This article on Lester Bangs is sharp and appealing:
No, sorry. Rock ‘n’ roll isn’t the party. It’s what you do when you’re home and miserable alone because you weren’t invited to the party. It’s what you do to make up for not being at the party. That’s why it sounds like a party. A guy wouldn’t break out one of those rubber fake-vaginas in the middle of actual fucking, would he? Rock ‘n’ roll is social masturbation.
It’s sort of appropriate for it to be less about Bangs himself than about his position and meaning, about his impact on his readers. After all, that’s much of the appeal of Bangs, as far as I can tell. It’s hard to know; he’s by now so frozen into the hall of fame that I can’t really get excited about him.
Still, I’m not sure I quite buy the idea of Rock ‘n’ Roll as the antiparty. Because unlike music or poetry or painting, music makes far less sense alone