Dateline,
February 3, 2012

Yessir, that last tour was sure a sumbitch, wasn’t it? Winter Dance Party my lone starred ass! More like a near month hauling all across those snow-crusted heartlands in the back of a school bus, sleeping with our guitars and our Jack Daniels and our rolling crap games. And precious little else, believe you me! But I suppose if they’d paid us what they were supposed to, we may have started flying between gigs instead … and that might’ve been even worse.

Sure was good to dump my brand new band and finally get back to New York City and my brand new wife, you bet.

And even though the past (in the form of former bandmates and management) kept calling – too bad there weren’t any answering machines back in the Summer of 59! – I certainly had lots of songs to write, melodies to sing, work to do …and fun to have.

My good bud Phil Everly immediately helped see to that: he always was promising the minute he dumped his brother, and me my Crickets, we’d just walk that block or two south from my new apartment through Washington Square Park and begin to seriously trawl the grand new sights and sounds of Greenwich Village.

So we did. For a year or two, in fact, we did little else!

And of course it was there, in some greasy little basement off MacDougal that we first saw, and heard, and then made an important point to meet, this scrawny kid from the Midwest name of Bob.

He was a funny little feller that continually swore we’d somehow locked eyes when I played the Duluth Armory …though unlike yours very truly, he’d only wear his glasses OFF stage. Still, he could sing up a storm, and soon enough write up one too.

Too bad management again – his this time, not mine – prevented me from taking him into the studio like we were busy planning. But nevertheless, he signed with Columbia Records rather than me and Phil’s own label, and made out pretty darn well for himself.

You oughta read his Chronicles book, by the way. It’s a Good One.

Anyways, money doesn’t talk, it swears, as Mr. D. once said. So eventually Phil got back together with Don, I hired back a couple’a Crickets, and we all headed off on a joint tour of England.

Opening up for us here and there were these four new guys from Liverpool who’d simply slapped Everlys harmonies over Crickets instrumentation, and the rest was soon… well, Beatlemania it was called once I’d gotten them safely over the pond and onto the Ed Sullivan Show. They were good guys though, and wisely recognized I, not they, had actually invented that so-called British Invasion. Only back in Lubbock in 1958, you see: Listen To Me, Think It Over, Not Fade Away…

”THERE’S yer fookin’ Merseybeat, mate,” as the Chief Beatle kept telling me and everyone else who could hear. I had to agree. Though he never wore his nice big black specs on stage either, by the by. But my, what a lovely character that Johnny Rhythm was.

So yep, those Beatles recorded my very own Words Of Love, and I have to admit those powerful royalties kept Maria Elena and Charles Hardin II in gas and grits as all my own musical monies remained tangled extremely up in legal limbos.

Still, I eventually made good on my dream to record an entire album of Ray Charles songs, and duetting with that afore-mentioned Zimmer Man on his Nashville Skyline brought in a few deep dollars to boot.

But then, like so many, many of us, the Seventies and especially Eighties were tough, empty years full of too much energy but too few (creative) outlets. At least I made it out pretty alive. My man Elvis, to cite the most obvious, didn’t, did he?

So here I sit today, luckily not being called a Golden Oldie as much the Godfather of alt. Country – whatever the heck THAT means. But I can still headline any damn PBS musical fundraiser I choose to …especially when an original Cricket or two care to join me.

And while Maria Elena may be long long gone, our boy Charlie is still ringing his Strat in a honky tonk right near you this very night no doubt. Better that than doing Vegas as “Son of Buddy” I guess.

Oh, and that Weezer song? It really did suck, y’know…

by Gary Pig Gold

In the meantime we have their harmonies, and their luscious melodies. Even with a couple of trades between discs – Justin James and Paul Runyon tagged in for Jimmy Faust and Stefan Rogenmoser – a high level is maintained in those glorious, succulent, joyful harmonies.

