From what I’ve read music critic Lester Bangs was a frustrated musician. I believe this is not an uncommon phenomenon. For every Patti Smith, David Thomas, and Chrissie Hynde who’s graduated from writing record reviews to writing records that get reviewed there must be a thousand frustrated rock critics. I’ve been told this even extends to music bloggers.
It had been years since I checked out the music of Lester Bangs. In fact, I’d forgotten that recordings of his music existed until I read the Joey Ramone memoir, I Slept With Joey Ramone, written by Joey’s brother, Mickey Leigh, who is a bit of a frustrated musician himself and who played in Bangs’ band for a while. I believe Leigh is the guitarist on this track. [NOTE: I was wrong about this belief.]
I found this track surprisingly strong. I still haven’t gone back to check out his other recordings, but had this been better recorded it would sit nicely alongside some of the jazz-poetry workouts of Patti Smith and a side 2 track from Pere Ubu‘s Dub Housing.
What do you think? Yourself excluded, who’s your favorite critic/frustrated musician?
tie Valania/Ed King
That’s funny. I thought Lester Bangs was a frustrated rock critic.
Someone, I forget who at the moment (but I think it was a rock critic), once wrote that most rock critics are frustrated *writers*, rather than frustrated musicians, stuck in the relative ghetto of pop music journalism. Just sayin’.
I’d go with Charles M. Young and George Tabb, who were both in the band Iron Prostate. Tabb later went on to form Furious George. Both of their main gigs were as music journalists.
I haven’t heard this track in a long time, even though I still have a mp3 of the single. Live is the B side, with Let It Blurt on the A.
I was thinking that it was very Voidoids. I looked it up on Discogs and the band is:
Bass – David Hofstra
Drums – Jay Dee Daugherty
Guitars – Jody Harris , Robert Quine
Vocals – Lester Bangs
And it was mixed by John Cale.
Nice lineup! That had to have helped.
Quine was the reason I bought ‘Let It Blurt’, more than Lester.
I don’t care what frustrated Lester. He was funny, and I’d love to see what he would have had to say about Bono these days (though by now he’d probably be bored with Bono). Lester is definitely the weak link in that chain for this song, though.
Lester will probably always be my favorite critic. I only like a few other ones, and kind of because I can figure out that if they hate something, I’ll like it. Or maybe it’s just if they like something, odds are good I’ll think it sucks. Robert Christgau comes to mind. I want to like the guy, but he goes on for pages about things I hate and has three sentences about things I love. Dave Marsh is entertaining, but sometimes I think he could try harder.
I like Lester’s protege, Jim DeRogatis. I like him because he listens to so much stuff. He’s trying hard to get you to listen to things you haven’t, or wouldn’t try to listen to.
I also like Bill at the I Rock Cleveland blog. Even when we disagree, at least I think he “gets it.” He turned me on to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyv4bPwUJws&feature=player_embedded
I don’t know if I’d watch it at work. But it’s pretty good, and the creep factor seems to be in good fun.