Top 10 Opening Lines by Lester Bangs

10. “Emerson, Lake and Palmer must be the biggest group in the world.”

9. “On New Year’s Eve of 1972 I attended a great party thrown by someone I didn’t know and inadvertently fell into a protracted conversation with this nearsighted social worker about 20 or 25 who kept babbling about his Volkswagen until I finally had to say: ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that the owning of a Volkswagen is a social, or a political act?’”

8. “Name me one Sixties superstar who hasn’t become a zombie.”

7. “HOT DAMN, it’s a new Deep Purple album!”

6. “Lately some people have begun to assert that, what with 1967 so far gone and all, ain’t nothin’ cosmic anymore.”

5. “A bunch of us are in the Allen park Hockey Rink, supreme arena of this bratwurst burg, watching BTO break on thru to Cobo Hall while the sweat off the pubes condenses in the air, when out comes this bunch of funnynosed dark-complected guys outfitted in spangles crossbreed Arabian Nights and hey-mofo-I’m-a-rockstar.”

4. “Today I am a pud.”

3. “One day someone I love said, ‘You hit me with your eyes.’”

2. “Good for Slade.”

1. “I decided it would be a real fun idea to get fucked up on drugs and go see Tangerine Dream with Laserium.”