Dec 14

AIP Records

AIP RECORDS
 
 
AIP Records  is a record label that was started by Greg Shaw’s Bomp! Records, being launched in 1983 to continue the Pebbles series. The abbreviation AIP stands for “Archive International Productions”.  In 2007, AIP Records released the Pebbles, Volume 11 CD as the last of the albums in this landmark series.   (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
After a few false starts, the Poppees were signed by Greg Shaw as the first new band for Bomp! Records – Bomp is still going strong, issuing the Poppees anthology album this year among other great records, and has several allied labels, such as AIP, Alive, Total Energy, etc.
 
(December 2010)
 
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But Nuggets turned out to be just the beginning.  Though many other Nuggets compilation albums would follow that concentrated on the better-known American bands of the garage rock era, it remained for music historian and legendary record collector Greg Shaw to begin to unearth an astonishing wealth of 45’s released by local American bands on tiny labels that almost no one had heard of before.  Beginning in 1978, and under the Pebbles name, Shaw’s AIP label and his alias BFD label put out close to 100 compilation albums.  While the Nuggets bands had the backing of major record labels, a lot of the Pebbles songs sounded like they had actually been recorded in a garage. 
 
(January 2013)
 
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One name that has come up repeatedly in these 40-odd posts is Greg Shaw, a widely respected music historian and the founder of Bomp! Records – which also includes the labels AIP Records, Voxx Records, Total Energy Records, and Alive Naturalsound Records (usually just called Alive Records) – and their associated Bomp! mailorder music service.  It would not surprise me at all if I haven’t mentioned Greg Shaw in a third of these UARB articles.  In addition, more than a few of the Under-Appreciated Rock Bands have released albums or EP’s on one of the Bomp!-affiliated labels.  If I also included the albums on non-Bomp labels that I ordered through the Bomp! mailorder service, close to half of the UARB’s and UARA’s would likely have a Bomp! connection. 

 

(May 2013)

 
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In 1983, another long series of Pebbles LP’s came out on a brand-new label called AIP Records (standing for “Archive International Productions”) that was openly affiliated with Bomp! Records.  As it happened, the very next disc, Pebbles, Volume 11 – with catalogue #AIP-10001 – would turn out to be my favorite album in the entire series. 

 

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Even the most recent Pebbles CD’s on AIP normally have a copyright notice for BFD Productions (clearly a reference back to the original label for the albums, BFD Records). 

 

(July 2013)
 
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GONN is another legendary garage rock band; their amazing song "Blackout of Gretely” was slated to be included on the original Nuggets album but was omitted due to its length (4:29 – most garage rock tracks clock in at 3:00 or less).  But Greg Shaw had included this song as a bonus track on the reissue on AIP Records of Pebbles, Volume 1 CD and also put their follow-up single “Doin’ Me In” on the Pebbles, Volume 10 CD.   

 
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I have been collecting Pebbles albums for around 30 years and have also purchased many, many other albums that have come out on Greg Shaw’s record labels:  Bomp, Voxx, AIP, Total Energy, and Alive.  There have also been several compilation albums that have collected highlights from Bomp! Records releases over the previous several years, and I have most of those as well.  One of the most comprehensive is Destination: Bomp!, a two-CD set that is subtitled “The Best of Bomp! Records’ First 20 Years”.  Bomp celebrates its 40th anniversary next year. 

 

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One of the other garage rock bands that I wrote about is the Outcasts.  They won the statewide Battle of the Bands contest in 1966, the high water mark of the garage rock era – furthermore, they won in Texas, which probably had the highest concentration of 1960’s garage rock and psychedelic rock bands in the nation.  The AIP Records series Highs in the Mid-Sixties concentrates on regional musical scenes rather than groupings of obscure songs from across the nation, and 5 of the 23 albums in that series are on Texas bands. 

 

(September 2013)

 

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The Communists could not keep rock and roll out of the country entirely. 

 

I have two delightful albums in my collection entitled Surfbeat Behind the Iron Curtain that were released several years ago by AIP Records.  They feature mostly instrumental recordings made by Russian and Eastern European bands that were evidently officially sanctioned by the Communist governments.  The small number of these recordings made it necessary for the label to create a faux “battle of the bands” between these groups and similar sounds produced by Western bands of the same time period.  The music is actually quite good though fairly tame.  

 

(April 2015/1)

 

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Anyway, once Kill City broke the ice, Bomp! Records and their affiliated labels like BFD Records, Voxx Records, AIP Records, Mohawk Records, and others began pressing LP’s by the truckload almost immediately.  The label’s first compilation album, The Best of Bomp, Volume One was originally released in 1978.  The Pebbles Series of 1960’s garage rock and psychedelic rock songs that number nearly 100 albums in all began shipping in 1978; besides Pebbles, the various series (both LP’s and CD’s) include the Highs in the Mid-Sixties Series, The Continent Lashes Back, Best of Pebbles, Great Pebbles, etc.  Their other reissues of 1960’s music include the English Freakbeat Series, the Rough Diamonds Series, and the Electric Sugar Cube Flashbacks Series. 


 
(December 2017)
 
Last edited: April 3, 2021