Lester Bangs
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Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs (December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, critic, author, and musician. He wrote for ''Creem'' and ''Rolling Stone'' magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock music criticism. The music critic Jim DeRogatis called him "America's greatest rock critic". Early life Bangs was born in Escondido, California. He was the son of Norma Belle (''née'' Clifton) and Conway Leslie Bangs, a truck driver. Both of his parents were from Texas: his father from Enloe and his mother from Pecos County. Norma Belle was a devout Jehovah's Witness. Conway died in a fire when his son was young. When Bangs was 11, he moved with his mother to El Cajon, also in San Diego County. His early interests and influences ranged from the Beats (particularly William S. Burroughs) and jazz musicians John Coltrane and Miles Davis, to comic books and science fiction. He had a connection with ''The San Diego Door'', an underground newspaper o ...
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Roberta Bayley
Roberta Bayley is a photographer, best known for her photographs of the New York punk scene of the 70s. Life Bayley was born in Pasadena, California and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended San Francisco State University for three years before dropping out in 1971. She moved to London where she lived for three years, before moving to New York in the spring of 1974. Bayley met musician and poet Richard Hell, and soon began working the door at CBGBs at the request of Terry Ork, the manager of Hell's band Television. In 1978 Bayley went to work for Blondie in the office of Peter Leeds, the manager of the band at the time. While Bayley had taken a few photography classes in high school in the 60s, it wasn't until November 1975 that she bought a camera to document what she saw going on in New York's downtown music scene. In 1976, she went to work for John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil at Punk magazine. She photographed the Ramones for the third issue in February 1976. Her ...
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The Beats
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. Allen Ginsberg's ''Howl'' (1956), William S. Burroughs' ''Naked Lunch'' (1959), and Jack Kerouac's ''On the Road'' (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature.Charters (1992) ''The Portable Beat Reader''. Both ''Howl'' and ''Naked Lunch'' were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States.Ann Charters, ''introdu ...
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Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer and musician. One of the most successful and widely known Rock music, rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the #1969–1970: Solo career, Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the ''Festival Express'' train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, ''Billboard'' Hot 100, including a cover version, cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include he ...
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Cream (band)
Cream were a British rock band formed in London in 1966. The group consisted of bassist Jack Bruce, guitarist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker. Bruce was the primary songwriter and vocalist, although Clapton and Baker also sang and contributed songs. Formed from members of previously successful bands, they are widely regarded as the world's first supergroup. Cream were highly regarded for the instrumental proficiency of each of their members. During their brief three-year career together, the band produced four albums, ''Fresh Cream'' (1966), ''Disraeli Gears'' (1967), ''Wheels of Fire'' (1968), and ''Goodbye'' (1969). Beginning with ''Disraeli Gears'', the band was joined in the studio by producer and multi-instrumentalist Felix Pappalardi, who became an important influence on the band's sound. Cream's music spanned many genres of rock music, including blues rock (" Crossroads", "Born Under a Bad Sign"), psychedelic rock (" Tales of Brave Ulysses", " White Room ...
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Black Sabbath (album)
''Black Sabbath'' is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released on 13 February 1970 by Vertigo Records in the United Kingdom and Warner Bros. Records in the United States on 1 June 1970. The album is widely regarded as the first heavy metal album, and the opening track, "Black Sabbath", has been referred to as the first doom metal song. Upon release, the album reached number eight on the UK Albums Charts and number 23 on the US ''Billboard'' 200. ''Black Sabbath'' is included in Robert Dimery's 2005 musical reference book ''1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die''. Recording According to Black Sabbath's guitarist and founding member Tony Iommi, the group's debut album was recorded in a single twelve-hour session on 16 October 1969. Iommi said: "We just went in the studio and did it in a day, we played our live set and that was it. We actually thought a whole day was quite a long time, then off we went the next day to play for £20 in Switzerl ...