That said, the album starts off with a barely over a minute, instrumental ditty, “Acapulco (Sunrise):” a pleasing, gentle, tropical bossa nova. It leads into “Run Run Run” (not the Third Rail number) whose intro sounds like something Joey Heatherton would enter on in one of her TV appearances. But the rest of the song is a pleasing, temperate number in the vein of late ‘60s Beach Boys, though with some 5th Dimension style horns and latin percussion subtly added, particularly in the outro. “Anticipatin’ ” moves a little more up-tempo and into blue-eyed soul territory, complete with mid-‘70s Bee Gees falsettos and disco 4/4 in the chorus, while the bridge throws down a bit of Stax funk for 13 seconds. “Bluebird” is an alluring, mid-tempo excursion, riding a countrified rhythm; it is pitched between ‘65 Bobby Goldsboro and ‘67 Glen Campbell.

The excursions keep coming with the title track’s Tijuana Brass with psych guitar instrumental; the Grass Roots/Turtles/Buckinghams amalgam “Go for You;” the funky one-minute snippet “Any Little Way” with its Herbie Mann-styled flute; and the Laura Nyro-period Rundgren-touched ballad “It’s No Use” (the lift from Little Anthony & the Imperials’ “Goin’ Out of My Head” in the runout is cute). My favorite cut of all is “I’ve Been Waiting,” a winsome, bubblegummy, power-pop number.

A succinct 2’ 36”, it’s driven by a stirring, ringing acoustic guitar, sharp toms and stacks of backing harmonies – particularly the head-long “la la la la”s. The insertion of different textured electric guitar flourishes amongst the periodic, standard power-pop electric guitar chords, and the synthesized ELOish bridge just increases the savoriness of it all.

Track number 12, “Acapulco (Sunset),” is, as you’ve probably surmised, a reprise of the opening number, though this time with vocals added. Usually when a band does this it’s the end of the album. But here there are three more songs that come afterwards. Jason Brewer, one of the guitarists, singers and songwriters, explains “It is to signify the grand finale of songs. It is the penultimate ending if you will.” I can’t say it quite works that way. If you’re an old-fashioned listener who listens to the whole album at one time it might leave you feeling a tad disjointed, it does me. The three final numbers – “Summer Days, Summer Nights,” “Weight of the World” and “Open the Door” — are all big ballads, big as in they have a touch of musical bombast at times (noticeably this segment includes the two longest number on the album). The mark of Webb is most noticeable on these, though Mr. Brewer has a bit of mid-‘70s Neil Diamond rumbling around in his vocals on the songs he sings lead on (1st & 3rd).

That being said I found much joy listening to this, as you’d find if you get the chance to catch them live. And can only hope it won’t be another four years until we are presented with the next one.

The Explorers Club – Grand Hotel [Rock Ridge Music/2012?]

Now, this being the absolute height of Frampton Comes Alive, it’s hard to completely fathom today the socio-musical import of that final kernel of information. But of course I was hooked, and the next time the Ramones landed in Canada, I made sure I was there.

The Dead Boys were opening: Sure, Stiv was alotta fun crawling over and across the drumkit during “Hey Little Girl,” but the headliners truly were, in every aspect of the words, The Real Thing. So I duly invited myself backstage to conduct their first interview on Canadian soil, and despite nearly getting bounced for taking a snap of Danny Fields writhing beneath a fridge in search of a runaway pencil, I was made to feel totally at home by the band’s deep-rooted, deep-seeded LOVE of all things Rock and especially Roll:

Johnny’s coming-of-age watching Elvis’ Ed Sullivan Show debut as a child, Dee Dee bemoaning the fact that it was hard getting the band going “coz rehearsal halls wouldn’t let us in, ya know,” and Joey. Dear, sweet Joey. He asked all about my record collection, claimed Peter Noone and Ronnie Spector as his two primary vocal idols, then wondered where a good place was to go see some local bands play later that night.

How utterly, disarmingly refreshing, to say the least!

