Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Five Star) [Paperback]

This is a compelling, though in places quite challenging, compilation of Bangs' articles for Creem magazine, The Village Voice and other publications throughout the 70s and early 80s. His style of writing was almost like the music he reviewed, at times in short and punchy riffs, in other articles going off on extemporised sequences where he expresses himself using incoherent hippy jive language straight from the streets. He confesses to writing one article for 12 straight hours and you can feel it in the language, like it was written on amphetamines so he could finish it to deadline. Although, like most rock journalists he was prone to hyperbole in his assessments of major artists and their records there is a lot of intelligent and astute observation about the rock business in this book. The chapters on his love hate relationship with, and searing criticism of, Lou Reed provide the most humorous sequences for me. For example, Bangs interviews Reed in his hotel room with a transexual and observes " ...it was almost unmistakably a guy. Except that behind its see thru blouse, it seemed to have tits. Or something. It was beyond light and shade. It was grotesque. Not only grotesque, it was abject, like something that might have grovelingly scampered in when Lou opened the door to get the milk and papers in the morning". Bangs is also capable of endearingly irreverent wit, for example describing Barry White as "nineteen pounds of pure lumbering animal who makes Leslie West look like Steven Tyler". Indeed his article on Barry White's schmoozy stage show is so close to the bone its stone cold brilliant. Now and again he also throws out a few life affirming profundities such as "we're all stuck on this often miserable earth where life is essentially tragic, but there are glints of beauty and bedrock joy that come shining through from time to time to remind anybody that there is something higher than ourselves. And I am not taking about putrefying gods but about a sense of wonder about life itself...". Finally my other favourite passage is in an article on John Lennon where he writes "The Beatles did lead but they led with a wink. They may have been more popular than Jesus but I don't think they wanted to be the world's religion. That would have cheapened and rendered tawdry what was special..."

If you like your rock journalists to be more out-there than the so-called stars that they write about, then read Lester Bangs. By turns abusive, reverent, irreverent, witty, humane and incisive, this man was the greatest rock hack of them all. This collection is a must-read, and the arrangement of the articles gives the reader the sense that Bangs was growing up, but was not losing the plot by any means. It's a sad loss that he is not still with us. Read this book, feel your enthusiasm for music be rekindled and then go and tell all your friends about it. Brilliant.

This is some of the best writing about music, if not THE best, compiled in one essential volume. Bangs is funny, wise and incredibly perceptive about the music he loves. Even if you don't agree with him, his passion is infectious. The Lou Reed sections of this book are especially good, but the quality of writing throughout this anthology remains very, very high. There's a vital insight and something to make you laugh on every single page.