if lester bangs was a mogger
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in my current re-obsession with van morrison's achingly beautiful "astral weeks", due to it's vinyl re-release, i stumbled upon this beautifully written piece by THE lester bangs, rock critique, life liver, extraordinaire....
http://personal.cis.strath.ac.uk/~murray/astral.html
i must go to madison square garden in feb where van the man will play the album live.
Comments (9)
I've always thought this was the greatest passage of Lester's many great passages:
"If you accept for even a moment the idea that each human life is as precious and delicate as a snowflake and then you look at a wino in a doorway, you've got to hurt until you feel like a sponge for all those other assholes' problems, until you feel like an asshole yourself, so you draw all the appropriate lines. You stop feeling. But you know that then you begin to die. So you tussle with yourself. how much of this horror can I actually allow myself to think about? Perhaps the numbest mannekin is wiser than somebody who only allows their sensitivity to drive them to destroy everything they touch - but then again, to tilt Madame George's hat a hair, just to recognize that that person exists, just to touch his cheek and then probably expire because the realization that you must share the world with him is ultimately unbearable is to only go the first mile. The realization of living is just about that low and that exalted and that unbearable and that sought-after. Please come back and leave me alone. But when we're alone together we can talk all we want about the universality of this abyss: it doesn't make any difference, the highest only meets the lowest for some lying succor, UNICEF to relatives, so you scratch and spit and curse in violent resignation at the strict fact that there is absolutely nothing you can do but finally reject anyone in greater pain than you. At such a moment, another breath is treason. that's why you leave your liberal causes, leave suffering humanity to die in worse squalor than they knew before you happened along. You got their hopes up. Which makes you viler than the most scrofulous carrion. viler than the ignorant boys who would take Madame George for a couple of cigarettes. because you have committed the crime of knowledge, and thereby not only walked past or over someone you knew to be suffering, but also violated their privacy, the last possession of the dispossessed."
geez. i think he could have used some of 'the power of now"
If Lester Bangs was a MOGger...he'd be a metaphysical marvel - even more than he was when he was alive.
Lester Bangs was the beginning of it all for me.
His writing at Cream magazine is legendary.
You can get that Van Morrison piece and many others in his book:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_0_12?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=lester+bangs+psychotic+reactions+and+carburetor+dung&sprefix=lester+bangs
Oh, yeah - I once jammed with the man on stage
;-)
If he was a MOGger the length of a page wouldn't be long enough for one of his posts.
Funny how we forget Lester's sensitive understanding of works like Astral Weeks in the noise surrounding his love for The Stooges and other rockers.
with all its talk of suffering, that passage masoo posted is more like
"if buddha was a rock journalist"
i was hoping to catch him out in LA this past fall doing Astral Weeks at the Hollywood Bowl, but missed it
the garden somehow seems less magical for this perfect record
wow...one of my fave alll time albums..i had no idea this was going down. get me a ticket. i will definately join you! we can meet up an grab a few club sodas before the show.
yummm, club soda
loved the man