Carbon 14

This isn’t a photo book, per se, but it’s big and yellow and distracting, and you can get wrapped up in its 306 pages for a long time, browsing through a yummy-yummy assortment of interviews, rants, essays, photos, cartoons, reviews and fabulous artwork from Bomp magazine, going back to the ’60s. I even like to smell its woody pages. This book is just the tip of the iceberg from the magazine’s long run, but what a tip it is, including features and interviews with Janis Joplin, the Doors, Ramones, Blondie, Sky Saxon, the Runaways and (eek!) the Grateful Dead. The writing by Lester Bangs (riffing unrestrained for thousands of words about the Troggs, among other things), Greil Marcus, Lisa Fancher, Iggy Pop (favorably reviewing a Bowie album, if you can believe that), Mike Stax, Lenny Kaye, Suzy Shaw (humorously recounting the mag’s many obstacles), Mick Farren and Greg Shaw is crazed, prescient, intelligent, fannishly spirited and thoughtfully trippy. Along the way, Suzy and Mick also fill in the story of Greg’s life with eloquent tributes to his resolve and five-years-ahead-of-his-time vision. Who put the Bomp? He did, but now it’s your turn. - Falling James / Carbon 14