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I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.

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
Hate
Like
Clark
Stanley
Admit
Jazz
Playing
Whether

More quotes by Lester Bangs

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Sometimes I think nothing is simple but the feeling of pain.
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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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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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All the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the fifties or sixties, as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix.
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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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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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Style is originality fashion is fascism. The two are eternally and unalterably opposed.
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I've always believed the New Left is rank.
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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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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.
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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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All blues singers are great liars.
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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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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.
Lester Bangs
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I don't see that there are any particular changes in popular music.
Lester Bangs
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The whole point of American culture is to pick up any old piece of trash and make it shine with more facets than the Hope Diamond.
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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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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.
Lester Bangs