Rating: 
Summary: excellent reviews that sometimes rambled
Review: This book contains some excellent reviews of early alternative music (Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Kraftwerk, etc.), but Lester Bangs has a tendency to go off on unrelated tangents that last for several pages. The racist and homophobic comments were also a little unpleasant (although he does apologize and admit his stupidity in a chapter towards the end), and the final section (rightly called "Unpublishable") is mostly just incoherent jibberish that can be skipped. Still, Mr. Bangs' articles on the bands (esp. The Clash) are top-notch (when they stick to the subject) and shouldn't be overlooked.
Rating: 
Summary: Honest, hilarious, and harrowing
Review: This book contains some of the finest rock journalism ever written. What it reveals about the man who wrote it is even more interesting. Every paragraph seems to have been slammed out by a guy vainly attempting to capture his love for music in words. This is worth owning for countless reasons but the absolutely hysterical account of Iggy and the Stooges playing for a room full of bikers would alone make this book a bargain.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I have ever read.
Review: This book is one of the best books, of any genre, that I have ever read. Bangs is hilarious, edgy, and intellectual, and he treats his reader with a degree of respect and intelligence not found in other authors. This is one of the few books I own which I can pick up, at any time, at any place, and read for hours on end. This book fits within my top tier of favorite books, along with the likes of Burroughs. A must read by anyone who considers music a serious form of expression.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning work by the best writer in Rock
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Generosity of spirit gleams at the center of the cyclone
Review: This book reads like an artifact recovered from an almost-unimaginably lost civilization - a place where rock'n'roll *meant* something, was something to fight for and something to cling to both. Everything between these covers is essential Lester, right down to the Romilar habit. It's all there, all the heart and all the goofiness - his legendarily catty bitchfests/"interviews" with bleached-out, smacked-out mid-70's Lou Reed, his endless paeans to "Metal Machine Music," and the ruthless honesty with which Lester dissected every hypocrisy in range, including his own racism and that he found festering in the downtown NYC postpunk scene circa '79-'80. Read this with an open heart - I think you'll find that contemporary pop music criticism is very thin stuff indeed in comparison. Bangs, you bastard, you are sorely missed. Greil Marcus does a spot-on editing job, incidentally, upping the signal-to-noise ratio substantially. And there's a short story by Bruce Sterling ("Dori Bangs") that hits just the right note.
Rating:
Summary: What can I say?
Review: This is without question the most important book in my life. A huge portion of my adolescence was spent clutching my mom's dog-eared copy, pouring over each essay, article, review, excerpt and rant again and again and again...Lester's explosive, visceral, hilarious style is well-documented, and it's part of what makes this tome so addictive. Ditto his incisive, unforgiving criticism--of culture and society and himself as much as music.
But the REAL story here is the man's soul. My life hasn't been much like Lester's at all (thankfully), and I count myself a more or less functional member of society who DOESN'T need to drink a half-gallon of wine and a handful of valiums just to stand being around people. But at the same time, I feel an incredible intellectual, emotional, and spiritual affinity for Lester--HE IS MY FRIEND, even though I never knew him, even though he died when I was all of 2 years old. Lester was an incredible person--a deeply troubled man, yes, but one with a much purer soul than any of the other cultural martyrs of the 20th century, living or dead (Burroughs, Ginsberg, Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, Keith Richards, Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious, Lou Reed, etc.). To read his work is to touch a tiny piece of that--because he wrote absolutely without compromise (which is why Jann Wenner didn't put up with him for long). I have felt moments of a similar understanding with other writers, but never this vividly.
Don't just buy this book. Buy it and keep it within arm's reach as often as possible. At once toweringly intelligent and frankly unpretentious; unflappably cool and openly vulnerable...I quite simply have never found another book like it, though the more recently compiled Main Lines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste is a worthy companion.
You may notice that almost none of this review seems to be about music, but trust me, it is. Lester will make you think of music as a part of everything we do, just as everything we do becomes a part of music.
Rating:
Summary: Singing the song of the soul
Review: Truth is stranger than fiction because reality precedes and includes imagination. What constitutes reality is unlimited and undefinable. Men of little imagination name and classify; the great ones are content to forego this game.Lester Bangs epitomises the hero-as-poet. Man's only real enemy is fear and all imaginative acts are inspired by the desire and unflinching resolve to conquer fear in whatever form it manifests itself. Lester Bangs inhabits reality. The purgatorial condition which prevails on earth is the caricature of the one and only reality; and it is because the poet-hero refuses to acknowledge any but the true reality that he is always vulnerable. Lester Bangs was an author who acted on his own authority, a man who fought for the good, the weak, the beautiful and the true in obedience to the dictates of his own conscience. The incarnation of man in his frailty battling against insuperable odds. What Lester teaches us is that the odds are not unsuperable, that the reality Lester tried to occupy, assert, establish and maintain is not at all a wishful reality but one which is ever present and only hidden by mans wilful blindness. The tenderness of Lester Bangs exudes from all pores. His harshest words are usually reserved for those whose work he considers spurious. Aside from those humourous diatribes you rarely find him passing judgement on others. What you do find is a laying bare of weakness and vulnerability in an effort to unmask our essential heroic nature. Lester's message is that you are heroic in the struggle to assert and uphold your own primal being. Once read wholeheartedly Lester can be returned to, returning you to your own life revivified. One accepts the uniqueness of the artist unreservedly, realising that it is only through one's uniqueness that one asserts his commoness. Though we don't know it we do possess the key to paradise. Using language as his instrument Lester demonstrates that it is not language at all but prayer. To paraphrase Dostoyevsky "To become a true human being is to become the brother of all men, a universal man..our future lies in our universality, not won by violence but by the strength derived from our great lonely ideal - the reuniting of all mankind". It is from silence that words are drawn and it is to silence that they return. In the interval something inexplicable takes place: a man who is dead resusitates himself, takes possession of you and in departing leaves you thoroughly altered. While on earth Lester Bangs was practising the song of his soul. His work remains to help us to perfect ours.
Rating:
Summary: A great read for anyone who loves rock music
Review: What amazed me about this book was the skill with which Lester Bangs articulates how it feels to love rock and roll.
His writing is funny and moving and personal. He writes about the 70's punk scene in a way that makes me wish I had
been there. Every time he writes about a record or song,
whether he likes it or not, I want to run out, find the record, and listen to it. High points for me were his accounts of interviewing Lou Reed and his reviews of a Barry White concert, Bowie's "Station to Station" and Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks".
Rating:
Summary: The best "music" book of the 20th century
Review: 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.
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