GROOVY: Many rock critics moan over seeing...

GROOVY: Many rock critics moan over seeing their favorite acts go ignored. So Michael Goldberg is doing something about it.

The San Francisco-based senior writer for Rolling Stone magazine has started National Records to, among other things, release the first studio album in a decade by his all-time favorite band, the Flaming Groovies. Cultists have long prized the Groovies’ ‘60s-revivalist sound and back-to-basics approach, which presaged the ‘70s punks and ‘80s new wavers.

What about a conflict of interest in a rock journalist owning a label?

“National Records is about as small and away from the mainstream record business as it’s possible to be,” Goldberg says. “So if there’s not room for me to write about music and also get a Flaming Groovies album out, it’s a sad world.”

Jim Henke, Rolling Stone’s music editor, says there’s no conflict. “What he’s doing is more from a fan’s point of view. At that scale we don’t have a problem,” he says.