparently this book does not contain all of his best work but I intensely enjoyed the tales of his various encounters with Lou Reed, the pieces on No Wave (Reasonable Guide To Horrible Noise), Peter Laughner, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, as well as his hilarious warnings against James Taylor and Barry White.

Just sometimes, he loses me when the writing becomes impenetrable and he goes off on too many tangents, as in pieces like "Fragments 1976 - 1982" and "Ten Post-Lib Role Models for the 80s" from the chapter titled Unpublishable. Where I do not agree with him, as in his (perhaps tongue-in-cheek?) endorsement of Reed's "Metal Machine Music," he still makes me laugh. Bangs would also have made a great novelist as is evident from the excerpt from Maggie May (1981).

To understand Lester and the background to this compilation, I recommend reading Jim DeRogatis' excellent biography "Let It Blurt" at the same time, as it also contains an impressive bibliography of his work and articles about him.

I look forward to more Big Bangs - more of his remarkable writings being made available in compilations.

A wonderful, extensive collection of writings by Lester Bangs, a great, dead rock critic from the 70's. During the decade he championed a range of socially-unacceptable bands, moving from Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground to Punk, and on to the New Wave, whilst simultaneously informing the public against such contemporary delights as Chicago, and James Taylor. As you turn the page you can see him change as a writer and as a person - originally writing in a sub-Beat jive-style he sharpens up as the decade wears on, and you feel sorry that he didn't live to see the rest of the 80's and the 90's. Quite what he would have made of grunge, MTV, Madonna, acid house, I don't know.

Unlike many other rock critics, Bangs gives the impression that he actually likes music, that he still has faith, and that he doesn't want to use rock writing as a vehicle for self-promotion. Coming off as an American John Peel, you can even forgive the casual racism of some of the earlier pieces, especially as he recants later on in the book. Not all of it works very well - some of the more freeform pieces make you realise why Editors exist, and a lot of the book depends on whether you share his philosophy on rock (basically, but not entirely - good music comes from the heart, even when it isn't 'good', and not necessarily the head).

Besides, any book with a whole chapter devoted to Lou Reed's legendary 'Metal Machine Music' is worth a read.

What can I say? He writes very well. Most of the selections are about music, all have at least SOMETHING to do with music. If you like wild stuff, Bangs points you in the right direction (Ever hear of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks? Lester has!). He has (for the most part) a very honest style, and if anything has a tendency to be a little over critical (not at all prone to hero worship, despite what a few of these other reviews say). This book is worth buying because it is FUN. Lester Bangs appreciates (for the most part) greasy 50's style rock and wild somewhat noisy styles (Free Jazz, proto-punk, experimental noise). 60's garage rock (songs like "Psychotic Reaction" and "Talk Talk") seem to be his ideal-I suppose because it draws on gut-bucket R'n'R as well as grungy noise. In these pages he rarely rambles, if ever. He does have a free form, or "gonzo" style, but that ain't the same thing-at least not usually. His honest-feeling style is most reminiscent of one of the other top writers of the 20th century, Mike Royko.

He has a few rare musical insights, and lists some of the wilder (and more obscure) stuff ever recorded, so this book is not just a history lesson or even a pleasant read-it is STILL VALID as a consumer guide, due to the recordings discussed as much as to the writer himself. How was Sgt Pepper, Les? What? You say it was ALRIGHT but far from great....but you'd rather tell me about the almost free form underground album "Godz 2" from that same year, huh? I bought Godz 2 based on his review, and he was right-it's cool stuff. The whole book works like that. Why read about the Beatles again anyway? We all know about them already.

Want an example? Look up "A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise", one of the articles in this book, on the net (it seems to be just about Lesters most popular piece today). That should give a good feel for the rest of the book. Be warned though-I found the whole thing to be somewhat pathological, so have a few others I know of----I mean this: once you read the book, you feel compelled to shell out 500 dollars finding all these recordings, and these lead to others-but it's still a fun addiction.

If you're a fan of rock'n'roll, you've got to read this. Although some of his pieces are quite absurd (and quite funny), Bangs has the ability to make every single word sound true and believable. After reading the piece on the Count Five, I searched all over the internet to find out about all these crazy records that they supposedly recorded. Of course, they only recorded one album, Psychotic Reactions, and records such as Cartesian Jetstream and Carburetor Dung don't exist, however much we wish they did. His piece on the Godz is entirely true however. Yes, there exists a song called "White Cat Heat" in which the band members are "yowling like a pack of alley cats in a fur-flying brawl." Bangs also have the ability to create highly moving pieces of work, such as his review of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and the piece titled John Contrane Lives. Add to that his great pieces on the Stooges and Lou Reed, and you've got one of the best books about music. Bangs was truly a gifted writer, and his early death was a great loss to all of us who love rock'n'roll.