Time & Perspective Quote by Lester Bangs

Bangs is doing that thing he does best: turning a shrug into an indictment. On the surface, he is dismissing some “meaning” someone wants to attach to a scene, a trend, a movement. Underneath, he’s calling out a crisis of content. “Very little at the moment” is a critic’s scalpel: not “never,” not “nothing matters,” but a time-stamped diagnosis. The problem isn’t that the music (or the bands) exist; it’s that “none of the groups are about anything.” Not politics, not desire, not danger, not even a convincing lie. Just posture.

The line works because it attacks the soft underbelly of rock mythology: the assumption that volume, attitude, or style automatically counts as conviction. Bangs hated the way subcultures calcify into costumes. When “groups” become interchangeable, the scene becomes a market category, and meaning turns into branding. His phrasing is bluntly moral without sounding pious; “about anything” is a low bar on purpose. He’s not demanding manifesto-level seriousness. He’s asking for motive force.

Contextually, Bangs is writing from inside a period when rock’s revolutionary self-image was already being repackaged and sold back to its fans. His cynicism isn’t anti-music; it’s pro-stakes. The subtext is almost a dare: if you want this to matter, make it mean something. Otherwise, you’re just watching the machinery run.