Open Letter to Lester Bangs

what are you talking about?  you said exactly nothing in this piece, seriously and truly nothing.  talk about a self indulgent and long winded piece of bullshit.  oh boo hoo Bono and Ozzy suck now and Iggy sucks now.  of course they do.  American Idol is the modern day Monkeys, no shit.  there’s stuff that’s going on right now that’s just as exciting and great as when Bangs was writing, it’s your job to find it.  you’re the music writer remember?  if all you have to say is how soulless and corporate and neutered everything is (which it is), then I suggest you abandon this demented hypocrisy you call journalism and look for honest work.

Comment by kid fitness from NYC — April 30, 2007 @ 10:04 am

Uh, kid fitness, I think you’re kinda missing the point.  This was a bit of humorous satire written in Lester Bangs style.

Comment by Steve from NYC — April 30, 2007 @ 11:11 am

Cool article and all, but did you have to end it with the “Kids Aren’t Alright” snipe? It smacks of ageism and makes it sound like nobody under the age of 30(5?) has the intellect to resist being sucked into the dual cults MTV or American Idol…

Comment by Neo_Vincent — April 30, 2007 @ 12:56 pm

If this article is considered satire then I’ve been living with the wrong definition of what satire. If this article is satire, then one can assume satire has come to mean cheap imitation devoid of any original thought or substance.

Lester Bangs would be ashamed.

Comment by Jay — April 30, 2007 @ 1:24 pm

well then it’s an even bigger waste of time, if all it was was a cheap ape of Bang’s style with hackeneyed critiques of what’s wrong today....then again I say: you said nothing with this article.  don’t waste our time.

Comment by kid fitness from NYC — April 30, 2007 @ 3:13 pm

Didn’t Lester hate the MC5? And the Stones? And Bowie?

Besides, there’s not a single ‘revelation’ here that would have surprised Bangs.  He had a habit of knowing what would happen next.

Comment by tyler — April 30, 2007 @ 5:50 pm

This article was a waste of time. Everybody knows the majority of the music industry is going to shit (artists and mags). Yet, there is promise, but certainly not in the “wannabe young again” Iggy Pop (last time I checked he had starred in a Nickelodeon movie). You sound just as outdated as everyone you’re writing about. There’s good music, just open your ears.

Comment by Mark — April 30, 2007 @ 8:18 pm

Said like someone who truly doesn’t know what’s going on.

Comment by matt — April 30, 2007 @ 9:10 pm

When I was a junior in high school I wound up in the hospital, and when I was recovering a friend stopped by with a gift—an entire box of Creem magazines from the 1970s. So I got to read Lester Bangs’ work in its original context along with the many letters to the editor he received.

Although Bangs is rightfully lauded now, he drew a LOT of angry responses from readers because he said brutal things people didn’t really want to hear. His piece on the wilting careers of the solo Beatles, for example, was hilariously cruel but in retrospect it now seems right on the mark. And if he didn’t say it, well, no one else would have had the guts.

So it looks like this piece has, in fact, carried on Bangs’ tradition by inspiring people to get really angry. Good to see Lester remembered. I sure haven’t forgotten him. I just wish I had kept all those old mags, because my buddy told me his mother later threw them all out!!

Comment by Tony S — May 1, 2007 @ 4:03 am

Adam,
a lot of cry-baby cynicism going on in a loose fitting Lester Bangs t-shirt. If there is one thing more cliche than saying the old days were good old days, it’s saying that rock and roll is dead.
Get yourself a metrocard and get out of your office/box/mountain dew bottle.  Get your head out of the industry and on to the music.
i hope you find something worth living for.
C. Linton

Comment by C.Linton from South Korea — May 4, 2007 @ 7:41 pm