Under Review:

• "Bowie In Berlin: A New Career In A New Town"
• "Bomp: Saving The World One Record At A Time"
• "The Buzzard: Inside The Glory Days of WMMS and Cleveland Rock Radio"

“Bowie In Berlin: A New Career In A New Town”: With the two albums that David Bowie recorded in Berlin during 1976-1977 now justly ranked among his most important (and influential) ever, it is fascinating to return to that moment in time when, not only were his plans being kicked against by record company and past management alike, his fans, too, were watching nervously while he worked. Bowie’s last two albums, Young Americans and Station To Station, after all, went out of their way to dismiss the past specters that still overhung his name. The notion that he was now sequestered away in Berlin with the likes of Brian Eno, Robert Fripp and Iggy Pop for company only added to the sense of imminent dislocation.

And so it proved. Famously, one review of Low condemned it for being little more than a series of intros that faded out while you were still waiting for something to happen; and, while Heroes, nine months later, received a more enthusiastic response from the critics, it was Bowie’s audience, not the media, that drove these two albums into legend.

“Bowie in Berlin,” by Thomas Jerome Seabrook, is the story of how, in just three years, Bowie came to create not only Low and Heroes, but also The Idiot and Lust For Life, the two LPs that relaunched Iggy Pop; plus two live albums, Stage and Iggy’s TV Eye, plus a new studio album, Lodger… and still have time to make a movie with Marlene Dietrich. 

And, overall, it’s a great story. True, Seabrook’s writing is a lot drier than it needs to be, and his reliance on previously published sources will undoubtedly leave the die-hard Bowie Mafia complaining that there’s nothing here that they didn’t already know. But that latter fault is relevant only if you, too, know far more than is healthy about the life of David Bowie, and the former… well, Seabrook is not the first author to take his subject too seriously, and he won’t be the last. A fascinating time filled with fascinating music has now been documented by a fascinating book. Hurrah. (Paperback, 272 pages, $19.95. Jawbone Press, www.jawbonepress.com)

“Bomp: Saving The World One Record At A Time”: “From psychedelia to garage punk to power pop.” With those words, we are ushered into one of the most fascinating worlds ever to orbit Planet Rock, the story of the tiny little label that could… the perpetual underdog, the permanent under-achiever, the wide-eyed boy next door who always wanted to be a part of the music industry, and who went a long way towards reinventing it. 

From fanzine writer to record label mogul, from music critic to rock ’n’ roll editor, Greg Shaw nailed down his hobbies while he was still in his teens, and spent the rest of his life making them work for him.  The result is this gorgeous, lavish compendium, by Suzy Shaw and Mick Farren, of thoughts, notions, manifestos and photos, and page after page of glorious reprints from the greatest fanzine American rock ever read: Who Put The Bomp, successor to Mojo Navigator and sire of plain ol’ Bomp. Great swaths of the ’zine’s original pages are reprinted here, dating back to Shaw’s earliest encounters with The Doors and the Dead, forward through his lifelong love of the Flamin’ Groovies, and on to the dedication that led him to launch the Bomp label, his private shrine to the bands that he loved so much that he knew that you would, too.

Latter-day contributions from friends, admirers, co-writers and more are wrapped around the vintage pages; previously unseen photos are unearthed from the Bomp vault. This isn’t a book you sit and read in one sitting, it’s one to browse over for weeks on end, a massive magazine to which you will keep on returning. Greg Shaw’s own life story still needs to be told, and you emerge from these pages with a few questions of your own. But, the most important thing you need to know is nailed down from the outset. He believed in rock ’n’ roll. (Hardcover, 306 pages, $34.95, American Modern Books, www.ammobooks.com)

“The Buzzard: Inside the Glory Days of WMMS and Cleveland Rock Radio:” Meeting Len Goldberg was an experience for John Gorman. Newly hired as the music director at WMMS in Cleveland, Gorman was treated to a rant from the DJ with the deep, cavernous voice about how screwed up the music department was — all while Goldberg enjoyed a marijuana hit.

Yes, this was going to be interesting. In his new book, Gorman tells how he and his shaggy-haired band of free-form insurgents brought about a metamorphosis that would change the world of FM radio forever. An underdog story if there ever was one, the tale of how WMMS went from ratings tragedy to a national broadcasting monolith, thanks to an adventurous playlist and outrageous, renegade radio personalities that were plugged into what their audiences wanted.

Written in an easy manner, parading zany, wonderful stories in a coherent, wildly entertaining style, Gorman’s book reveals much about the inner workings of WMMS, telling never-before-heard stories, such as the one about Dennis Wilson’s nervous breakdown at the station.

Rare black-and-white photographs of staff and rock ’n’ roll superstars such as Gene Simmons and Mick Fleetwood, to name a few, put faces with names, adding to the richness of Gorman’s tale of his 13-year run at the station. If only radio today was as energized as this lot. (www.grayco.com)