eli@uw-june (Eli Messinger) (08/17/83)
For those of you who've never read Trouser Press (the title, by the way, taken from the Bonzo Dog Band) and are thinking of subscribing, I thought I'd hack a few personal comments. Many years ago when TP started out it was a terrific "little" maga- zine. They covered undiscovered bands that often went on to greater glory, and featured articles on a whole range of strangely relevant topics. They also featured collector mail-order ads in the back. As the magazine grew in stature (and shrank in number-of-pages) the ads were farmed out to a separate publication, composed mainly of collectors ads, and collector-oriented articles (e.g. discographies, etc.) A few weeks ago the last edition of the collectors mag was published -- just not enough $$ in it I guess. Looking back it seems that the split into two publications coincided with the slide of TP. They seemed to start covering more and more "safe" bands, one's that already had some underground static going. This is fine for those that aren't in the thick of things (which I guess most people aren't), but much less useful to those that are. TP still features some very fine writing, excellent auto-discographies (wherein they get the artist to comment on his/her/their catalogue) and reviews... but it's just not as much a >source< anymore. Mainly it provides auxillary facts about bands you already know, and rarely introduces you to ones you don't (except in the capsule review sections, where you don't get too much information). Good national music publications are getting harder and harder to find. With any luck the New York Rocker will publish again someday. Until then I suggest people look into Musician magazine (as well as Trouser Press). Musician covers a much wider musical spectrum than Trouser Press, generally presents its articles in greater depth, and occasionally comes up with something or someone that is not already known. ... uw-june!eli