Rating: 
Summary: Motion the Seconds!
Review: Not to sell "Psychotic Reactions" short (perish the thought)--yes, I bought the first copy I saw; no, I'm not sorry yet; yes, I agree wholeheadedly about the section on the Clash....Kudos to "A reader" from Sandton, South Africa, and "lexo-2" from Dublin, who call for an additional volume, and "A reader from New York," who terms this selection "partially satisfying"; thumbs down on Art Turner's calling this a "definitive collection." If Robert Christgau's Consumer Guides for the '70s, '80s and '90s remain in book print, a complete collection of Lester's album reviews is decades overdue--as Christgau would undoubtedly be among the very first to agree. Even before Creem magazine, when Lester was still reviewing for Rolling Stone, he could make you want to run out & buy stuff you knew you'd hate; and when he turned his lights on something really good (e.g., Roxy Music's "Stranded"), the only reviewers who could compare with him were John Mendelsohn (another apt candidate for collection) and Patti Smith (who didn't write many reviews). Best would be a dictionary-scale tome subsuming his Creem photo captions, responses to reader letters, posthumous Hendrix interview, et alia. Honorable mention to "mhoran@snip.net" for observing that Bangs's "syntactical rhythms were those of R&B" and comparing his "cadences" to those of "the garage bands he loved." He lived too long, but I miss him too.
Rating: 
Summary: abstract
Review: part loathsome monologue of infantilsim AD NAUSEUM, irrelovant points off on the compose journalings,often POST BEFORE,it was fashionable,sheer genuine hallucinations ELVIS portait is stunning in it DECONSTRUCTIONINGS,merry merry stream of consciousness SOPHMORIC,naive pannings, some sommulist, adherence to structure of nineteenth century, hints of MELVILLE,descriptions HILLAROUS,, dont read the INTRODUCTION BY GRIEL marcus,! HE DOESNT GET IT,he never has never will,beyond him.THE WORSE OF THE VERY WORSE POMPUOUS TALKIN ABOUT the REAL IS CHEAP MYSTIFT BOLOGNA,BY A LOATHSOME hack wanna be, imrefering to the introduction burn it out rip it out dont read the INTRODUCTION IT WILL ruin it LESTER NEEDS NO CONTEXT .its lesters writings,,MAN>needs no restricture by clown dunce.
Rating:
Summary: Talented, But This Guy Needs An Editor
Review: Plus: If it weren't for Bangs bands like The Stooges and MC5 would've never gotten their due (actually, they still haven't). Minus: If it weren't for Bangs, Chuck Eddy the would be rock writer wouldn't exist. This guy is a great rock writer, that is when he actually sticks to that subject. Unfortunately, this guy goes off on more tangents than I care to mention, especially since quite frankly I don't care about his personal life but simply wanted to read about some great rock n' roll. This makes his book only partially satisfying. I'm sorry he's dead, but let's be honest, like Hendrix and Cobain his death has given him an untouchable mystique that makes him almost immune to criticism.
Rating: 
Summary: A dodgy selection of a great writer's work
Review: 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?
Rating:
Summary: No surprise
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: No surprise
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: READ THIS BOOK!
Review: The definitive collection of one of the twentieth century's greatest prose writers. Yoy owe it to yourself to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful!
Review: The title turned me off for a long time - I knew he'd been a rock critic for Creem, but thought he had used his fame to sell a book with dull ramblings about his life and car problems. It is intensely personal, all right, but always well worth reading. This is one of the few books that, during deep depressions, has made me want to be positive again, want to live through the pain, want to at least want to do those things, because of Lester's explanation of why he rejected "Please kill me" and all that despair stuff, no matter how much empathy he had for its proponents that allowed him to love and understand their music. I finally picked it up for the Clash essay, but love even the pieces on bands I've never heard of. If you're interested enough in any related subject to have found this review, _read it_!!
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating collection of ramblings
Review: The writing throughout this book is wonderfully entertaining, whether Bangs is serving up praise or hurling daggers, and the limited but vivid glimpse one gets of what Bangs was like as a person is equally interesting. If you buy this book for no other reason, you must read the description he gives of Iggy and The Stooges taunting bikers from the stage in a bar Bangs describes as "one livid wave of hate". It's as hilarious and frightening as rock has ever been.
Rating:
Summary: hilarious, insightful, puzzling, untouchable
Review: theres really nothing new to add to the other reviews of this, except to reiterate that this is a simply wonderful book. the bands i've been turned onto through this book! the modern lovers! the dictators! pere ubu! richard hell! the list goes on. worth purchasing if only for his 15 reasons why lou reeds hideous noise record "metal machine music" is the greatest album ever made (apparently his pet crab liked it alot). if you like rock and roll writings and dont own this book, you are a true dork.
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