lowquality.net

I know it might be kind of a hipster thing to idolize Lester Bangs, but I really wish there were more critics in our time that found fault with the current state of rock and roll and could express their feelings as eloquently as he did in a time that many regard as the greatest span rock and roll ever experienced. If he’d lived into the 90’s I’m sure he would have died of boredom.

In this quotation, Lester is commenting on an incident that occurred where someone in his audience threw a pie at Alice Cooper during a performance and rather than freak out and go “Axl Rose” on someone he proceeded to mash the pie into his face and mock himself.

From a lester bangs article, circa 1970

“The point … is not to elicit sympathy for Alice Cooper, but rather to point out that in a way Alice Cooper is better than Ritche Havens (even though both make dull music) because at least with Alice Cooper you have the prerogative to express your reaction to his show in a creative way. Most rock stars have their audiences so cowed it’s nauseating. What blessed justice it would be if all rock stars had to contend with what A.C. elicits, if it became a common practice and method of passing judgement for audiences to regularly fling pies in the faces of performers who they thought were coming on with a load of bullshit. Because the top rockers have a mythic aura around them, “the superstar,” and that’s a basically unhealthy state of things, in fact it’s the very virus that’s fucking up rock, a subspecies of the virus I spoke of earlier which infests “our” culture from popstars to politics (imagine throwing a pie in the face of Eldridge Cleaver! Joan Baez!), and which the Stooges uncategorically oppose as an advance platoon in the nearing war to clear conned narcoleptic mindscreens of the earth, eventually liberating us all from basically uncreative lifestyles in which people often lacking half the talent or personality or charisma of you or I are elevated into godlike positions. Pure pomp and circumstance.”