Yow! Here’s one to make you feel every one of your years…On March 16th, beloved music magazine Trouser Press, which existed for roughly a decade from 1974-1984, will be throwing a party for itself and their readership at Bowery Electric in New York City. The mag started out as a mimeographed, hand-stapled fanzine with a deeply Anglophilic slant, with mainstream and even Prog being covered. But by the time that its distribution finally made its way down South to where I lived in 1981, it had almost fully changed its stripes to be the premiere magazine covering the New Wave movement at just the time it was starting to make a little commercial headway.

I rode that mag hard for the next three years, subscribing and keeping each issue in a periodical binder to this day. Often buying any scant issue that I might see in a record store or record show. The list of music I was made aware of in those pages would go on for days. Many was the time that I would read a review or bit of copy then have the top of my heard blown off by the actual music once I found it in the bins.

I might have never heard of Gina X Performance for decades had the writer of their piece on the New Romantic movement not name checked them as part of the Blitz playlist…years before I even knew there was a Blitz playlist! In one of the biggest time-released musical depth charges I’ve ever experienced, a rave review by editor Ira Robbins of the Trees album “Sleep Convention” got on my want list for an astounding 36 years before I could finally find and buy a copy! And it when I did, it was all that and more!

The event is also being commemorated by a fat trade paperback dedicated to the magazine’s full history, with 440 pages taken from the magazine’s archives. All presented and annotated by editor-in-chief Ira Robbins; the prime mover of the magazine and caretaker of the mag’s legacy website, where there is still a forum where this Monk participates on a daily basis. The book will set you back a modest $25.00 and cover’s the whole TP spectrum, so it’s not just New Wave under the microscope.

• ZIP IT UP! The Best Of Trouser Press Maagzine 1974-1984
• Trouser Press Books
• Softcover
• 440 pp.
• Edited and annotated by Ira Robbins
• $25.00

IT’S A PARTY PARTY WEEKEND

The party to kick off the book and the second half of the Trouser Press Century [someone had to say if first…] will be held on March 16 at Bowery Electric and will of course have musical events happening. Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey of the legendary dBs will be the headliners with The Smithereens’ Dennis Diken [who printed the first TP T-shirts way back when] helming a one night only supergroup of musicians called The Shirt Event, and the Washington D.C. Pop Punk band Dot Dash. Doors at 6 and as The Romantics would have it, 21 and over only. Tickets are $25.00 with [minor] fees but if you have cash in your pocket, why not bump up to VIP level for $20 more and get a copy of the book at the launch party as well for only $45.00 with fees? If I lived in the NYC zone you know I’d be there. Act accordingly.

• Trouser Press 50th Birthday Party/Book Launch Party
• Saturday, March 16th
• Bowery Electric, NYC
• 6 PM doors
• Peter Holsapple + Chris Stamey
• Dennis Diken’s The Shirt Event [supergroup]
• Dot Dash
• 21 + Over
• $25.00

BOOK PREORDER

LAUNCH PARTY TICKETS

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