Greg Shaw 1

GREG SHAW – Early Power Pop Releases

In the early 1970’s, when the concept-album craze, side-long classical-style keyboard exercises, and other similar pretensions in rock music started to run their course, many rock scribes began to search for redemption for popular music by a return to the carefree energy of the 1960’s. No one quite got it right as to what actually came to pass, but Greg Shaw – publisher of Mojo Navigator, Who Put the Bomp and other storied fanzines, some of which actually predated Rolling Stone – put his faith in what he called “power-pop”: teenage pop music in the standard 3-minute format but backed up with a hard-edged punk rock aesthetic. Pete Townshend coined the term power pop in a 1967 interview to describe the music that his band the Who and Small Faces played; many of the Beatles’ mid-period singles are also in that style, such as “Paperback Writer” and “Day Tripper”. Among American bands, “Time Won’t Let Me” by the Outsiders and “Go All the Way” by the Raspberries are early power-pop hit songs.

By 1971, the term “punk rock” had already been applied retrospectively by Greg Shaw as well as Greil Marcus to American bands such as Question Mark and the Mysterians, the Standells, the Seeds, the Shadows of Knight, and the Kingsmen who managed to score some hit songs during the height of the British Invasion.

Unfortunately, the power-pop movement was somewhat overwhelmed by punk rock and new wave, but some marvelous records were pressed nonetheless with some success. In late 1974, Greg Shaw’s first release on his Bomp! Records record label were two tracks from 1972 album sessions by the Flamin’ Groovies that the band could not get anyone to release. The “A” side was “You Tore Me Down”, backed with a fine treatment of the old Paul Revere and the Raiders song “Him or Me”. As Shaw put it: “All I knew was that music this good had to come out. . . . And that’s as good a foot to start on as any, I reckon.”

(April 2010)