Trouser Press

More than a decade after the magazine ended its ten-year run, Trouser Press went online in 1997. In 2002, we consolidated the contents of five Trouser Press Record Guides on a new site. Our 2020 relaunch is a digital music publication optimized for various devices. In September 1989, the week Tears for Fears released their third album, The Seeds of... Love, I interviewed both members of the duo separately for a Rolling Stone feature headlined Fear of Finishing: How Tears for Fears Took Four Years to Sprout The Seeds of Love. (Had an editor pored over my interviews, the title might well have included the word Fussy.) This interview with Curt Smith details the making of that album. Ive been doing a lot of reflecting on the past these days. Ive also been thinking about records and the stores where I used to buy them. Despite streaming, rents, corruption, consolidation, an epidemic and other deleterious factors, New York still has a number of going concerns, but I recently got it in my head to see what became of the places that are now gone. While Im not sure what value these pictures of places that used to house New York City record stores hold, some mixture of nostalgia and curiosity got me out of the house to go photograph them. In a never-before published article written in 1976, Pete Silverton gets up close and personal with Joe Strummer and the band that preceded the Clash. The main reason for seeing the 101ers is the short stocky guy with cropped dark hair intent on further mutilating his already near-to-death Telecaster Joe Strummer. There arent many other bands named after a member who isnt the clear frontperson. J. Geils comes first to mind.Manfred MannZumpano But when Kippington Lodge decided to reinvent themselves in 1969, thats what they did. They became Brinsley Schwarz. Since Grazed, the first new studio album in six years from Chicagos Eleventh Dream Day, came about largely as a result of a musician being sidelined with a serious health problem. But it wasnt COVID. I had a severe back injury from ...Read More