So we drove the R. brothers straight over to Toronto’s Crash and Burn club to see Teenage Head throttle some old Eddie Cochran and Swinging Blue Jeans tunes, ran into Phil Lynott somehow lurking by the bar, then we all went out for some classic Canadian pizza slices (…mainly crust ‘n’ cheese, Tommy was complaining). Through it all, and then during subsequent fleetful meetings, Joey remained every inch the diehard, gentle man FAN of Our Music. And despite the fact that he and his bandmates literally Changed The World, I simply prefer to remember the man instead as nothing but the tallest, and needless to say coolest Herman’s Hermits fan I ever did meet.

Joey left us on April 15, 2001.

Gabba Gabba, wherever you are.

You can read all about Gary’s night with The Ramones in his very own Pig Paper:

Pig Paper #5

by Gary Pig Gold

So instead, I thought I’d pick a mere forty of my favorite Beatle tunes of the moment, and tell you all why I think they’re so, well, Fab. Of course, YOUR mileage – not to mention choices – will differ, but that’s half the fun of listening and listing, isn’t it?

Allow me then to kick straight off with the Beatlesong I still find myself humming, playing, and yes, writing about most often than not…..

1) PLEASE PLEASE ME
…and, with the supreme Beatle ballad Ask Me Why on its original flipside, perhaps the greatest one-two career launcher in poppy-rock history.

2) IT WON’T BE LONG
As you’ll soon realize, John is my unapologetically favorite Beatle, and he was positively on fire throughout my fave Fab album, With The Beatles. Elsewhere upon same, Not A Second Time and All I’ve Got To Do were pure Smokey Robinson-worthy young Lennon gems, while Paul’s All My Loving – not to mention George’s first-ever (!!) ditty Don’t Bother Me – also helped make the band’s second album an end-to-end unbeatable beat group classic.

3) STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
Arguably the very pinnacle of the band’s studio concoctions …before they started getting altogether too magically mysterious for their own good, that is. And STILL the greatest fade-out(s) ever committed to vinyl to boot.

4) I DON’T WANT TO SPOIL THE PARTY
Both Everlys notwithstanding, The Beatles hear-by invent alt. country and, coupled with Eight Days A Week, produce in the process their first of many 1965 North American chart-toppers.

5) TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS
If you hadn’t already realized during its previous thirteen songs, Revolver had just forever re-written musical history right before your very ears.

6) A HARD DAY’S NIGHT
The undeniable State of the Art, 1964-model. Listen closely for the driving bed of bongos, not to mention that stellar George M. vs George H. piano-guitar solo (…and not a bad li’l movie they stuck after it either!)

7) HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN
Lennon truly was pop’s Picasso, compositionally-speaking, and only The Beatles could’ve made it successfully thru this dizzying mini-History of Rock ‘n’ Roll with the help of only three or four tape splices.

8) GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING
Stripped of all its Pepper down to the rhythm track alone, as the Anthology 2 version demonstrates, we realize how great a tight little band The Beatles really were …even AFTER a whole year off the road!

9) EVERYBODY’S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT ME AND MY MONKEY
…and THIS totally Pepper-free hum-ringer must’ve been even more fun to record than Birthday, Hey Bulldog, or maybe Lennon’s Ninth (Revolution).

10) I’LL BE ON MY WAY
Along with Hello Little Girl, the nascent Lennon and McCartney’s keenest Buddy Holly re-write ever …though you must admit Billy J. Kramer, as opposed to them Beatles, recorded the definitive rendering.

11) I FEEL FINE
The first feedback on record, as John once claimed? Link Wray might just have something to say about that. But there certainly was nothing finer to be heard over Christmastime 1964 …and THAT’S the truth.

12) I SAW HER STANDING THERE
The album-opener to start all album openers …or, as producer-extraordinaire Sir Big George Martin would so aptly characterize it, “a potboiler.” Why, even the other George’s wholly-Hamburg-drenched guitar solo lives up to Paul’s proto-Dee Dee count-in!