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Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath were an English rock music, rock band formed in Birmingham in 1968 by guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward (musician), Bill Ward, bassist Geezer Butler and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne. They are often cited as pioneers of heavy metal music. The band helped define the genre with releases such as ''Black Sabbath (album), Black Sabbath'' (1970), ''Paranoid (album), Paranoid'' (1970) and ''Master of Reality'' (1971). The band had multiple line-up changes following Osbourne's departure in 1979 and Iommi is the only constant member throughout their history. After previous iterations of the group – the Polka Tulk Blues Band and Earth – the band settled on the name Black Sabbath in 1969. They distinguished themselves through occult themes with horror-inspired lyrics and down-tuned guitars. Signing to Philips Records in November 1969, they released their first single, "Evil Woman (Crow song), Evil Woman", in January 1970, and their debut album, ''Black Sabbath'', was rel ...
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Kick Out The Jams
''Kick Out the Jams'' is the debut album by American proto-punk band MC5. It was released in February 1969, through Elektra Records. It was recorded live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom over two nights, Devil's Night and Halloween, 1968. The LP peaked at No. 30 on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart, with the title track peaking at No. 82 in the Hot 100. Although the album received an unfavorable review in ''Rolling Stone'' magazine upon its release, it has gone on to be considered an important forerunner to punk rock music, and was ranked number 294 in both 2003 and 2012 editions of ''Rolling Stone'' " 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" lists, and at number 349 in a 2020 revised list. Release The album peaked at number 30 on the ''Billboard'' albums chart, "in the wake of a publicity blitz", wrote Robert Christgau in '' Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies'' (1981). In Canada, the album reached #37. While "Ramblin' Rose" and "Motor City Is Burning" open with the ba ...
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Freelance Writer
''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance workers are sometimes represented by a company or a temporary agency that resells freelance labor to clients; others work independently or use professional associations or websites to get work. While the term ''independent contractor'' would be used in a different register of English to designate the tax and employment classes of this type of worker, the term "freelancing" is most common in culture and creative industries, and use of this term may indicate participation therein. Fields, professions, and industries where freelancing is predominant include: music, writing, acting, computer programming, web design, graphic design, translating and illustrating, film and video production, and other forms of piece work that some cultural theor ...
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Underground Newspaper
The terms underground press or clandestine press refer to periodicals and publications that are produced without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant (governmental, religious, or institutional) group. In specific recent (post-World War II) Asian, American and Western European context, the term "underground press" has most frequently been employed to refer to the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ... of the late 1960s and early 1970s in India and Bangladesh in Asia, in the United States and Canada in North America, and the United Kingdom and other western nations. It can also refer to the newspapers produced independently in repressive regimes. In ...
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The San Diego Door
''The San Diego Door'', (in former versions: ''Good Morning Teaspoon'', ''Teaspoon Door'', ''Door to Liberation'', and ''Free Door'') was an underground newspaper that thrived from January 1968 to August 1974 in San Diego and San Diego County, Southern California. Alongside the ''San Diego Street Journal'' (formerly ''San Diego Free Press'') and the OB Rag, it dominated the underground genre. They all contained anti-war and anti-establishment articles on business interests in San Diego during the 1960s. The newspapers encompassed New Left issues, and the birth of the Chicano Movement and second-wave women's movement within San Diego. History Founded by publisher Dale Herschler in January 1968 and published on a biweekly schedule, ''The San Diego Door'' was initially based in La Mesa and loosely connected to campus activism at nearby San Diego State University. ''Good Morning, Teaspoon'', began as a local underground which first published in October 1966, and was edited by Don ...
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Science Fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality (like mind uploading), and the singularity. Science fiction predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots, and borazon, whose names entirely match their fictional predecessors. In addition, science fiction might serve as an outlet to facilitate future scientific and technological innovations. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is also related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has beco ...
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Comic Books
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and written narrative, usually, dialogue contained in word balloons emblematic of the comics art form. "Comic Cuts" was a British comic published from 1890 to 1953. It was preceded by "Ally Sloper's Half Holiday" (1884) which is notable for its use of sequential cartoons to unfold narrative. These British comics existed alongside of the popular lurid "Penny dreadfuls" (such as "Spring-heeled Jack"), boys' " Story papers" and the humorous Punch (magazine) which was the first to use the term "cartoon" in its modern sense of a humorous drawing. The interweaving of drawings and the written word had been pioneered by, among others, William Blake (1757 - 1857) in works such as Blake's "The Descent Of Christ ...
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