Reviews - Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

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Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

Lester Bangs was certainly an entertaining, great writer and I love his gonzo style. That said, I don't always respect his musical opinions but I'll defend to the death his right to write lines like "The Beatles were four yobs, or three yobs plus a librarian named Paul." His laser sharp observations plus a savage sense of humor make even the criticisms I disagree with hysterical and insightful reading. If only Bangs had survived to the internet era, he would have had the single most entertaining blog on the web.

ellestad's review against another edition

Not sure what to say about Bangs.

Never read Creem magazine. Like much of the same music he does.

On one hand, I find his writing is too derivative of Kerouac, Bukowski, and Burroughs to be truly compelling. On the other hand, it certainly is a compelling portrait of rock and roll and New York at a certain time.

The big question: Does anyone care this much or have this much invested in any music anymore let alone rock and roll? Or have the giant mega corporations truly co-opted both the music and the media?

lordslaw's review against another edition

4.0

He is at times self-indulgent, borderline racist, vulgar, and obscene; at other times he is self-aware, sympathetic, empathetic, prescient, and insightful. This is my first encounter with legendary rock-critic Lester Bangs. Although it sometimes reads like Bukowski Lite, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung is nevertheless a fascinating look, via a selection of essays and excerpts, of one human being's search for meaning and relevance through the medium of rock 'n' roll. There are hints in this book that the iconoclastic and self-aware Bangs, had he not died young, would have improved as a writer. Some of the material at the end of the book contains hints that Bangs was interested in cleaning up, trimming away some of the overindulgences in his writing, and honing and improving his talent even further. Entertaining, controversial, fascinating; a very good book.

jmy404's review against another edition

4.0

4 stars for the book as a whole. 5 stars for lester. what a writer. what a beautiful, genius, psychotic (haha) believer in the human race. he didn't write about music, he wrote around it. it's a wonderful thing when you meet a writer who makes you sad to finish the book. lester, i'll miss you forever. thank you for what you've done.

historysworstmonster's review against another edition

3.0

Lester Bangs IS a legendary rock critic, and his work is worth is worth collecting to be read, but the book's editor does him an injustice by including so much material. Especially the stuff that Bangs himself had yet to deem worthy of being published. On a personal note when there is no "What will happen next?" factor it's a little harder to pick it up.

cami19's review against another edition

2.0

lighthearted medium-paced

housebern's review

4.0

Ever year or so I return to this collection, primarily to re-read the Joycean Strand-walk of a rock record review that is Bangs' exegesis of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. It reminds me that criticism can be worthwhile, and that music is supposed to mean something. Bangs believed Astral Weeks to be a metaphysical Testament. At one point he writes:

What this is about is a whole set of verbal tics—although many are bodily as well—which are there for a reason enough to go a long way toward defining his style. They're all over Astral Weeks: four rushed repeats of the phrases "you breathe in, you breathe out" and "you turn around" in "Beside You"; in "Cyprus Abenue" twelve "way up on"s, "baby" sung out thirteen times in a row sounding like someone running ecstatically downhill toward one's love, and the heartbreaking way he stretches "one by one" in the third verse; most of all in "Madame George," where he sings the word "dry" and then "your eye" twenty times in a twirling melodic arc so beautiful it steals your own breath, and then this occurs: "And the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves to love the love that loves to love the love that loves."

The record—and Bangs' own examination of his reaction to that record—provide a startling moment of collusion with the young man's ecstatic release in the short story Araby from [b:Dubliners|11012|Dubliners (World's Classics)|James Joyce|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166394864s/11012.jpg|260248]:

I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: O love! O love! many times.

Here then, are the passions of all my passions combined. First, Bangs on Morrison:

Van Morrison is interested, obsessed with how much musical or verbal information he can compress into a small space, and, almost conversely, how far he can spread one note, word, sound, or picture. To capture one moment, be it a caress or a twitch. He repeats certain phrases to extremes that from anybody else would seem ridiculous, because he's waiting for a vision to unfold, trying as unobtrusively as possible to nudge it along.

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.