13) I’LL BE BACK
Add the lads’ always-shimmering three-part barbershop chorale atop John’s loving tribute to the late, very great Del Shannon’s trademark major/minor way with a song structure, and you have the album-closer to end all albums. At LEAST.

14) I’M DOWN
Meanwhile, Paul gamely wrestles Little Richard to the studio floor …whilst telling Jerry Lee the news.

15) THANK YOU GIRL
This raw diamond, which along with Misery Squeeze particularly built a whole vocal career after, truthfully deserves much more notice after decades spent languishing upon the underside of that original From Me To You single.

16) BABY YOU’RE A RICH MAN
And on the subject of Great Lost Beatle B-sides, this big-bass and Clavioline-driven sing-along has aged SO much better than its Summer of Love topside, All You Need Is… …now what was that word again??

17) COME TOGETHER
Wherein Lennon caps his Fab career with a slyly-subtle slice of Liverpool funk. And, as always, Ringo positively SHINES. So much for the rest of Abbey Road…

18) LOVE ME DO
So frequently poo-poohed coz Brian Epstein could only buy its way up to Number 17 on the hit parade. Yet as no less an authority as Raymond Douglas Davies has always attested, The Beatles’ vinyl debut nevertheless pricked up all the right ears all over Britain during that otherwise uneventful winter of ’62.

19) IT’S ALL TOO MUCH
…and I guess it IS, clocking in as the not-so-quiet Beatle’s long long longest Northern Song ever. Still, I can so much more easily hear it closing Sgt. Pepper rather than that other epic production A Day In The Life, can’t you? No?? oh, well…

20) THERE’S A PLACE
Somehow telepathically (though monophonically) linked since ’63 with Brian Wilson’s In My Room as two of the most deeply touching agoraphobic studies of all time.

21) I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER
Here our heroes, lead again by John, toss off one of the greatest deceptively-arcane musical throwaways of the era with one harmonica holder tied behind their backs. Plus George says it all with the last twelve-strung note of his guitar solo, as usual.

22) I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND
The crowning jewel which, rightfully so, took Beatlemania global …and opened B. Dylan’s ears especially to a certain misheard phrase in the bridge, just as importantly it turns out.

23) MARTHA MY DEAR
The most beloved song ever written to a sheep dog? Irregardless, it is that most infrequent instance of a McCartney composition which is perfectly, regally understated in both arrangement and execution. Hence its rare, pure, and SIMPLE (got that, Paul?) charm.

24) DAY TRIPPER
The boys gamely take on the twin late-’65 titans of the Stones and Stax …and, wouldn’t you know it, cross the line with flying colours.

25) ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (Spector version, btw!!)
So maybe its words do flow out endlessly, but WHAT a tune! (no doubt inspired by George’s most-melodious Inner Light being completed that very same week).

26) NOWHERE MAN
The Beatles meet The Byrds.

27) DEAR PRUDENCE
What happens when you take your guitar, and Donovan, to India with you. And then one of your playmates won’t come outside. Superb drumming as well …by PAUL this time though!

28) NO REPLY
Hey! A Beatle samba, with an actually complete lyrical narrative along the way. Before John fell off Dylan’s deep-end altogether with You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, mind you.

29) THINK FOR YOURSELF
Can you think of any other song, Fab or otherwise, that can employ a word like “opaque” – not to mention a fuzz-toned bass – and get away with it?

30) GETTING BETTER
Paul’s ever-cute cleverness pretty near capsized the Peppery proceedings in all too many places, but for these two-minutes-forty-seven he’s kept keenly in check (“…can’t get much worse”).

31) TICKET TO RIDE
The first heavy metal song, as John once claimed? Oh, boy…

32) YOU KNOW MY NAME (LOOK UP THE NUMBER)
Until Apple Inc. gets around to compiling all of the band’s great goonish Christmas recordings on one shiny disc, there’s always this inspired chunk of Brian Jones-saxed lunacy readily available on a compilation and/or file-sharing trough near you.

33) AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING
The Beatles BEAT The Byrds!

