Frequently Asked Questions
How did Trouser Press Books come to be?
Trouser Press was a New York-based rock music magazine that specialized in a number of genres — British Invasion history, new wave, progressive and independent-label releases — during its existence, which ran from 1974 to 1984.
In 1983, the editors of the magazine authored the first of a series of five record guides. Now it continues on as a website.
In 2022, Trouser Press co-founder Ira Robbins began regularly publishing books in the spirit of the magazine’s ethos and approach.
What’s a trouser press, anyway?
It’s an archaic (but still made and used) device used to flatten out the wrinkles and put the crease in pants. But that’s only part of the answer. In late 1973, when three New York City friends got the idea of starting a rock fanzine, they named it Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press in honor of a song by the Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band. Written by Roger Ruskin Spear (who later provided us with an explanatory drawing of the device), “Trouser Press” — a track on the group’s 1968 Urban Spaceman (aka The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse) album — supplied a good (if unintended) journalistic pun and conveyed the dada whimsy we envisioned for our little magazine. (The rest of the cumbersome name, which was eventually relieved of its “Trans-Oceanic” aspect, was an indication of our Anglo-American geo-cultural sensibilities and an acronymic tribute to England’s great music television show, Top Of The Pops, as well as the great Kinks song of that title.)
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What was the Trouser Press Record Guide?
Five books of album reviews were published under that name.
The first edition, quaintly titled The Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records, was published in hardcover and paperback in 1983 and covered the music’s roots in groups like the Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, Flamin’ Groovies and Stooges up through the techno-poppers of the early ’80s.
The New Trouser Press Record Guide, published in 1985 in hardcover and paperback, greatly expanded and updated both the stylistic and chronological scope of the coverage, taking into account the increasing popularity of CDs and other developments.
The third edition was issued under the same title (but only in paperback) in 1989, reviewing more than 6,000 records by nearly 2,000 artists in 658 pages.
The fourth edition was published in paperback in 1991. With all the updates and revisions, it ran to 764 pages, covering 2,500 artists and nearly 10,000 records. We had reached a dead end in terms of the ability to keep adding entries and updating entries ad infinitum, so we decided to start from scratch.
The Trouser Press Guide to ’90s Rock, published in early 1997, was an 846-page paperback containing almost entirely new material — 2,300 bands and 8,500 records — from the era that nominally began with Nirvana’s Nevermind. Read the preface.