Lester Bangs Lives

Many years ago, I thought of it as a title for a radio show. Lester Bangs, if you don’t know, was a writer mostly known for his rock criticism published in Rolling Stone, Creem Magazine, and The Village Voice. I picked up a copy of Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste on a whim and fell in love.

I was in grad school at the time, trying to sort out my relationship to the violin and classical music, and was discovering that rock critics write about music in a way that resonates with me. Writing on classical music tends to focus on the compositional structure of a piece, its historical and biographical context, and the appraisal of performances. These are all (or at least can be) relevant components but there are missing pieces here—what about the experience of the listener, the performers, the composer? What, for instance, does the music make them feel or remind them of? Where does it take them? And what is the concert experience like?

Lester Bangs Lives on Substack.