Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung PDF Author: Lester Bangs
Publisher: Serpent's Tail
ISBN: 1847655580
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism he brought the talent of a great a renegade Beat poet, and his essays, reviews and scattered notes convey the electric thrill of a music junky indulging the habit of a lifetime. As Greil Marcus writes in his introduction, 'What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews.'

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung PDF Author: Lester Bangs
Publisher: Serpent's Tail
ISBN: 1847655580
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book Here

Book Description
Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism he brought the talent of a great a renegade Beat poet, and his essays, reviews and scattered notes convey the electric thrill of a music junky indulging the habit of a lifetime. As Greil Marcus writes in his introduction, 'What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews.'

Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste

Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste PDF Author: Lester Bangs
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 030748789X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
Before his untimely death in 1982, Lester Bangs was inarguably the most influential critic of rock and roll. Writing in hyper-intelligent Benzedrine prose that calls to mind Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, he eschewed all conventional thinking as he discussed everything from Black Sabbath being the first truly Catholic band to Anne Murray’s smoldering sexuality. In Mainlines, Blood Feasts, Bad Taste fellow rock critic John Morthland has compiled a companion volume to Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, the first, now classic collection of Bangs’s work. Here are excerpts from an autobiographical piece Bangs wrote as a teenager, travel essays, and, of course, the music pieces, essays, and criticism covering everything from titans like Miles Davis, Lou Reed, and the Rolling Stones to esoteric musicians like Brian Eno and Captain Beefheart. Singularly entertaining, this book is an absolute must for anyone interested in the history of rock.

Let it Blurt

Let it Blurt PDF Author: Jim DeRogatis
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307487407
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Let It Blurt is the raucous and righteous biography of Lester Bangs (1949-82)--the gonzo journalist, gutter poet, and romantic visionary of rock criticism. No writer on rock 'n' roll ever lived harder or wrote better--more passionately, more compellingly, more penetratingly. He lived the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, guzzling booze and Romilar like water, matching its energy in prose that erupted from the pages of Rolling Stone, Creem, and The Village Voice. Bangs agitated in the seventies for sounds that were harsher, louder, more electric, and more alive, in the course of which he charted and defined the aesthetics of heavy metal and punk. He was treated as a peer by such brash visionaries as Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Captain Beefheart, The Clash, Debbie Harry, and other luminaries. Let It Blurt is a scrupulously researched account of Lester Bangs's fascinating (if often tawdry and unappetizing) life story, as well as a window on rock criticism and rock culture in their most turbulent and creative years. It includes a never-before-published piece by Bangs, the hilarious "How to Be a Rock Critic," in which he reveals the secrets of his dubious, freeloading trade.

Attack of the Killer Facts!

Attack of the Killer Facts! PDF Author: Eric Gryzymkowski
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1440525390
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Factoid Attack: Inherent sadistic streak in dentists confirmed! The electric chair was invented by a dentist, Dr. Alfred Southwick. Not surprising, dentists have been perfecting torture devices for centuries. Factoid Attack: Galaxy at risk! Intelligent life in short supply! In 1961, Astronomer Frank Drake estimated the number of probable intelligent civilizations inhabiting our galaxy. Using conservative numbers, that estimate came to 10,000. Unfortunately, we are not included in that total. Factoid Attack: Colorblind bulls hate all matadors equally! The color of a matador's cape, or muleta, is traditionally red, which is widely believed to irritate the bull. In reality, bulls are colorblind, so it is irrelevant what color cape a matador uses to antagonize them. Shot in the dark, but maybe it's the being stabbed with swords bit that pisses them off. Forget Fringe, Warehouse 13, and The X-Files. In this book, you'll find more weird and wacko truths than in all those combined. From golden poison dart frogs with enough venom to kill ten grown humans to cockroaches that can survive radiation 15 times stronger than what kills people, scary and strange just got scarier—and stranger!

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic PDF Author: Jessica Hopper
Publisher: Featherproof Books
ISBN: 0983186367
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Jessica Hopper's music criticism has earned her a reputation as a firebrand, a keen observer and fearless critic not just of music but the culture around it. With this volume spanning from her punk fanzine roots to her landmark piece on R. Kelly's past, The First Collection leaves no doubt why The New York Times has called Hopper's work "influential." Not merely a selection of two decades of Hopper's most engaging, thoughtful, and humorous writing, this book documents the last 20 years of American music making and the shifting landscape of music consumption. The book journeys through the truths of Riot Grrrl's empowering insurgence, decamps to Gary, IN, on the eve of Michael Jackson's death, explodes the grunge-era mythologies of Nirvana and Courtney Love, and examines emo's rise. Through this vast range of album reviews, essays, columns, interviews, and oral histories, Hopper chronicles what it is to be truly obsessed with music. The pieces in The First Collection send us digging deep into our record collections, searching to re-hear what we loved and hated, makes us reconsider the art, trash, and politics Hopper illuminates, helping us to make sense of what matters to us most.

