Greg Shaw – Fanzine Hemorrhage

Because I was four years old when Who Put The Bomp #9 came out in Spring 1972, I have exceedingly little firsthand knowledge of the rocknroll fanzine scene of the time that this was a part of. Clearly, and as I’d imagined, it’s a leading light in a much larger sea of underground, home-produced fanzines being produced by rock maniacs across the US and UK. Editor Greg Shaw gets into it by reviewing many action-packed fanzines of the era like Alan Betrock’s Jamz, which “has a good section on punk rock (Terry Knight & Pack, Shadows of Knight, Vagrants)”, as well as Andy Shernoff’s Teenage Wasteland Gazette. I’ve sadly never seen either, but one day I shall. There’s another one called Bedloe’s Island that you can read about here while also observing my own 90s fanzine being slagged in the process. It’s only now that I’m coming to realize how fertile fanzine-dom was in the early 70s, and that maybe punk didn’t actually need to happen after all.

This one’s far more lo-tech than the Who Put The Bomp issues I previously bantered with you about here and here. Shaw is living in Fairfax, CA, which is still my favorite place in Marin County and located about 35 minutes north of my San Francisco home. He says at the outset “And don’t bother ripping up this magazine – I’ll send you a complete set of photos plus cover for 25¢”. I wonder if the offer still stands? He then has an editorial apologizing for this not being the promised “English invasion issue”. That would come out over a year later. He’s also warning folks that Who Put The Bomp isn’t usually so oldies-oriented as this issue is. They were actually calling late 50s rock “oldies”, even in 1972 – how about that. What do you call the music of 2009, Times New Viking, Grass Widow, Fabulous Diamonds and whatnot?

Gene Vincent has just died, and thereby gets his own piece. Shaw has also just found out about Wanda Jackson, someone whom he believes “may be a name familiar to you only as a country & western singer”. (I just so happen to greatly prefer the Wanda Jackson country years to her often silly rockabilly stuff, although this video is pretty great). The Vincent thing reminds me of this fanzine’s major contribution to furthering record scholarship, which is assembling a painstakingly complete discography with catalog numbers and the works. Rip Lay does the Wanda Jackson piece, and he talks about how smitten he became of her from her record covers and how she thereby supplanted Darlene from the Mickey Mouse Club in his heart.

Mike Saunders does a phony interview with a rockabilly artist he invented from whole cloth called The Famous Alaska King Crab. Couldn’t this guy take a breath and be serious, even for a minute? There are other features on Harmonica Frank and “Elvis in Print” (books about Elvis), Greg Shaw goes deep on reissues, which have started to flood out in 1971/72 – even one with Conway Twitty’s early rocknroll material. He reviews the much-maligned Hot Poop record, who were a bunch of students from my alma mater of UC-Santa Barbara who recorded one record and received an absolute stonewalling as a result.

The excellent and lengthy letters section calls attention to previous pieces in Who Put The Bomp by Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus, and contains letters to the editor penned by Eddie Flowers, Kim Fowley and a dude named Doug Hinman, whom I’ve come to find published a Kinks book thirty years ago. There’s much parsing in these many pages about what real rock & roll is, and little if any complaining about the year 1972 and whether or not it’s dead. There are far too many records to collect and reissues to celebrate for that kind of talk.

Who Put The Bomp was an ur-fanzine, one of the earlier and absolute best examples of a rocknroll fanatic following his obsessions and documenting every jot and titter from his heroes. Greg Shaw is deservedly lauded for parting from the mainstream in his writing when it was warranted; for going deep into topics that no one else would touch (like this issue’s instrumental surf records coverage) and for bringing on a king’s table of rock writers over the years to write for the mag – including Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus and “Metal” Mike Saunders.

I’ve had all six of the late 70s punk-infused issues, from when it was just called Bomp! magazine, for quite some time. I’m only now coming around to trying to cobble together issues of the pre-1976 Who Put The Bomp! fanzine, of which there are 15 issues. The first one of those I got was the “British Invasion Issue”, #10-11, and it’s so massive and meaty and full of tiny type that I’ve barely cracked the code on the thing. All-in, it’s longer than most books about music you’re likely to read. All the issues before that one are too scarce and expensive for Fanzine Hemorrhage’s pocketbook, but if there’s a will there’s a way, and there’s totally a will.

So I’m concentrating on those issues between that British Invasion one and and the punk-era stuff, and recently found a lovely copy of Who Put The Bomp! #14 from Fall 1975, the one with these hodads on the cover. Like I said, the key to the issue is the instrumental surf music discography and backstory. It’s an incredible resource even now, 48 years later. I’m sure there’s probably some small-press record collector book that’d tell me a bunch of the same info I can get here, but there might not be. I happen to love this stuff and it grows on me even more as I age into the typical age bracket of the “1961 surf instrumental 45 record collector”. After glomming onto this thing I’ve been spending a bunch of time with the Surf-Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals box set, as well as with my Lost Legends of Surf Guitar comps. OK, grandpa!

I learned all about Tony Hilder, who produced Fresno’s Revels (who did “Church Key”) and was a prime mover in the early 60s California Central Valley instrumental surf scene, which I was surprised as you were to find out was a thing. Hilder then put out a series of “right-wing records” about the John Birch society and Barry Goldwater, which I’m sure are total fucking godhead. Alas, the piece says “The defeat of Barry Goldwater and the demise of surf music marked the end of Tony Hilder’s active involvement in the music industry. He is now employed as a salesman of freeze-dried food products in Southern California, writing reactionary declarations in his spare time”.

Other highlights: a complete discography and story about Dutch rock (The Outsiders, Q65, Shocking Blue etc.) and another oddly compelling discography of Beatles novelties and parodies – none of it by the Beatles, but stuff like The Twiliters’ “My Beatle Haircut”. I mean, the folks that put this stuff together, need I say, did not have the internet, or Goldmine, or anything similar. Just their own crate-digging and obsessive compiling, at a time when a used, non-picture sleeve 45 in a record store could be picked up for a nickel, dime or quarter.

And Roky Erickson is back! He’s just been released from a Texas state psychiatric hospital after being inside for five years – and he’s got a new band, Roky Erickson & Bleib Alien. He’s come to Los Angeles to play his brand-new songs, “Two-Headed Dog”, “Starry Eyes”, “Don’t Slander Me” and “Don’t Shake Me Lucifer”. Can you believe it? Greg Turner is on the scene, and gets Erickson to do a fairly coherent interview. This is then followed up with a full International Artists discography, because of course it is.

The new wave is almost here. Shaw notes in his end-of-issue column that “Big news around Hollywood is The Runaways, a group of 3 high school girls (14, 16, 18) who play like The Sweet and sing great teenage anthems, most of them written by Kerry Krome, a 13-year-old girl prodigy. They also do The Troggs’ classic “Come Now”. Remember, you read it here first.” In 1975, that was probably the case. She was actually Kari Krome, real name Carrie Mitchell, and boy does she now have a sordid and likely indisputable story to tell.

Who Put The Bomp #14 is one of those fanzines you wanna hold onto for dear life, not merely because of its centrality to a certain all-encompassing rock & roll mindset in ‘75, but as a resource to be frequently mined. I probably gave Shaw short shrift in my twenties for being what his contributors Greg Turner and Mike Saunders would call “a power pop turd”, but hey, I’ve even come around a little on some 70s power pop. Let me see if I can find a few of those other issues and I promise to meet ya here to talk about them.