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Ten Great Glam Rock Albums
Originally published in Harpers & Queen, 1998
Ten great glam rock albums you cannot afford to live without…
Electric Warrior/T. Rex (1971)
Lester Bangs: Rock ‘n’ Roll as Literature, Literature as Rock ‘n’ Roll
Originally published in Mojo, March 1994
Whither Rock Gomorrah, the great gonzo hack’s unpublished swansong?
Over a decade has passed since the world lost Lester Bangs, the greatest gonzo hack that “rock ‘n’ roll writing” has ever spawned. And already six years have passed since Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung, Greil Marcus’ collection of Bangs tirades from the outer limits of the amphetamine zone, introduced a new generation to his crazed, electrifying rantspeak. After all this time, it’s as if Bangs had been a cult rock star in his own right, not just a cult scribe. As the dust-jacket of Marcus’ book proclaimed, this was “rock ‘n’ roll as literature and literature as rock ‘n’ roll.”
The Year Of The Smiths
Originally published in The Virgin Yearbook, 1984
Gay men paved pop’s way this year. With Boy George’s wardrobe fully open, all the closet cases came spilling forth: Burns and the Bronskis, Frankie and NRG. The subtlest victory was Morrissey’s—his the least fairy-tale, the least gaudily exhibitionist. Maybe it’s because he conjured a ghost from all our pasts: The outsider, the Weird One, the pariah you put at full-back so you didn’t catch his leprosy.
When Morrissey refused to play “festive faggot,” he was appealing to something fundamentally more lonely in us. He was making the outsider a star.
Angry Young Women
by: Barney Hoskyns
Rock ‘n’ roll is being hijacked by angry girls with electric guitars. Tired of playing airbrushed pop dollies for salivating male voyeurs, women on both sides of the Atlantic have seized the traditional rock weapon of phallic oppression and made it their own.
More importantly, they have exploded the Ideal Feminine of pop by singing of sweat and blood, lust and menstruation, fear and self-loathing. Inger Lorre of LA’s infamous Nymphs quotes Rimbaud to the effect that, when a woman has thrown off her servitude, she will “discover strange, unfathomable, repellent, delicious things”—which is precisely what acts as diverse as Hole, Belly, L7, Daisy Chainsaw, PJ Harvey, the Breeders, and Babes in Toyland are busy doing on their new releases.
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by: Barney Hoskyns
published: November 12, 2008
in column: Classic Vantage
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