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Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader.

Article Excerpt
Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader. Edited by John Morthland. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. [xviii, 409 p. ISBN 0-375-71367-0. $15.]

Lester Bangs, who wrote for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and above all else, Creem magazine from the late 1960s until the early 1980s, exemplified and largely created the notion of rock critic as rock star, right down to his untimely death at age 33, in 1982. And like many a young deceased rock star, Bangs's legend--and beyond-the-grave product--has grown unabated. Within a few years Greil Marcus, Bangs's first editor at Rolling Stone and something of a rock star-critic himself, compiled and edited Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), a collection of Bangs's articles and record reviews in which Marcus proclaimed Bangs "the best writer in America" (p. x). The year 2000 saw both a full-length biography of Bangs (Jim DeRogatis, Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic [New York: Broadway Books, 2000]) and a fictionalized portrayal by Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of the most memorable scenes of Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous. Bangs's celebrity is one of the driving forces behind the recent resurrection of the defunct Creem, which has a presence on the web (www.creemmagazine.com, accessed 3 March 2004) complete with selected archives...