Daily Inspiration Quote by Lester Bangs

Nostalgia is the bait here, but Bangs is really swinging at conformity. The line has that signature Bangs move: a conversational shrug ("The thing is that") that disguises a hard verdict. He’s not simply praising old bands for being "better". He’s diagnosing why they mattered. "Strong personalities" and "distinct identities" aren’t just vibes; they’re the raw materials of conflict, risk, and spectacle - the stuff that makes a group feel like a volatile little society rather than a product.

As a critic forged in the late-60s/70s rock ecosystem, Bangs watched bands function as public arguments: ego vs. ego, style vs. style, band mythology built in real time. Those groups arrived with recognizable silhouettes - musically, visually, rhetorically. Even their flaws were legible. By contrast, his swipe at "groups...coming out now" implies a scene where the edges have been sanded down, where marketability and genre templates flatten difference. The subtext is institutional: labels, radio formats, and critical consensus can turn "identity" into branding, and branding into interchangeable units.

The grammar matters: "I don't find" keeps it personal, not absolute. Bangs frames the critique as lived experience, which is how he smuggles authority without sounding like a lecturer. It’s also a warning about cultural drift. When personality disappears, so does friction - and without friction, rock turns from a messy human drama into a clean consumer option.