Lester Bangs, December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982.

With Debbie Harry. 1978 photo by Chris Stein.

I am also glad to be able to tell everybody that the Clash are solid Muppets fans. (They even asked me if I had connections to get them on the show.) Their fave rave is Kermit, a pretty conventional choice if y'ask me- I'm a Fozzie Bear man myself. That night as we were walking into the hall for the gig in Cardiff, Paul said "Hey, Lester, I just figured out why you like Fozzie Bear- the two of you look a lot alike!" And then he slaps me on the back.

Lester Bangs, The Clash

The world if Lester Bangs had gotten the Clash a guest episode on The Muppet Show:

"The makeup thing is just a style thing now, like platform shoes. If people have homosexuality in them, it won't necessarily involve makeup in the first place. You can't fake being gay, because being gay means you're going to have to suck cock, or get fucked. I think there's a very basic thing in a guy if he's straight where he's just going to say no: 'I'll act gay, I'll do this and I'll do that, but I can't do that.' Just like a gay person if they wanted to act straight and everything, but if you said, 'Okay, go ahead, go to bed with a girl,' they're going to have to get an erection first, and they can't do that. The notion that everybody's bisexual is a very popular line right now, but I think its validity is limited. I could say something like if in any way my album helps people decide who or what they are, then I will feel I have accomplished something in my life. But I don't feel that way at all. I don't think an album's gonna do anything. You can't listen to a record and say, 'Oh that really turned me onto gay life, I'm gonna be gay.' A lot of people will have one or two experiences, and that'll be it. Things may not change one iota. It's beyond the control of a straight person to turn gay at the age he'll probably be listening to any of his stuff or reading about it; he'll already be determined psychologically. It's like Franco said: 'Give me a child until he's seven and he's mine.' By the time a kid reaches puberty they've been determined. Guys walking around in makeup is just fun. Why shouldn't men be able to put on makeup and have fun like women have?"

- Lou Reed, 1973 from Lou Reed: A Deaf Mute in a Telephone Booth by Lester Bangs for Let It Rock

excuse me what

I just like people with some Looney Tune in their souls.

—Lester Bangs

Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom

The other night I drifted nice, continental drift divide, mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs

iykyk

This didn't come out quite the way I had hoped, but my motto for 2024 is "it doesn't have to be good, it just needs to exist."

12:30 - 3:30 start to finish

Original sketch

Lou acting stunned at Lester Bangs’ writeup in Cream.

“He’s been influenced a lot by The Band, his arrangements tend to take on a Van Morrison tinge every now and then, and he sort of catarrh-mumbles his ditties in a disgruntled mushmouth sorta like Robbie Robertson on Quaaludes with Dylan barfing down the back of his neck. It’s a tuff combination, but it’s only the beginning. Because what makes Bruce totally unique and cosmically surfeiting is his words. Hot damn, what a passel o’ verbiage!”

— Lester Bangs’ review of Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. for Rolling Stone, ‘73.

Swastikas in punk are basically another way for kids to get a rise out of their parents and maybe the press, both of whom deserve the irritation. To the extent that most of these spikedomes ever had a clue what the stuff originally meant, it only went so far as their intent to shock. "It's like a stance", as Ivan [Julian] says. "A real immature way of being dangerous." Maybe. Except that after a while this casual, even ironic embrace of the totems of bigotry crosses over into the real poison... Something harder to pass off entered the air in 1977, when I started encountering little zaps like this: I opened up a copy of a Florida punk fanzine called New Order and read an article by Miriam Linna of the Cramps, Nervus Rex, and now Zantees: “I love the Ramones [because] this is the celebration of everything American — everything teenaged and wonderful and white and urban…” You could say the “white” jumping out of that sentence was just like Ornette Coleman declaring This Is Our Music, except that the same issue featured a full-page shot of Miriam and one of her little friends posing proudly with their leathers and shades and a pistol in front of the headquarters of the United White People’s Party, under a sign bearing three flags: “GOD” (cross), “COUNTRY” (stars and stripes), “RACE” (swastika). Sorry, Miriam, I can go just so far with affectations of kneejerk cretinism before I puke.

Lester Bangs, The White Noise Supremacists

Read in June Part I

My money is on Lou.