34) CRY FOR A SHADOW
George was only… HOW old, when he helped create this delightfully mock-Marvin (as in Hank of the Shadows) Hamburg set-stretcher?!!

35) THINGS WE SAID TODAY
Finally! The first McCartney effort to hold its own against a Johnsong.

36) YES IT IS
Barely-in-tune British doo-wop …and the greatest Beatle backside since its first cousin This Boy.

37) HOLD ME TIGHT
Similarly suspect in the vocal pitch dept., but it’s about as close to, yes, heavy metal as these four comparative short-hairs ever got during the once-swinging Sixties.

38) SHE SAID SHE SAID
Metal doesn’t even BEGIN to describe the veritable wall of Epiphones which took less than three minutes to raise even Peter Fonda from the near-dead.

39) HELP!
Sure, the movie’s a clinker, but the song is as harrowingly autobiographical as anything on Pet Sounds …AND you can frug to it!

40) YOU CAN’T DO THAT
When all is said and sung, however: GOTTA have cowbell…

by Gary Pig Gold

This is their second album and once again I can’t give you any context, but I can tell you this one offers a good bit of charm. The record does have a bit of a triadic nature, with one aspect being an indie-hewn pop-rock, another being spare, mostly single instrument & vocal duets, and the third having a more expansive British folk-prog bent, though these aspects can be found intertwined at times. Ms. Bright, who has a wide-ranging voice, melds her tone and timbre to each context. For instance the album’s introductory track, a 1’ 25” piece called “Alive,” opens with just an electric piano and after about 15 seconds Ms. Bright comes in with a conversational, resonant style, a bit like the intro to Patti Smith’s “Gloria” (except Sohl’s playing an acoustic piano). Then after about 30 seconds in, her voice sweeps up into a classical soprano. In-between those two inflection points, on a much more gradual grade, a subtle string section enters. For the rest of the number her voice moves irregularly between those two states.

“Oh, the Lightning,” which “Alive” runs right into, is a jaunty, sinuous pop-rock number. An interesting construction of what seems like a verse done twice with separation by a chamberesque bridge. The latter is composed of just an acoustic piano, at a slight remove, and Ms. Bright’s purer side, though a second voice, one Shelley Short, joins in harmony two-thirds the way along. And though it’s only a 2’ 58” number its last 40 seconds falls into spacey, almost dub-esque pieces for the runout. The alluring “Come to Be” with its crisp instrumentation, including strings, and its pacing brings to mind something from out of Love’s Forever Changes. While “Do You See It?” brings the rock: from its fuzzed pick slide intro to its thumpin’ rhythm play, to its tart, semi-freakbeat guitar solo. Yet it’s the following, mid-tempo “We” that might be my favorite cut. It has a well-formed melody throughout, led by a buoyant lead vocal with subtle and simple backing vocal harmonies, even the guitar solo slips right in on its tunefulness. And at under two-minutes it doesn’t have time to lose its focus.

Things make that turn towards the spare in the middle section of “Wine & Want,” “How Good” and “All the Birds.” Ballads, lullabies of a sort, formed, as I mentioned, with Ms. Bright’s voice foreground – with some delicate, carefully placed, backing vocals and harmonies — and generally just one or two instruments. In the first it’s a gentle guitar with what seems like a touch of bass underneath; in the second it’s acoustic piano; and in the third – a brief, relatively jauntier number — the bass moves to prominence with guitar out along the edges.

The third delineated aspect comes to the fore with the next triptych of “The Rushes,” “Goodbye” and “Mist as Me” (which includes the only two songs to stretch past four minutes). With their shifting arrangements, signature instrumental voicings — in the crystalline guitar that intros “The Rushes” and “Mist as Me,” the guitar solo(s) in the former’s bridge (the whole of which nicely cranks up the speed), the electric piano in “Goodbye” — and a seeming touch more Britishness to Ms. Brights intonation and her elongated phrasing in spots, brings to mind such bands as early Curved Air, Fotheringay and most particularly the Annie Haslam-fronted version of Renaissance.

