Photo by Craig Schwartz

David C. Nichols – LA Times

Talk amongst yourselves,” says a wild-eyed Lester Bangs as he hammers away at his typewriter, gesturing us into his unkempt apartment, Black Sabbath blaring from the turntable. “And nobody touch my records.”Read more…

Dany Margolies  -  Arts In LA

The lesson to be learned here is not how to be a rock critic but how to be a human being, experiencing instead of describing, taking action instead of observing. When the theatermakers are teaching this lesson, this piece is at its finest. When the theater-makers are trying to make theater, even they must still learn a few things. Read more…

Jon Magaril – Curtain Up

I raise my lighter way up for Erik Jensen’s kick-ass performance as Lester Bangs, trumpeted by many as the best rock critic of all time. His reviews and essays in the ’70s heyday of Rolling Stone, Creem, the Village Voice were fiercely opinionated (sometimes ecstatic, often vituperative), deeply personal, and enduringly influential. Following his example of popularizing the terms “heavy metal” and “punk rock,” I hereby dub the new play co-written by director Jessica Blank and Jensen a rock-u-docu-solo-show. Read more…

Myron Meisel – Stage Raw

….Bangs, with his uninhibited prose and rabidly personal take on pop music, remains the patron saint of rock critics, martyred at 33 by demons not unlike those of many musicians he idolized and in turn rejected for their inevitable failings. Read more…

Now running through June 28.