The Flamin’ Groovies is an American rock music band whose peak was in the 1960’s and 1970’s. They began in San Francisco in 1965, founded by Ron Greco, Cyril Jordan and Roy Loney. They are perhaps best known for their song “Shake Some Action”; a cover version by American band Cracker was later featured in the 1995 movie Clueless. The group have been called one of the forerunners of punk rock, and they also had a major influence on the power pop genre. (More from Wikipedia)
The Charlatans’ second drummer was Dan Hicks, who later formed the band Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. In the late 1970’s, Charlatans founding member Mike Wilhelm joined the Flamin’ Groovies as their lead guitarist for 6 years.
(August 2013)
The first CD of Destination: Bomp! in particular walks the listener through the chronological history of Bomp! Records, beginning with the “A” side of their very first release: “You Tore Me Down” by the Flamin’ Groovies. Greg Shaw’s liner notes about this song describe how Bomp! Records got started: “When Cyril Jordan first played me this, and the other stuff that they’d done in England (including ‘Shake Some Action’) that nobody would release, I was stunned. Then he said, ‘why don’t you put it out?’ I couldn’t think of a good reason, except of course that there was no way to distribute, promote or sell it. . . all I knew was that music this good had to come out. So we did. And that’s as good a foot to start on as any, I reckon.”
(September 2013)
The Flamin’ Groovies showed the way when their 1976 album, Shake Some Action (on Sire Records and Aim Records) moved a lot of vinyl by looking backwards to the 1960’s, vindicating Greg Shaw’s decision to step up and launch Bomp! Records by releasing their 1974 single, “You Tore Me Down” b/w “Him or Me”.
As quoted in the book by Simon Reynolds called Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past: “Greg Shaw soon decided that words weren’t enough anymore; it was time for action. He folded the magazine Bomp! and injected all of his energy into Voxx, a Bomp! [Records] subsidiary label dedicated to the new breed of post-[Flamin’] Groovies garage bands.”
(January 2015/2)
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The two songs that introduced me to Phil Gammage were on a sampler album entitled The Electric Radio Sampler Music Test (1993). The album is probably intended to be played inside record stores as an inducement to purchase albums on sale by the label who released it, Marilyn Records. It doesn’t look like much, but there is some great music on this little CD. Besides the two Phil Gammage songs, there are two by Flamin’ Groovies guitarist Chris Wilson.
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Marilyn Records was a European label that was founded by French musician Patrick Boissel in the mid-1980’s. After a number of French and Spanish releases, Marilyn began handling the sort of musicians and bands that gravitate to Bomp! Records. Suzy Shaw of Bomp! Records met Boissel at a record convention, and Marilyn Records became their distributor in Europe. One result was a great compilation album that I have of previous Bomp! Records releases called From L.A. with Love (1992) that features the Plimsouls, the Flamin’ Groovies, Stiv Bators, Jeff Dahl, the Stooges, and the Zeros.
(March 2015)
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