Bennies, bangs, bucks and sudden eloquence
Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend.
– Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
A very funny (and at times oddly moving) collection of opinionated articles on the bygone era of early rock that move between quiet, laconic reverence, utter contempt and pages-long reams and riffs without punctuation that whirl like sleepless nights and the fuel of a bad trip.
In other words, Lou Reed is a completely depraved pervert and pathetic dwarf and everything else you think he is. On top of that he’s a liar, a wasted talent, an artist continually in flux, and a huckster selling pounds of his own flesh.
[…]
– …Do you ever feel like a self-parody?
– No. If I listened to you assholes I would. You’re comic strips.
– That’s okay. I hoohawed, losing ground steadily. I don’t mind being a comic strip. Transformer was a comic strip that transcended itself.
He told me to shut up, and we sat there and stared at each other like two old geezers at the spittoon.
And no doubt most fun for those of us who were actually alive way back then.
From a post-mortem letter sent from heaven:
Met God when I first got here. I asked him why. You know, 33 and all. All he said was, “M.T.V.” He didn’t want me to experience it. Whatever the fuck it is.
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