Lester Bangs

By: James Parker

Strictly speaking it’s Meltzer who’s the hilo hero, who inverted the language of academe in pursuit of the rock thrill, but here’s what puts Lester in the pantheon: he redefined monotony. The vicious monotony of […]

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Winds of Magic (3): Oral or Anal?

By: James Parker

The first thing to be said about the concept of the “oral history,” as it applies to rock biography, is that Sigmund Freud — damn him! — has triumphed again. For what purer display of […]

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Buddy Holly

By: Lynn Peril

The early death of BUDDY HOLLY (1936-59) transformed him into an icon of the Boomers’ Happy Days-esque vision of American life in the 1950s, all poodle skirts and sock hops at the malt shop, or […]

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