Allen & Unwin Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung book Music English Paperback 416 pages

The essential writings of the greatest music writer of the twentieth, or any, century, reissued as a Serpent's Tail Classic.

Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism he brought the talent of a great a renegade Beat poet, and his essays, reviews and scattered notes convey the electric thrill of a music junky indulging the habit of a lifetime. As Greil Marcus writes in his introduction, 'What this book demands from a reader is a willingness to accept that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but record reviews.'

Lester Bangs started out as a record reviewer for Rolling Stone, went on to write for and then edit the magazine Creem, before moving to New York and covering the burgeoning punk scene, writing in daily newspapers and the Village Voice. Bangs died suddenly at the age of thirty-three in 1982. A biography of Lester Bangs, Let it Blurt was published in 2001.Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He writes for newspapers and magazines including Rolling Stone and the Village Voice.