From Publishers Weekly

Until his death in 1982 at age 34, Bangs wrote freewheeling rock 'n' roll pieces for Creem, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice and London's NME (New Musical Express. As a rock critic, he was adept at distinguishing the commercially packaged product from the real thing. Written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his impudent reviews and essays explore the connections between rock and the body politic, the way rock stars cow their audiences and how the pursuit of success and artistic vision destroys or makes rock performers as human beings. This collection (which includes no Rolling Stone pieces) covers "fake moneybags revolutionary" Mick Jagger, John Lennon ("I can't mourn him"), David Bowie "in Afro-Anglican drag," Iggy Pop, the Troggs, Lou Reed, Van Morrison, Chicago, the Clash, many more. Marcus, a music critic, is the author of Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music.

Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

For rockers whose tastes demand more than Madonna and who remember back before Bruce, this is a gem. By turns insightful and hilarious, these collected essays by the late, legendary Banks (mostly accumulated from hard-to-come-by journals like Creem ) constantly astound. If your mind can embrace a shrewdly perceptive essay on the Troggs with the title "James Taylor Marked for Death," you also deserve to read the title essay on the Count Five's first album, some amazingly antagonistic love/hate interviews with Lou Reed, and so on. Add to all this a whacked-out sprung prose style (and vocabulary) that would make Gerard Manley Hopkins gasp for air, and you havewellwhat you have. For larger music collections, this is, like, highly recommended. Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty . P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.

Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.