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BANG_PUNK

                             Originally written for wikipedia, 2004
                             [ref]


Lester Bangs is often credited with inventing
the term "punk", for example, in his 1971 essay        Though that's not
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung he             perhaps, strictly
comments                                               accurate:

   "... then punk bands started cropping up who              POWER_OF_PUNK
   were writing their own songs but taking the
   Yardbirds' sound and reducing it to this kind of
   goony fuzztone clatter".

Certainly "punk" was a word that Lester Bangs
used frequently. For example, he wrote an
autobiographical novel titled "Drug Punk" in
1968 -- this was unpublished, but excerpts can be
found in the collection Mainlines, Blood Feasts,
and Bad Taste (ISBN 0-375-71367-0). Another
example can be found in his earliest published
work, the 1970 article The MC5: Kick out the
Jams (also in the same collection):

   "Never mind that they came on like a bunch of
   sixteen-year-old punks on a meth power trip
   ...".

What Bangs actually meant by "punk" might be
debated, but it's clear that he was an advocate
for an attitude toward music that that later
punk rockers could easily sympathize
with. Another quote from the Psychotic Reactions
article:

   "It wasn't until much later, drowning in the
   kitschvats of Elton John and James Taylor,
   that I finally came to realize that grossness
   was the truest criterion for rock 'n' roll,
   the cruder the clang and grind the more fun
   and longer listened-to the album would be."

And further:

   "... it was just that he couldn't stand
   ineptitude of any kind in music, which was
   perfectly reasonable, while I dug certain
   outrageous brands of ineptitude the most!"

This essay can be found in a collected volume of
the same title: Psychotic Reactions and
Carburetor Dung (ISBN 0679720456).

Here's a quotation from another article
collected in that volume, A Reasonable Guide to
Horrible Noise (1980):

   "Look at it this way: there are many here
   among us for whom the life force is best
   represented by the livid twitching of one
   tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety
   attack. I do not subscribe to this point of
   view 100%, but I understand it, have lived
   it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the
   chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the
   whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the
   adventurous or emotionally damaged as
   mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation."


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