Pickle in the Middle Murder

Pickle in the Middle Murder PDF Author: Jessie Chandler
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 0738725986
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Privy to Murder Shay O’Hanlon never knew the Minnesota Renaissance Festival was such a strange and bawdy event until JT Bordeaux—her badge-wearing, medieval-loving girlfriend—drags her along for a visit. The sixteenth-century faire is full of thrilling jousts, feisty wenches, and pickle vendors showing off their tasty tonsil ticklers, but Shay is distracted by the call of her full bladder. While trying to rein in her newest dog’s overactive nose, she finds a dead body with a pickle stuffed in his mouth. A real dead body. In the privy. And before Shay can shout “Huzzah!” JT is arrested for being the porta-potty body’s murderer. Together with her quirky crew of caper-solving pals, Shay must scramble for clues to free JT from the clink . . . and her troubled past.

Elephant Story

Elephant Story PDF Author: Les Harding
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476655383
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
The newspapers called him "Overshadowing Monarch Mastodon," "Behemoth of Holy Writ" and "Prodigious Mountain." He was the main event at the greatest show on earth: Jumbo, at around 6-1/2 tons and almost 12 feet tall, the biggest elephant anyone had ever seen. Jumbo's mere presence in the Barnum, Bailey and Hutchinson circus guaranteed an additional $3,000 a day in box office receipts. More of an exhibit than a performer, Jumbo was simply paraded around the three rings. But still the people came, just to marvel at the size of this monster pachyderm. This work traces Jumbo's capture in East Africa, his life in the London Zoo, the controversy over his sale for $10,000 to American showman P.T. Barnum, his journey across the Atlantic, his life as the most famous attraction in Barnum's circus, and his tragic death in a railway accident in Canada in 1885.

Give the Anarchist a Cigarette

Give the Anarchist a Cigarette PDF Author: Mick Farren
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446412482
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Through a long and chequered career, Mick Farren has functioned as a writer, poet, rock star, recording artist, rabble-rouser, critic and commentator, and even won a protracted obscenity trial at the Old Bailey. After resisting the idea for a long time, he has finally written his own highly personal and insightful account of the British counterculture in the 1960s and '70s, from the perspective of one who was right there in the thick of it. With a continuing and unashamed commitment to the tradition of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, he recounts a rollercoaster odyssey - sometimes violent and often hilarious - from early beatnik adventures in Ladbroke Grove, through the flowering hippies to the snarl of punk. He gives a firsthand, insider's account of the chaos, disorder and raging excess of those two highly excessive decades. At the centre of the book is Farren's career in the underground, as the man on the door at the UFO club, driving spirit at IT and, of course, lead singer with the Social Deviants. He describes his encounters with the celebrated and the notorious, who range from Jimi Hendrix and Germaine Greer to Julie Burchill and Sid Vicious, and concludes that the pop history of bohemian culture does not neatly divide itself into easy decades, but continues to this day, perhaps in different guises, but frequently with the same goals and motivations.

Mystery Train

Mystery Train PDF Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110166164X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1525

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Book Description
Now Available as an eBook Catch a train to the heart of rock ‘n’ roll with this essential study of the quintessential American art form. First published in 1975, Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train remains a benchmark study of rock ‘n’ roll and a classic in the field of music criticism. Focusing on six key artists--Robert Johnson, Harmonica Frank, Randy Newman, the Band, Sly Stone, and Elvis Presley--Marcus explores the evolution and impact of rock ‘n’ roll and its unique place in American culture. This sixth edition of Mystery Train includes an updated and rewritten Notes and Discographies section, exploring the evolution and continuing impact of the recordings featured in the book.

The Dark Stuff

The Dark Stuff PDF Author: Nick Kent
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0786730749
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Rock journalism on: Brian Wilson, Guns' N' Roses, Roky Erickson, The New York Dolls, Sid Vicious, Roy Orbison, Elvis Costello, The Smiths, Neil Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Miles Davis, The Pogues, Lou Reed, Syd Barrett, The Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain