I got my brand spankin' new issue of Chunklet in the mail yesterday and while I was saddened that it did not include the David Cross/Les Savvy Fav split 7" I was promised (difficulties at the plant and it is forthcoming and all that sort of thing) I was highly entertained. I haven't gone super deep into the longer articles but the Mission of Burma stuff and the Mr Show tour diary read well. Early on the issue opens with some Rocktoids -- a hilarious music themed doppelganger of Harper's index -- with such fun facts as:

Band who are still bigger fans of themselves than their fans : Red Kross

Most annoying guy in a band : Guy who ges shit impossibly cheaper than anyone else in the world. "Yeah, I got a mellotron at a thrift store for 30 bucks, but I sold it because everyone's using them now."

Artists most mistaken for Ron Jeremy : Har Mar Superstar

You get the idea. Anyway, there's one that goes:

Worst band championed by Lester Bangs : (three way tie) Black Oak Arkansas, J. Geils Band & White Witch

...and that got me to thinking about good ol' Lester and why he's still hailed as such a great rock critic when he was so often so far off the mark. Granted, the boy picked out some greats but he was just as likely to spew out a speed fueled frenzy about the greatness of some band that really and truly sucked. So why is he such a great critic?

Here's why.

In our current age most criticism is driven and controlled by the vast marketing arm of record labels (and I'm including the indies in this one too since their publicists can be even more cut-throat when it comes down to cutting one out of guest lists or indefinitely removing one from their promo and advance album mailers when they get wind of a bad review) so most criticism is couched in a certain veneer. I mean Rolling Stone fired Jim DeRogatis a few years ago because he refused to write a light and fluffy shiny happy piece on Hootie and The Blowfish. Hootie and The Fucking Blowfish! I mean since when does "Rock and Roll's Premiere Magazine" condone such crap?! Oh yeah, since about 1969. Never mind, I'm getting off subject.

So our current critical climate is one of -- at it's most scathing -- cautious pessimism so we've attuned ourselves to detecting crap phrases and generally just ignoring reviews and buying shit that our friends recommend or that we scan on peer to peer file-sharing networks before actually plunking down our cold hard cash. In this climate the true rock critic with a broad audience is virtually non-existent (Robert Christgau is completely irrelevant -- though he was hilarious at the Blender and Spin Battle of the Bands at Arlene Grocery -- and just because Rob Sheffield writes in the "cheeky hipster vernacular" for a wide audience his opinions are still complete bullshit fueled by publicists) and that's where Lester's legacy is allowed to flourish.

You see Lester actually believed in what he was writing with all of his body and soul. He believed to the extent that he kept getting bounced from magazine to magazine because he refused to dim his passion or work with (gasp) publicists and in this he was unique. Yeah yeah, sure sure, Richard Meltzer got bounced around too but he was hell-bent on being a smart-ass and taking the piss out of anyone and everyone. Have you ever read his Aesthetics Of Rock? Funny stuff but I would hardly consider it as a passionate beast beating close to his true heart.

So Lester believed and he was a gifted writer to boot. He could make a review of Black Oak Arkansas fun to read so that even if you hated the band you loved the piece. Lester never minced words and is the only critic ever to get into a high profile war of the words with actual honest-to-god rock stars -- in this case Lou Reed -- that evolved into an exchange that actually meant something.

When someone writes something truly passionate that reads incredibly well the end result is an object of true and pure beauty no matter how off the mark an aesthetic judgement might be in the long run.

And that's why Lester Bangs was a great rock critic.