or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
24 used & new from £4.58
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Five Star)
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

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

by Lester Bangs (Author), Greil Marcus (Author, Introduction)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.97 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £3.02 (30%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Thursday, November 12? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
17 new from £4.58 7 used from £4.61

Frequently Bought Together

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Five Star) + Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader + The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993
Price For All Three: £20.63

Show availability and shipping details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader

Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader

by Lester Bangs
5.0 out of 5 stars (2)  £5.99
The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993

by Iggy Pop
4.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £7.67
Mystery Train

Mystery Train

by Greil Marcus
5.0 out of 5 stars (3)  £7.99
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century

by Greil Marcus
3.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £8.42
Head On/Repossessed

Head On/Repossessed

by Julian Cope
5.0 out of 5 stars (21)  £6.47
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 420 pages
  • Publisher: Serpent's Tail; New Ed edition (2 Aug 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1852427485
  • ISBN-13: 978-1852427481
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 116,980 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Product Description

Before his death aged 33 in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, passionate pieces on Barry White, Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Lou Reed: 'I always wanted to emulate the most self-destructive bastard I could see, as long as he moved with some sense of style. Thus Lou Reed'. To his journalism, he brought the talent of a great fiction writer. As Greil Marcus writes in his introduction: 'What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews'


From the Back Cover

Collected work of Lester Bangs, the passionate, brilliant, and inspirational writer, who was immortalised in the film Almost Famous.

Psychotic Reactions collects Lester Bangs' most wired, passionate writing on legendary figures in music history, including Barry White, Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, and Lou Reed: 'I always wanted to emulate the most self-destructive bastard I could see, as long as he moved with some sense of style. Thus Lou Reed.'

To his writing he brought the talents of a great novelist and became one of the most celebrated writers in the history of music journalism. Immersed in the rock 'n' roll lifestyle about which he wrote, Bangs died tragically young in 1982 at the age of 33.

'Pure Bangs in full effect ... [He] wasn't the greatest ever rock critic because he split away, way beyond rock criticism. These are the places he went.' Uncut

'A superb collection ... Wild and funny and unpredictable. Lester Bangs was a great American writer who happened to write about rock 'n' roll.' Rolling Stone

'Bangs was one of the best writers ever to appear on newsprint ... When he died American culture lost one of its most astute, ornery, funniest and most soulful observers.' New York Times

'One of the most significant books ever written about music. 10/10.' Loaded

'A swaggering, scary, defiant, superhuman piece of writing.' Q

'A marvellous collection ... It will unquestionably teach you more about rock music and the appreciation thereof than a two-year subscription to all of the current British rock papers and mags.' Time Out

'Bangs created a grand philosophical gesture from the dynamics of fandom.' Wire

'One of life's great gurus.' Julian Cope

Lester Bangs started his career in music journalism as a record reviewer for Rolling Stone. He went on to write for and then edit the magazine Creem, before moving to New York and covering the burgeoning punk scene, writing in daily newspapers and the Village Voice.

See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

 (What's this?)
Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
 
(2)
(2)
(1)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Five Star)
84% buy the item featured on this page:
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Five Star) 4.5 out of 5 stars (4)
£6.97
Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader
8% buy
Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader 5.0 out of 5 stars (2)
£5.99
The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993
4% buy
The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)
£7.67
Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk, 1978-1984
2% buy
Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk, 1978-1984 4.6 out of 5 stars (18)
£5.49
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Master of Rock Writing in full swing!, 1 Mar 2002
By Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)   
I love Lester Bangs' unrestrained style: the passionate torrents of words, the extravagant metaphors and the keen 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.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars All hail the king of rock journalism, 6 Aug 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Psychotic Reactions and Carburettor Dung (Paperback)
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.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
5.0 out of 5 stars Lester Bangs is funny, and most of the time interesting., 12 Nov 2008
After many nights of heated discussion about music and the place of critics, I was given this book to read. As was intended, this selection of Lester Bangs' writings, taken from both published and unpublished material, opened a new vista of Critique as Art for me.

Bangs' writing is straight from the stream-of-thought school of Beat. Although he specialises in tangentially searing past his original point of any piece, or indeed sometimes coming nowhere near it in the first place (to the degree that it takes a few pages to work out what he is actually reviewing), he does it in style with imagination and wit. Although I quite like the breathless un-punctuated page-long ranting-past-the-point sentences, on the infrequent occasion Bangs' writing does get too thought-disordered for me to stomach; and he himself displays some insight into this, in one of his comments that he was "trying to be Bukowski".

However in short, Lester Bangs is funny, and most of the time interesting.

Although some of Bangs' writing might open up new perspectives on previously dismissed music, a cautionary word is that one mustn't take his opinion as anything to base your selection of music on. This is entertainment and as someone once said, "the critics have their audience too".
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars It's only rock and roll
As a reviewer I expect a weekly dose of Lester Bangs would have been entertaining. But a whole book of the stuff was a bit too much for this reader. Read more
Published on 10 Nov 1998

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 

   

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject










i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.