Greg Shaw

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Greg Shaw (January 1949 - October 19, 2004) was a Los Angeles-based fanzine publisher, music historian and record label owner. He grew up near San Francisco, California.

It was as a young teenager that he started writing about rock and roll music. His first zines were Tolkien related, but among them was also a mimeographed sheet called Mojo Navigator (full title, "Mojo-Navigator Rock and Roll News"). It was started in 1966 by David Harris, with Greg's help, and it is said to have been an early inspiration for Rolling Stone magazine. In the 1970s he moved to Los Angeles with wife and partner Suzy Shaw and started another fanzine, this time a magazine with a glossy cover called Who Put the Bomp, popularly known as simply Bomp!, or Bomp magazine. Greg's writing appeared in Bomp!, of which he was editor and publisher, as well as Creem, Phonograph Record Magazine, and occasionally, Rolling Stone. He also wrote a book about Elton John and another one about The Doors while on staff as a writer for United Artists records. Bomp featured many writers who would later become prominent, including Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Richard Meltzer, and Ken Barnes, the current music editor of USA Today. KROQ legend Rodney Bingenheimer, and many others, also contributed to Bomp.

During the 1970s, Greg worked for Sire Records, and was instrumental in the signing of The Flamin' Groovies, a band that he also managed for a couple of years. In 1974 Bomp! became a record label, and Greg released records by Devo, The Weirdos, and worked with several legendary artists including Iggy Pop, Stiv Bators and the Dead Boys. He signed power pop and new wave acts such as Shoes, The Plimsouls and The Romantics. Bomp! Records was a record store for a couple of years, and was also the first independent distributor of music in the U.S. at a time when major labels dominated record distribution.

In the 1980s, he helped launch the garage revival scene with bands such as The Miracle Workers and The Pandoras, and also released music by Spacemen 3. Greg released recordings by The Brian Jonestown Massacre in the mid to late-1990s, resulting in their signing to TVT Records. He appears in the Sundance award-winning documentary Dig!, a movie about The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. In 1994, he associated with Patrick Boissel's Alive Records, a label with music by The Black Keys, Two Gallants (band), Soledad Brothers, Black Diamond Heavies, and Thomas Function.

In addition, Greg was known as a record collector, archivist, and historian, and started the "Pebbles" series in the mid-1980s, which Rhino Records used as inspiration for its Nuggets reissue series , according to producer Gary Stewart. The original Nuggets was released in 1972, and produced by Lenny Kaye.

Greg Shaw died of heart failure in Los Angeles at the age of 55. He is survived by his son Mike, born in the sixties from Suzy Shaw, his second son Tristan, and his brother Robert.