The Golden Bears – Write It Like You Find It [D.I.Y/2012]

Accolades and awards are being tossed around far too indiscriminately these days, wouldn’t you agree?

Especially within the, uh, Wonderful World of Entertainment. I mean, I heard that Chuck Berry’s piano player-slash-genius behind the scenes, Johnnie Johnson, was once attempting to PATENT (that’s right, Patent …via the United States Department of Commerce) the words “Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” As a Registered Trademark. All for his very own, private, exclusive, ever-lasting (legally-protected) use.

Uh-huh. Well, as much as I’d have to admit Johnnie belongs right up there amongst Ike Turner, Bill Haley, Sam Phillips and even Sid King & the Five Strings, bestowing such a title is a bit silly – not to mention a half-century or two tardy – at this fairly late stage in the game. Even if he DID, indirectly or otherwise, help rid the world of Patti Page, Mitch Miller, and possibly even Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy.

Nevertheless, in Show, as in any Bizness, isn’t it often those who toil longest and hardest in silent obscurity, criminally under-compensated not to mention FAR behind the spotlights (…yes, even farther back than Mr. Johnson) who really deserve such loft-headed crowns of Fatherly honor? Hmmm…

Well, we lost another of those most criminally undersung of heroes. Greg Shaw, founder of Bomp! Records …among so many, MANY other things.

Just from my own personal experience, I can solidly claim that the very first Bomp record ever to reach these ears (which, I’m kinda proud to now relate, was the very first Bomp record ever released: the Flamin’ Groovies’ 1974 seven-incher You Tore Me Down) actually caused the sonic earth to move beneath me in ways matched only by, I kid you not, you-know-who on The Ed Sullivan Show, my first discovery of Elvis’ Sun sessions, and my pal John’s bringing the first Ramones record home to our innocent little Canadian turntables via the Bowery, very very late one long-lost Friday ago.

Yessir, that little Groovies record, and the joyous singles (and albums) (and magazines) Bomp faithfully sent my way throughout the Ford and Carter administrations – while those less fortunate amongst us were stuck listening to the Cars and pondering the fate of J.R., just to put things in their improper hysterical perspective – duly inspired little ol’ me, among many many others, to eventually start my OWN fanzine …then my OWN band …then even my own record label! You could say, then, that You Tore Me Down single-in-handedly spared me from a life of University study and squarely set me down the road to, uh, starvation, bankruptcy, mononucleosis and… uhh… anyways…

And THEN, when Bomp founder / mastermind / domo-major Greg Shaw Himself actually blew my way in early 1978, his raw, unbridled enthusiasm instantly swept aloft all of us riding the then-new Toronto punk wave, in turn inspiring such things as, oh, off the top of my once-buzz-cut scalp, Teenage Head (the band), SCTV (the television show), and possibly even Maggie and Ronnie (the weekend that almost brought down a Canadian Prime Minister …via that goof in the once-Rolling Stones).

So! Just who was this Greg Shaw fella then, you might well be asking?

He was born in San Francisco in 1949, raised on a healthy diet of Elvis, Fats Domino and sci fi zines, and when not hovering backdoors at the touring Rock ‘n’ Roll Revues of the day could be found not only hanging with such folk as Robert Silverberg and Philip K. Dick, but immortalizing all of his thoughts and adventures of same in a series of crude, mimeographed broadsheets he fearlessly circulated to an ever-growing circle of friends, fans and followers.

Why, he’d soon published over 200 such “fanzines,” as today they’d be called, one of which (entitled Entmoot, an early Tolkien epistle) even earned him a write-up in the Saturday Evening Post! But lest Greg end up just another Trekkie-in-training, come 1966 he happened upon a nearby street-corner labeled “Haight” and “Ashbury.”

