Since I first blasted their Raw Pie cassette I’ve been hooked. This band literally encompasses everything that rock and roll should be. And they bring the fucking tunes to back their attitudes earning the right to rip off Carl from Aqua Teen and Joey’s ghost as much as they damn well please.

Oops Baby Records who not only has one of my favorite logos (look it up jerk) also now put out one of my favorite 7″s of the year. This ones worth it for the cover art alone. Order soon in hopes of getting the limited pepperoni red colored wax.  Or don’t and possibly get brass knuckled up by the band.  Your choice numb-nuts.

Why did you choose to carry on Bomp yourself?

It was never an issue or a choice, it’s just what I do and have always done. Greg was, of course, the creative genius, I never signed a band or wanted to, but I was always right there taking care of the daily business. Greg hadn’t been actively involved in the company for quite a while before his death, he was sick for a long time. Patrick (my husband and owner of ALIVE RECORDS) and I had been pretty much running things for years by the time of his death. Greg did sign some bands not long before he died, but he didn’t come into the office or have much to do with the actual day to day work, we would take care of all that for him. Of course I will not add any new bands to the label, that was Greg’s part of the business and I wouldn’t presume to add to his body of work, but Patrick and I work with what is already there, remastering and reissuing some of the existing titles. And I have always run the mail-order by myself, so nothing changed there.

Bomp! has gone through almost every aspect of the music business: magazine, label and distributor, how important was it that Bomp! have complete control over what it did and wanted to do?

Suzy and Greg (circa 1970)

Greg and I were both VERY independent, neither one of us wanted other people making decisions for us. That’s all the fun of what we do anyway, we come up with ideas and make them happen, or not, sometimes things fail miserably, but at least it was our own doing. Our brief association with the majors made us very hesitant to try it again. Patrick is the same way, we prefer to do it our way or not at all. There are inevitable conflicts when you are working with other companies or people; everyone has their own way of doing things. We like to work alone.

How has Bomp! managed to stay one step in front of the rest without having a “commercial” hit?

I’m not sure we STAYED one step in front of rest, but we were probably one step ahead to begin with! Greg was a terrible businessman in spite of his brilliance, an absolute failure at making money. (See my stories in the Bomp! books for a good laugh and the evidence!) He would come up with amazing ideas… the first rock and roll fanzine, the first indie label, the first distro for indie records, etc, etc. It’s a long list of “firsts”. But he couldn’t make the connections needed to make things happen, or focus on one thing for too long, always off to the next project. Money and talent have little to do with one another, it’s not unusual. Greg’s solution to our inability to have a hit record was to hire a staff of people with suits and ties; he figured they knew how to talk to the other people with suits and ties, a talent that we lacked. Unfortunately the “business manager” he hired was actually a failed insurance agent, whose main advice had to do with building shelves. Going bankrupt? Build some shelves! The advice didn’t really work out too well and it cost us a fortune. (Between the shelves AND his salary…) We eventually got rid of the staff of 12 and downsized Bomp!, our attempt to play with the big boys was all a huge waste of time and money. The closest thing we had to a “hit” nearly bankrupted us anyway, the staff had forced the initial sales, but the records came back later. (That was the Plimsouls record) Lesson learned, keep it small!

How important do you think rock and roll is to America ?

Not very. I wish I could say there was a huge market, or that there was about to be, but it’s always been a niche. Of course I’m talking about the style of rock and roll that we do, to define the term. But America is a big place, and I’m talking about percentages here, probably 99% of America doesn’t care one bit about rock and roll. On the other hand there is a very vocal and enthusiastic minority that is passionate about music. Labels like us will survive selling to that niche, it’s pretty stable. But I’ve seen some labels try to expand beyond the market and go right down the toilet.

Has Bomp! changed how it handles business now that we are in the digital age?

Absolutely, I can’t think of anything that’s the same as it was 10 years ago, or even last year really, it goes very fast. We have to constantly adapt to the changes in the ways of doing business. 10 years ago our catalogue was print, now it’s all on line. And we do a lot of digital sales now too, as most labels do. We’re entirely dependent on the computers. If the computers are down, the only thing we can do is maybe clean the warehouse or go home, there’s not one thing we do that isn’t all about the computer. I wouldn’t turn back the clock; I like it much better now. I look back on the pre-computer days and wonder how I did it. It seems insanely problematic. We are not inclined to think that the pre-computer era was “the good old days”, which I think a lot of people do. I love technology! Mike Stax found a GREAT quote from Greg, from back in the 70s; it’s an astonishingly accurate prediction of what actually came about. I didn’t make this up, this is printed in a magazine from 1979!

Greg Shaw

“Imagine 20 years from now, if every teenager could sit in his bedroom with a computer screen and terminal (and stereo speakers attached) and call up anything he wanted, from Billy Ward & the Dominoes to Ed Banger & the Nosebleeds-see what they looked like, read extracts from fanzines and historians who wrote about them, cross-referenced to other artists and sources, and above all to hear the music, and maybe even see film footage if any exists.” GREG SHAW

That shows you how far ahead of his time Greg was… he was waiting for the internet all along, and when it came along he jumped right on it.

Do you have any bands connected with Bomp! that were your personal favorites?

