Swansea Sound: “Twentieth Century”
Ira Robbins podcast interviews
Walden Pink
Arthur Brown Is Back!
Colored Vinyl: A Chronological Survey
French indie rock pix
The Beatles. Really?
“The bible of alternative rock”
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After a decade in print (1974-84), Trouser Press magazine went online in 1997. In 2002, the contents of five Trouser Press Record Guides formed the basis of a new site, which relaunched in 2020 as a music portal with features, reviews, interviews, the indexed Trouser Press archive, a forum, Trouser Press Books and much more. Use the links below (and above).
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- Billy Joel, Tchotchke Man
I watched the new documentary recently and found it extremely well-made (if long ). It put me in mind of my interview with Joel, in 1993. He was married to Christie Brinkley, in court with his former brother-in-law and promoting the River of Dreams album, which I didn’t much care for. But Billy was far more charming than I expected: oddly self-deprecating, a funny mixture of pretentious and offhand, just like he comes off in the documentary. Even though hating music critics was his default stance, I didn’t feel like an enemy in his midst. - “Another Tuneless Racket” (book bit)
Another Tuneless Racket, a monumental book series of five volumes (with a sixth in progress), attempts to tell the story of the first four years of punk, with opinionated in-depth coverage not just to the well-known bands but also to the scenes and smaller bands that provided the environment in which punk could take root. - Art Fein: Rock’s in My Head
In 2022, Trouser Press Books published Rock’s in My Head, a memoir by the fabled LA scenester Art Fein, based on 10,000 pages of journals he had kept. Art died July 30, following surgery for a broken hip. He was 79. - Never Understood So Well: The Jesus and Mary Chain
The effect is not of a book being read aloud, but of two enormously likable fellows alternately recounting their shared life story for nine mesmerizing hours. It’s weirdly intimate, almost as if they’re speaking directly to you. And with colorful inflections. It’s fucking brilliant. - When the Cramps Played the Napa Psychiatric Hospital
Living in San Francisco in the late 1970s, Philip Polarov is a writer scraping by on a series of odd jobs while attempting to turn his self-described “stream of drivel” into an Important Novel. As the last soldiers of the Beat Generation become ghosts in the North Beach neighborhood they put on the map and the Baby Beats, a new clique of their acolytes, take over the bars and coffeehouses, Philip searches for meaning, sex, drugs … and an affordable place to crash.