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.)
