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When kids can't afford to see it anymore maybe we'll have a whole resurgence of garage bands all over America and this New Wave thing will start to mean something on a grass roots level.

Lester Bangs

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Lester Bangs
Age: 33 †
Born: 1948
Born: December 13
Died: 1982
Died: April 30
Journalist
Music Critic
Musician
Writer
Escondido
California
Mean
Band
Resurgence
Thing
Level
Garage
Something
Levels
Bands
Maybe
Afford
Start
Grass
Kids
Wave
America
Anymore
Whole
Roots

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Rock is for everybody it should be so implicitly anti-elitist that the question of whether somebody's qualified to perform it should never even arise.
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Or like in the early 70's when we had the reaction against acid rock and all the fuzz tone, and feedback, and the noise. And you had James Taylor and everyone went acoustic and that.
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I'm really schizophrenic about that, because on the one hand I would say, yes there is, there's something inherently, even violent about it, it's wild and raw and all this.
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Sometimes I think nothing is simple but the feeling of pain.
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The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there's precious little to be seen.
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. . . rock and roll, as I see it, is the ultimate populist art form, democracy in action, because it's true: anybody can do it.
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The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.
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Realizing that life is precious the natural tendency is to trample on it, like laughing at a funeral.
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I've always believed the New Left is rank.
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The great thing about The Clash of course is that they keep searching for answers beyond that.
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All blues singers are great liars.
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A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own.
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Rock'n'roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock'n'roll, or a movie can be rock'n'roll. It's a way of living your life.
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Style is originality fashion is fascism. The two are eternally and unalterably opposed.
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The thing is that, they all had real strong personalities and real distinct identities, and I don't find most of the groups that are coming out now really do.
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The real question is what to live for. And I can't answer it. Except another one of your records. And another chance for me to write. Art for art's sake, corny as that sounds.
Lester Bangs
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Don’t ask me why I obsessively look to rock ’n’ roll bands for some kind of model for a better society. I guess it’s just that I glimpsed something beautiful in a flashbulb moment once, and perhaps mistaking it for prophecy have been seeking its fulfillment ever since.
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I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.
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The only questions worth asking today are whether humans are going to have any emotions tomorrow, and what the quality of life will be if the answer is no.
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Personally I feel that real rock 'n' roll may be on the way out, just like adolescence as a relatively innocent transitional period is on the way out. What we have instead is a small island of new free music surrounded by some good reworkings of past idioms and a vast sargasso sea of absolute garbage.
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