Keeping Rock ‘n’ Roll Alive

Rock label pioneer Bomp Records and its imprint, Alive, take rock ‘n’ roll very seriously

By Michael Saltzman

Photo by Evans Vestal Ward

The offices of Bomp Records are hidden deep in the middle of central Burbank, in a line of identical warehouses off throbbing Victory Boulevard, right beside a climate control corporation. Outside, the scene is quiet, bright and industrial. The hot blue sky hangs overhead like a heavy blanket. Inside, however, it’s stone-cold rock ‘n’ roll.

Patrick Boissel, the French-born, existentially skinny label boss, is playing me the latest signing to his Alive imprint: a band called the Black Diamond Heavies that hails from the American South. Their music is anarchic and propulsive. The singer’s voice sounds whiskey-shot. The drummer, Boissel tells me, comes from a well-known family of bourbon distillers.

The music tears through the chilly, cavernous warehouse. All around us, metal racks and scuffed wooden shelves overflow with records. Famous names from Bomp’s past are everywhere: Iggy Pop, Devo, the Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Over the stairs hangs an imposing poster of Greg Shaw, Bomp’s late, legendary and flaxen-haired founder. He wears a turtleneck sweater and a naïve, hesitant expression. In his hands is an early Bomp single: “Punk-a-rama” by Venus and the Razorblades.

If the present and future of the Bomp family belong to Boissel, with his Alive imprint and the spate of raw rootsy groups he’s been discovering across America, then its past still belongs – and always will – to Shaw. He watches over all goings-on like a god on the wall.

“Greg really had an idea of what rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be,” Boissel says. “He always said to me, ‘This is a serious art form. This is not a secondary art.’”

Bomp was founded by Greg and Suzy Shaw, who met in the heady environs of San Francisco circa 1966, where Suzy was a teenage runaway evading the law.

“I was sleeping under a tree in Golden Gate Park,” she says, “and I would come up once a day to panhandle for something to eat. I went up to Greg and he said, ‘You can stay at my house.’ I think he thought I was a woman who could really collate a fanzine.”

Shaw was just starting to produce Mojo-Navigator Rock & Roll News, one of the very first rock ‘n’ roll fanzines and an early inspiration to magazines like Rolling Stone. But Shaw’s smudged, mimeographed sheets were far more mysterious than those later glossies. Cursory news items ran down the page like words on a psychedelic ticker tape machine: “Howlin’ Wolf is coming to the Avalon in 2 weeks … Jefferson Airplane will have an album out August 15 … looking for a Yugoslav electric kazoo player?”

Mojo-Navigator eventually gave way to Bomp, which ran for 21 issues through the 1970s and featured contributions from a

virtual who’s who of early rock writers, including Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus.

By then, the Shaws had moved to Los Angeles and in 1974 they released their first single as Bomp Records: “You Tore Me Down,” a searing piece of wax by proto-punk combo the Flamin’ Groovies. Over the years to follow, the label stuck unflinchingly to Shaw’s garage-rock guns; while oversized bands like Led Zeppelin and the Who were taking rock into the arenas, Bomp was offering raw, pithy, home-brewed rock ‘n’ roll. In so doing, he helped pave the way for a startling series of movements, from power pop to punk to new wave to the ’80s garage-rock revival.

But it took more than just Greg to keep the label alive. While he scoured for bands, partied, networked, wrote rabidly and designed Bomp’s grand vision, Suzy paid the bills and made sure orders were actually shipped.

“He thought really big and, for him, everything was very dramatic and part of a big scheme,” says Suzy. “I thought, ‘All right, I put records in a box for a living.’”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, their romance had long since fizzled.

“We weren’t really a couple for very long,” Suzy notes. “We were business partners. We just forgot to get divorced.”

On a business trip to Europe in 1993, Suzy met Patrick Boissel and they soon married. Boissel, who had worked in underground music in France and Spain running labels and managing bands, moved his Alive operations under the Bomp umbrella. Greg, meanwhile, had grown ill from untreated diabetes and was receding from active duty.

“I don’t think he really set foot in the office from 1994,” Suzy says. “It was Patrick’s label that sustained Bomp the last 10 years.”

Greg died Oct. 19, 2004, of heart failure. According to Suzy, no new music will ever again be released on the Bomp label. The vision has passed with the visionary.

But Boissel’s Alive imprint is keeping the family spirit, well, alive. His current roster includes Beatles-esque guitar crunch (Buffalo Killers); keyboard-heavy garage-rock (SSM); and literate roots-punk (Trainwreck Riders). His best-known discovery, the Ohio-based Black Keys, have built a wide international following for their thick, rippling blues-rock, following their 2002 Alive Records debut. In September, they released their fourth album, “Magic Potion,” on Nonesuch Records – with Boissel’s blessing.

“I don’t want to grow too much,” he says. “The more you grow, the more records you need to sell. We try to find the best bands possible and put out their debuts.”

In the high-ceilinged warehouse he plays me another fresh find. They’re called Radio Moscow. Their drummer rides the beat like a dirt bike.

“Greg always considered Bomp to be part of a long legacy of bohemians,” Boissel says. “That includes beatniks, hippies, punks, whatever you want to call it.”

From the stereo, Radio Moscow’s guitarist scales a furious, psychedelic lead, all the way to the rafters.

“We try to keep that going,” he says. “It’s a state of mind.”

For more information on Bomp and Alive Records, visit www.bomp.com.

Verdugo Monthly