Goldmine

“Bomp: Saving The World One Record At A Time”: “From psychedelia to garage punk to power pop.” With those words, we are ushered into one of the most fascinating worlds ever to orbit Planet Rock, the story of the tiny little label that could… the perpetual underdog, the permanent under-achiever, the wide-eyed boy next door who always wanted to be a part of the music industry, and who went a long way towards reinventing it.

From fanzine writer to record label mogul, from music critic to rock ’n’ roll editor, Greg Shaw nailed down his hobbies while he was still in his teens, and spent the rest of his life making them work for him. The result is this gorgeous, lavish compendium, by Suzy Shaw and Mick Farren, of thoughts, notions, manifestos and photos, and page after page of glorious reprints from the greatest fanzine American rock ever read: Who Put The Bomp, successor to Mojo Navigator and sire of plain ol’ Bomp. Great swaths of the ’zine’s original pages are reprinted here, dating back to Shaw’s earliest encounters with The Doors and the Dead, forward through his lifelong love of the Flamin’ Groovies, and on to the dedication that led him to launch the Bomp label, his private shrine to the bands that he loved so much that he knew that you would, too.

Latter-day contributions from friends, admirers, co-writers and more are wrapped around the vintage pages; previously unseen photos are unearthed from the Bomp vault. This isn’t a book you sit and read in one sitting, it’s one to browse over for weeks on end, a massive magazine to which you will keep on returning. Greg Shaw’s own life story still needs to be told, and you emerge from these pages with a few questions of your own. But, the most important thing you need to know is nailed down from the outset. He believed in rock ’n’ roll. (Hardcover, 306 pages, $34.95, American Modern Books, www.ammobooks.com)
— Dave Thompson