Trouser Press, One of the All-Time Great Music Magazines, Finally Gets an Anthology: Book Review
18.03.2024 - 14:37
/ variety.com
Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Despite and also because of its puzzling inside-joke name, Trouser Press was one of the greatest music magazines in history. It existed for just a decade — from 1974 through 1984 — but in the process, it nurtured the careers of thousands of musicians and exponentially more fans, future musicians, writers, music executives and others.
But unlike nearly every major music publication, it had no anthology or collection of its greatest work until the release last Friday of “Zip It Up! The Best of Trouser Press Magazine 1974-1984,” a sprawling 440-page 50th anniversary collection of its greatest articles that is practically a real-time history of some of the best rock music of that era — from the Who, the Rolling Stones and David Bowie to the Sex Pistols and the Clash to U2 and the Cure, and dozens more. Launched in early 1974 by a group of Who fanatics/British-rock obsessives — and edited for its entire existence by Ira A.
Robbins — the magazine was initially written on typewriters and mimeographed; the first copy cost a quarter. That first issue, which naturally featured the Who’s Pete Townshend on its cover, garnered its creators a humorous letter from Townshend himself (recapped in full in this book’s introduction).
Trouser Press — the name comes from a song of the same title by the ‘60s British pop-comedy group the Bonzo Dog Band — was off and running. Over the next decade, the magazine, which arose in a year when rock was dominated by the Eagles, progressive rock and arena rockers like the Who, Stones and Led Zeppelin, spoke to fans of the British rock that its creators were raised on, but also introduced them to virtually every important new act that arose in those years — and when
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