Lester Bangs
Whether Lester Bangs loved or (much more often) despised a record, he wouldn't merely calculate its merits against its flaws and issue a grade. He'd shout his opinion from the rooftops, often spraying so much vitriol it was hard to imagine the target of his wrath wanting to make a peep ever again. He was the ultimate contrarian, referring to Lou Reed's contractual-obligation noisefest Metal Machine Music as "the greatest album ever made." But the man's passion was a rare thing, sorely missing in these days of sponsored blurbage and back-scratching infotainment.
Lester Bangs died in 1982 at the age of 33. But he left behind a compelling body of work (anthologized in such collections as Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung and chronicled in the biography Let It Blurt). He's been mentioned in songs by R.E.M., The Ramones, The Buzzcocks and Bob Seger, among numerous others. Philip Seymour Hoffman played him in Almost Famous. Many of his colleagues consider him the greatest rock critic of all time; most consider him the one true artist in the history of his profession.
And even if you don't care what he thought about the Velvet Underground or Black Sabbath or Van Morrison, we think wearing this shirt is a nice way to remind our "leaders," in this tiresome political season, what we're supposed to be all about. That's the spirit of Lester.
|
Lester Bangs T-Shirts
|
|
|