Sure, I have a ton of BOMP! stuff that I play all the time, too many to list really, and on a personal level I was very good friends with Stiv Bators, he was hilarious, we were good friends. And of course Nikki Corvette is a sweetie, and all the guys from the Nerves/Plimsouls are very nice. We are working with them now to put out unreleased material, just got a great live Nerves LP in and a Breakaways to follow soon. Iggy is fantastic, we’ve gotten to be good friends since Greg died. He’s been very nice to me. We’re working with him and James, maybe some new projects in the works there too.

What do you listen to around the office?

I have a few thousand tunes on our Ipod… a lot of the classics, Stones, Who, Beatles, Kinks, and the newer ALIVE stuff is a warehouse favorite…. half of my Ipod is the ALIVE label….. Thomas Function, Black Diamond Heavies, Henry’s Funeral Shoe, Black Keys. Yeah, I know, I’m prejudiced, but I really like the label, a classic sound with a modern twist.

How much influence do you think you have had on pop music since Bomp!’s inception?

That’s very hard to judge, I think Greg had a big influence of people with his writing and ideas. Whether Bomp! changed anything musically on a large scale, impossible to say. I’m sure Greg influenced the whole Nuggets type reissues, no doubt about that.

What is in the cards for Bomp as time goes on?

We plan to keep the mail order going, of course, and maybe another book or two. The newest book, “Bomp! – Born In the Garage”, will be out in a few weeks, check on bompstore.com for details. I think it’s important for me to put back into print the material from BOMP! magazine, there’s so much great stuff there. All the early writings of Lester Bangs and Ken Barnes and Greil Marcus, the true greats of rock journalism. And on the label side, the back catalogue is enormous and just keeping that in print is a huge job. I wont be bored!

What is it about vinyl?

People are very emotional about vinyl, they see it as being more “real” that cds. Some people think it sounds better, some people love looking at the covers, some people collect all the colors of vinyl, just for the fun of it. I love it because you can’t download it, we lose a lot of cd sales from file-sharing and the like. We do a lot of vinyl sales now, which is a surprise because we thought the natural progression would be for it to vanish. Far from it…

Bo Diddley or Chuck Berry?

Go, Johnnie go! Greg was a big fan of Chuck Berry too, one of our favorites.

A lot has been made of “Metallic KO”. As a live album, it is horrible. Even as a bootleg, which it isn’t really as two of the band members signed off on it, it’s pretty low quality. It documents the disgraceful last performance of a band way past it’s prime. The songs are badly done and feature corny piano prominently and Iggy is spouting so much foul and annoying shit even a listener decades removed from the show kind of wants to deck him. The whole thing just sounds like what it was; a drunken druggy bad time. But people keep buying it and listening to it, me too. Nick Kent from New Music Express called it a “masterpiece” back in they day, and, not that I care what Nick Kent thinks, I guess I know what he means.

“Metallic KO” represents the final ugly downfall of an ugly confrontational band, and in that it is perfect. Every second of that performance of February 1974 is charged with malice. The crowd hates Iggy, Iggy hates the crowd, the band hates Iggy, Iggy hates the band. Iggy loves eggs and ice cubes and baiting the biker gang he has invited to his own show to “do their worst”. And they did. How Punk Rock is that?

And that is really the genius of this recording. It represents the death of one thing which gave birth to something else. The Sixties were dead and buried in a shallow grave and every one was getting the feeling that the world was several shades meaner. The Stooges had been the voice of the ugly crazy fringe when they began, but by the time of their demise their nihilism was catching. You can hear on this record the blueprint of the Punk Rock aesthetic being lain out, line by obscene line. “Metallic KO” went on to find it’s place on a lot of turntables inspiring people to new heights of angry depths. It was the forest fire that cleared the way for new growth.

But I could be wrong I sometimes am. Put it on and see what you make of it.

Pink Lincolns - Back From The Pink Room (Reissue)

I recently read an interview with Iggy Pop where he was quoted as saying “Miami’s a good place to eat a banana.”  I have no idea what that means, but the first song on this album is called Miami, and Iggy once drew the album art for one of the band’s other releases, so I figured that this quote was somehow relevant.

“Back From The Pink Room” begins with the sounds of sirens, alarms, and gunfire and goes from there.  The Pink Lincolns are punk rock in the ‘80s hardcore vein.  Fast, angry, no bullshit, fuck everybody, 2-3-4.  Originally released in 1988 this is the Lincolns’ first album and definitely one of their best.  The re-release comes to us from Jailhouse Records on a really nice lookin’ slab of splatter vinyl.  It’s got three bonus tracks not on the original (Paper Girls, Obscene Phone Call, and I Do (German Version).   And it also contains one of my favorite punk rock songs of all time… but more on that later.

The Lincolns hail from Tampa, Florida which judging by songs like I’ve Got A Gun must have some rough areas.  Miami can’t be all that safe either as they refer to it as an “urban battleground” and let everyone know that “the only way to walk my streets is with your hand around a gun.”  So I guess Disney World is out?

Other song topics range from not selling out (Not For Sale), to wasting your life in an easy chair (Bad T.V.), to the trappings of suburban life (Suburbicide), to stealing things at rummage sales (Velvet Elvis), and to being so polite that you hate yourself and everyone else (I’m So Polite).  The icing on the cake however is I’ve Got My Tie On.  It’s not only my favorite Pink Lincolns song; it’s arguably one of the best punk songs of all time.  There was a brief period of time when I was in college working a desk job at a brokerage firm that I would listen to this song all the damn time.  It’s one of the number one reasons I quit and changed majors.  If you’ve never heard this song, this album is worth buying for just that.  And next time you go to Florida to visit your grandparents, bring a gun.