Talk about yer crossroads… needless to say the next Shaw fanzine, Mojo-Navigator Rock & Roll News, became no less than the socio-musical template upon which another local rag, Rolling Stone, was soon to be intrinsically based. Too bad. As usual, Greg was there first. But the scene, and the spoils, went Wenner’s way. Drat!

Blueprint ruthlessly high-jacked, but energy and enthusiasm stubbornly unbowed, Greg by the Seventies had joined that elite-and-then-some tiny circle of scribes (alongside such hallowed personages as Ed Ward, Nick Kent, and – pause for reverence – Lester Bangs) who not only knew, but actually WROTE about such things as Raw Power and the New York Dolls … and in publications that us fellow music addicts could actually unearth and devour at the neighborhood newsstand! Consequently, Greg’s newest publication – and soon label — Bomp! quickly found a rabid, wide-eared audience which truly transcribed the globe …and then some.

And it should also be remembered right about here that for most of the musical events now considered pivotal during this era (very roughly speaking? the first Nuggets album, the creation of the Runaways, and the Sex Pistols’ first paying gig) …Shaw was THERE. No, not Malcolm McLaren. Not even Kim Fowley. And certainly not Rolling Stone magazine. No. It was Greg Shaw.

Lest those ill-informed now be wont to cast all things Bomp onto the nostalgia heap alongside “I Hate Pink Floyd” t-shirts and Sid Vicious EP’s, here’s a short-list of just some of the bands Greg has helped bring to our attention in those long years since that oh-so-fateful Summer of Hate. Ready?

Devo, The Plimsouls, The Romantics, The Barracudas, The Shoes, The Soft Boys, Black Flag, Redd Kross, The Pandoras, The Chesterfield Kings, Bad Religion, Lazy Cowgirls, Ray Campi, Spacemen 3, Ant Bee, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Keys.

OK then: some names therein you may not be intimately familiar with, but each and every one of ‘em are without a doubt acts which have proven, and shall continue to prove, instrumental in laying groundwork for most every pop ‘n’ rock genre-du-jour (ie: Goth, Grunge, Hardcore, Rave, Industrial, alt.C&W, Power Pop, insert your own pigeonhole here). And once again, each and every one of those acts, to varying degrees, owe their influence – not to mention their initial recording contracts – to, do we note a pattern developing here, Greg Shaw.

Closing words? They should really belong to The Man Himself. Listen closely, all of you (especially those who deign to nurture musical talent in whatever capacity yourselves). For HERE was a man who knew of what he spoke:

I guess I’d most like Bomp to be remembered as a label utterly dedicated to the people who care most about music: the fans and collectors. I think it comes down to the fact that Bomp is an outgrowth of my love for music.

Where many would view it as a marginal business that barely breaks even, I prefer to see it as a hobby that’s profitable enough to allow me to build my life around it. The opportunity to make more money elsewhere has never once tempted me – but it HAS drawn many talented people AWAY from this business.

But we’re still here, doing what we want, on our own terms, answering to nobody, dealing with people in an old-fashioned “mom and pop” kind of way. It’s a satisfying life that I’d NEVER trade for, say, David Geffen’s.

If nothing else, maybe we’ve set an example that might offer an alternative to this increasingly corporate, impersonal society. Or maybe not. At least we’ve had a good time trying… and we’re not done yet.

Greg Shaw? Thank You.

by Gary Pig Gold

At the show in January 1967 they also performed Going To A Go-Go. It certainly was a place to be as other artists appearing there that evening were Françoise Hardy, Walker Brothers, Sylvie Vartan, Marianne Faithfull, Serge Gainbourg & France Gall to name a few. But it was only the Zombies who performed live.

The whole 16 minutes film included:
1. The Mascots – A Sad Boy
2. The Shanes – I Don’t Want Your Love
3. Sven-Ingvars – Det var i vår ungdoms fagraste vår
4. Sven-Ingvars – Börja om från början
5. The Streaplers – Rock-In Robin
6. Tages – I Should Be Sad

So the most interesting clips are added here.
(Taken from a video released 1995 by Premium.)