I came across a book of Lester Bang's reviews and musings on rock in general, and my impression is fairly positive (by which I suppose I mean that I can relate to most of his views, and that his writing of a good quality; or something along these lines). I only became aware of this legendary critic through his praise of VU, specifically White Light/White Heat, and at the time it struck me that he was the sort of person who'd embrace the rawer sounds of say the Stooges and the Ramones, but reject new friends like Eno. After all, I remember hearing WL/WH and thinking it to be near unbearable - I still can't believe I sat through all of "Sister Ray"...painful! It was of course quite rash of me to make such judgements, for he seems to like them all with equal discretion; Another Green World he says is too "becalmed", but he still digs it. I also thought that he'd be another vitriolic Doors-hater, judging by the exchange in Almost Famous (where Morrison is called a "drunken buffoon"), but his view is far more measured (though Morrison's still a "Dionysian bozo"!), and in fact about as close to my own view as I've seen.

He doesn't always read my mind though, as with his scathing review of Desire. As I have mellowed, I have to come to see the merits in such criticisms of later Dylan efforts, regardless of my own sentimental attachments (Desire was the first Dylan album I heard, doncha know). I've read before critique of Dylan's idealization in "Joey" and "Hurricane", and I don't doubt the validity of such arguments. But it strikes me also that there are..different ways to view things? My way of listening and appreciating Desire was cemented four years ago, and I doubt very much it will change now, no matter how persuasive the writing is. I suppose when I listened to "Hurricane" all those years ago, what I was drawn to was the passion and anger that I felt the song conveyed - the story was put across (I thought) effectively, with a truly moody violin providing quite an atypical sound for a Dylan album (at that stage of course, I had no idea what a typical Dylan sound was). Having said this, I do of course confess that such a thing is not alway enough to obviate onesself from responsibility; after all, writing convincingly does not mean one can write about anything, true or false! But like I said, my view has already been cemented, and that view (unfortunately) totally disregards the points made by critics of the song. In some sense, it does not bode well, for it is a very severe case of close-mindedness! Of course with such matters, it does not matter all that much, and indeed even if it did, this is one of those things where I simply don't care. With this made perfectly clear, it's probably a very good thing that there aren't more people like me, the world would be far too messed up to be remotely functional.

Oh, right, I was talking about Lester Bangs - well, another thing I found interesting was that he also predicted the death of rock circa '76, a bold statement to make, but it's easy to see such a motivation. He was a little premature (but I have the gift of hindsight!), but I guess that's the stage when most of the rockers from the golden age started showing signs of being jaded. Of course, it was also the start of the punk-rock movement, and I'm interested as to what Bangs thought about it. John Peel certainly took to it, I believe in fact going so far as to call The Fall the best band he'd ever heard (it's strange to think that the same person could lend his voice to Tyrannosaurus Rex's "Romany Soup" back in '69, ain't it!!). The Fall, now there's a crafty bunch. I'm interested in their catalogue, but frankly I'm a little scared - this is the problem with reading one too many reviews without listening to anything, they can create these outlandish (sometimes garish) images of things that are completely far from the truth (or, at least, from one's personal reaction to something). I'd wager that by this time next year I'd have acquired (probably through fraternal means) one of the 40-odd albums Mark E. Smith put his name to, so let us see what time makes of this curious band; with such high praise, they're bound to disappoint at least a little (or maybe not!?).

Again I am drawn to George Starostin's essay about rock being dead, and whether or not it matters; considering it was written six or so years ago, where (presuming the lack of inclusion on the site implies lack of listening to said artist; which may be flawed) he hadn't heard a fair amount of post '60s material that's now featured on his site, so I wonder whether his views have changed. I suspect that he might have changed his view a little, to the extent of admitting that rock did have a few tricks up its sleeve in the late '70s (he sure loves Before And After Science!), but I think he'd still be pretty adamant about rock being dead; not that I can blame him. Dead, of course, meaning not that every melody in the world has been used up, or every chord change or what have you, but rather the broader ideas surrounding rock. I don't think that rock is necessarily dead, but it's probably dying (this whole area is rather subjective, because one would have to properly define what innovation really means in this context). I think that I fall into the camp of "Well, rock may be dying, but it doesn't matter..too much", in that I can deal with the fact that most artists today aren't bravely ploughing ahead into unchartered waters. For instance, Cave (really the only post-1980 artist I'm moderately familiar with) may not have produced any sort of true innovation since his Birthday Party days, but these things don't seem to matter all that much to me. I don't think George necessarily disagrees that there is still good music being made, rather it's that this music is not providing something that hasn't been done before, only in a slightly tweaked way. All I can hope for is that I don't run out of interesting artists in my lifetime - though it seems like "the future's uncertain and the end is always near"!