Lester Bangs Waxes on the ‘State of Rock’
Somebody ran this Lester Bangs tidbit on YouTube through my Facebook ‘Home’ the other day. Since then I`ve watched it twenty times or so, and am really getting` a BANG out of it! Lester casually CRUCIFIES Rock Stars with the 
greatest of ease. He hammers nails into Jethro Tull, Bryan Ferry and most of all, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Trying to find a date, but I would guess around 1973 or 1974, maybe later? It`s when he was working as an editor at CREEM.
Excellent paisley shirt, you can`t find em like that anymore. In the last segment he speculates about the condition of Rock, its health or lack of. This was a recurring theme with Lester. That is: exactly where were we (this would be in the mid-`70s, people) in the Rock Continuum? Why wasn`t a savior coming along at that time? As Lester says, “you had Sinatra in the `40s, Elvis in the `50s and The Beatles in the `60s.” What would the next Renaissance look like?
When you come to the 1970s, nada? Emptiness. It`s interesting to think on why this condition existed. Of course, you have to chew on every word of Lester Bangs that you can find, if you want the answers. Let`s see, what was so bad about Jethro Tull, Lester? Students, turn to page 128 in your Bangs Reader, Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung. A piece called Jethro Tull in Vietnam…
Dust Off Your Cobwebs And Spiders! ‘Black Sabbath’ Is Back In Town!
Black Sabbath was released on Friday the 13th, 1970. I consider it a classic; it`s the roots of Metal & Goth. Maybe the very essence of witchcraft brims as incantation from its sepulchers. I think of it as a Hammer Horror film, but filtered through bombastic guitars and the chilly vocals of Ozzy. Lester Bangs gave it a good spanking in Rolling Stone, writing: “discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitised speedfreaks all over each other`s musical perimeters, yet never quite finding synch.” Apparently, it was recorded almost live; this is also one of the origins of looser, jamy-ier record projects.
Black Sabbath is also fodder for my latest thesis that 1969 saw the advent of a new ‘Millenarianism,’ a belief that life on earth was coming undone. In this context, the ‘Evil of Beelzebub’ piped its manifestos vicariously through the Sabbath folks. The story behind the first cut would support this. Geezer Butler saw a “figure in black” over his bed when awakening from a nightmare. A book of black magic, which Ozzy Osborne had given him, had mysteriously disappeared. The eerie cover of the hooded figure at Mapledurham Watermill is ‘Gotho Supremo!’ *(Thanks Wiki!)
As summer vanishes & Halloween slowly cometh, we pull out this classic for guidance, as we navigate the perils of Hell, with Dante & Virgil *(& the bat chewing Ozzy) as our guides. Will we survive this Wicked World?
The Continuing Saga Of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer?
“It`s not just that all their albums are chart sensations. What really makes ELP a dinosaur potentate is the sheer scale of the noise they emit. With ELP we`re swatted into the new age of totally Technologized Rock. This is robot music mixmastered by human modules who deserve purple hearts for managing to keep the gadgets reined at all”. Lester Bangs-Creem-1974
How should we characterize Emerson, Lake, and Palmer in the grandiose scheme of things, that is, in ‘Rock History’ itself? And what exactly does the Classical/Rock synthesis mean? Did ELP help to lay the ground for the emergence of Punk Rock, around 1977 some time? Of course, we know that Disco certainly played a role in this. I have begun to study these questions, attempting to put aside some prejudices that I know I have retained from the past. After all, it`s a heavy bummer to accuse ELP of killing Rock single-handedly. As early as 1974, Lester Bangs was noticing that ELP was getting too big, and was burying the sound with electronic keyboard gadgets, like Moog synthesizers, Hammond organs, and celeste.
I picked up a vinyl copy of the 1971 concept record, “Tarkus,” in order to sort out a fraction of this mess. I promise you, I wasn`t able to make heads or tails of it, but Greg Lake has said that it`s about the military-industrial complex and expresses the futility of war. The Tarkus creature itself is half armadillo, half tank, and engages in random high tech battles, as he roams the countryside. The inner sleeve has some great illustrations of this machine warfare. Some of Keith Emerson`s rambling Moog solos might seem a trifle dated in this day and age, but I feel like Indiana Jones discovering the ‘Lost Temple of Moogs’ when I listen.
Alright, so Rock got a little frothy, a little off the tracks in the 1970s? ELP were putting themselves out on a limb and forging a new form, Classical/Rock. And I believe the album cover for Tarkus is one of funniest and most original ever conceived! Do not just write off ELP off without careful examination. Next week, “Brain Salad Surgery”…if you don`t give it the THUMBS DOWN?