Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [164]
The Gun Club: dull attempt to punk Robert Johnson blues.
The Blasters: in every song you immediately recognize where
they stole the riffs, and most of them were stolen from Top
Ten hits of the Fifties.
I recently appeared on a radio show with critic Robert Christgau and critic/DJ Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman of Manhattan r&b station WLIB-AM. I told Pablo: “Black music has no soul anymore. You know it's true! I just figured you’d appreciate a white person coming on here and telling you. It doesn’t have one iota more passion than all that New Wave garbage Christgau writes about. Do you really listen to it?”
Christgau says: “I don’t consider intense emotionalism a valid criterion by which to judge music.” (He had just finished saying: “I think there's more good records out now than ever!”)
Pablo says: “Well, I went to a couple of concerts recently that I thought were really moving.”
“Who was that?”
“Kraftwerk and Devo.”
I was flabbergasted. What do you say to something like that?
“It was beautiful,” he said, “to see all those black and white kids getting together like that.” (Notice he didn’t say the music did anything to him.)
“Yeah,” I said, recovering, “that's because both races wanna be robots. Devo are just a bunch of wormy little wimps who think if they get rid of their personalities their neuroses will go too. And everybody knows it's been downhill for Kraftwerk since Autobahn—though “Showroom Dummies” was good. Did you see all those idiots in those discos dancing to that song? ‘Ve are show-room dahmmies, showroom dummies.’ ‘Yeah, that's me!’ ”
He brightened. “Yeah, okay, that's what we wanted: some of that Lester Bangs controversy!”
I asked my friend James Marshall if he thought the current dismal state of music was likely to improve. “No,” he said. “It's got to get worse, because everybody's into their own thing and doesn’t wanna know. Pretty soon every band will have no more than three fans, and nobody will even have any friends. Then after that you’ll start resenting the other guy because he likes the same thing you like: it's your turf! How dare he encroach? So then people will start killing each other for appropriating each other's musical tastes and thus infringing on the neighbor's hipness space. How can you be smug about being the only person in the world cool enough to appreciate some piece of New Wave shit, or a blues band or arcane jazz artist for that matter, if you find out somebody else likes it? Don’t dare tell ‘em! Don’t even tell your wife or girlfriend! Keep it safe inside your Walkman!”
Music and Sound Output, July/August 1982
An Instant Fan's
Inspired Notes:
You Gotta Listen
Hi there. Right now I bet I can read your mind. You’re standing there holding this album, your curiosity perhaps mildly piqued, but wondering (and probably more dubious than not) whether an album as off-the-wall as this one appears to be might actually be a worthwhile addition to your collection that you’d play often because you actually liked to listen to it, just like a lot of rock or jazz albums or anything else. I know, because I’ve been in the same position so many times, and I’m actually sick of all the dreams I keep having about it. The alternative outcome of course, would be that you just paid hard-earned money for some oddball novelty item that might be good for one play, maybe, another at Christmas when the relatives are over, a couple lame Nazi jokes and then “Get it off!”
Most records, as we know all too well, aren’t worth the vinyl they’re stamped in. Who the hell wants a bunch of by-now-probably-dead Germans from the mid-1920's singing harmonies that’re some weirdo combination of music hall, rathskeller, alpine folk strains and, most important to me and perhaps you as well, American black blues, gospel, ragtime, and jazz influences. Which makes it more than just another novelty right there. Because when these guys sing Duke Ellington, they mean it. Do they ever.
Still reading? Good. Don’t feel sorry for Hannibal Records if they end up taking a bath on this passel o’ cheery Jerries—feel