Trouser Press Magazine Archive | Trouser Press
Trouser Press magazine published a total of 95 issues between 1974 and 1984. They’ve all been scanned and posted here. The contents are searchable within each issue. Click here for an index of every review, article, column, flexi-disc and news item that ever appeared in the magazine.
TP 71, March 1982
Excellent use of mirrors in this hotel lobby shot of Genesis by Ebet Roberts. And the coverline matches. Oh, weren’t we just so clever? In the corner cut, we kept taunting newsstand buyers with the inclusion of free flexi-disc records — in subscriber copies only. As a marketing gambit, it worked — a lot of people went from buying single issues to becoming subscribers, which was a boon for our cash flow.
TP 72, April 1982
Eight years after deciding that Trouser Press would be a clever name for a music magazine we began to tire of the marketing problems it engendered. Newsstands rarely racked us in the right section, advertisers didn’t take us seriously, suppliers invariably asked for an explanation. As much as we loved the significance and idiosyncrasy, it seemed obvious that a rock magazine by any other name would sell better, and we finally decided to find out if that was true. Test-marketing this issue with two alternate covers, one of them named The Beat, proved nothing, so we got over our anxiety and went back. Yellow cover shot by our friend Godlis. Click the cover image to see the alternate Beat cover.
TP 73, May 1982
After April’s inconclusive name experiment, we dropped that project and figured we’d go back to the “let it rock!” slogan (for one more issue, as it happened). The cover photo of Der Stingle is by Bob Leafe; the inset shots are by Laura Levine (Stewart Copeland) and Ebet Roberts (Andy Summers). Our newfound editorial interest in synthesizers was a moderately successful effort to attract equipment advertisers.
TP 74, June 1982
We didn’t always have such a great relationship with Joan Jett — a negative (OK, nasty) review of her first album elicited an angry letter from her and a venomous missive from her manager/producer. But that didn’t stop us, a bunch of years later, from putting her on the cover with an article that we pointedly titled “Selling Records Is the Best Revenge.” Cover photo (surrounded by black hearts in honor of Jett’s label) by Ron Akiyama. Out goes “let it rock!,” in comes “the beat!”
TP 75, July 1982
“Nick the Knife” Lowe could certainly be taken at face value when he told us, “I was never an angry young man.” Unfortunately, the chilly B.C. Kagan photograph we chose to run on the cover made him look like someone who’d never been to sleep, either. Actually, it’s a pretty great cover of a down-to-earth guy who has never pretended to be anything he wasn’t.
TP 76, August 1982
Kind of a matched set with the preceding cover, eh? Photographer B.C. Kagan, a talented and frequent contributor to Trouser Press, got the assignment again, but her subjects this time look warm, relaxed and well rested. Stylee cover design, as usual, by longtime Trouser Press art director Judy Steccone.
TP 77, September 1982
Finally, on our third try, a gorgeous Blondie cover to be proud of. Brian Aris took this snazzy studio shot of the sextet, a chic study in black and platinum. The article inside was an autodiscography assembled by staffer (and longtime singles columnist) Jim Green from his interviews with five of them.
TP 78, October 1982
Roman Szolkowski, the Trouser Press regular responsible for the monthly triple-sec-irony cartoon Don’t Believe a Word!, returned to the front of the book after a 63-issue breather to paint this excellent likeness of the Who to accompany excerpts from Richard Barnes’ Maximum R&B book. For those keeping score, this is the sixth and final appearance by the Who on the cover of Trouser Press.
TP 79, November 1982
B.C. Kagan took this idyllic Go-Go’s picture on a summery cover for a late fall issue, one boasting “more pages! new features!” Our bounteous folio count, in fact, was 64 pages (plus four for the cover), while the new features included a nifty question column, a useful listing of upcoming album releases and a collection of record and video charts.
TP 80, December 1982
More pages … new features! … lots of type … small pictures … Actually, it’s a fine issue, jam-packed with solid contents, just a bit hard to explain on the cover. Adam had been a big seller for us on the cover of TP 69, so we didn’t pass up the opportunity to slap a snap of him on the cover when we could.