FYI -- Trouser Press Returns

Later editions - I did not rate from browsing in bookstores.

Oxymoron alert!

(And don't let my lame sense o' humour mask the fact that the 4th Edition of Les Trouser Press did a little thing called Changing My Life Forever.) (Of course, waking up every day does that, too, but that don't get me into muzak like the Ex and other stuff, and it's hard to read "waking up" - the Trouser Press Guide offers turnable pages & shit.)

You're not kidding! Just check out this review: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=Abu1ibka9jakx

Great on things like Thin White Rope, but kinda weak on quite a lot of other things.

I dunno if I'd agree with much of it, actually I do know, I dont.

For instance who is this? Raised on William S. Burroughs and Philip K. Dick, and inhabiting a science-fiction-now world of industrial depression, [band name here] produced some of the most confrontational and unpleasantly fascinating music of recent years, ostensibly as a means to radicalize the listener into abandoning bourgeois romanticism for a realistic view of life. Umm, well I can see what the writer is doing here. Not quite how I'd describe the Dave Matthews band, but there y'all go. As I always say, different strokes n'all.

Actually - my idea to improve the site, offer a 'blanked out' version of the descriptions which replaces band names and song / album titles and you have to guess who it is.

http://trouserpress.com/forum/list.php?f=1

Just read this again today and thought I'd share; it's pulled from the online version. This has to be one of my favorite entries in the Trouser Press guide, both for its hilarity and dead-on accuracy. Emphasis on the essential lines (i.e., the majority of the entry) is all mine:

While widely admired and frequently imitated, Jane's Addiction (now in a 21st century second go-'round, following an interval of Porno for Pyros and a short solo career) is/was pretentious, tasteless and blatantly self-indulgent. The obnoxious Los Angeles glam-punk poseurs recorded most of their debut album (pressed on clear vinyl) onstage at the Roxy in Hollywood. New York-born Perry Farrell sings in an aggressive womanly warble as his three bandmates pound out competent but unoriginal post-'70s rock. "My Time" and the dramatic "Jane Says," both played with acoustic guitar, show the group capable of moderate musical achievement, but most of the record — especially "Sympathy" (for the Devil) and Lou Reed's "Rock 'n' Roll" — sounds like the work of an incompetent Aerosmith cover band. And Farrell's effete habit of interjecting the word "motherfucker" merely frosts the album's maggotry.

As guitarist David Navarro and the lumbering rhythm section work themselves into a dull sub-Led Zeppelin metallic stupor on the rambling Nothing's Shocking, Farrell screeches smugly self-obsessed lyrics — repeating favorite lines over and over — as if his idiotic free-form musings were somehow significant. A new version of the two-chord "Jane Says" contains an even more mannered vocal performance; the rest of the amorphously tuneless material runs either hot ("Had a Dad") or cool ("Summertime Rolls"), with a laughably crude funk-rhythm detour ("Idiots Rule"). Farrell's skillful front-cover sculpture of two nude women — joined at the shoulder and hip — with pierced nipples and their heads ablaze is the album's only convincing evidence of creativity at work.

Pulling himself further into a private world of self- congratulatory decadence (the inclusion of a methadone bottle on the back cover's botanica shelf is bad news, whatever the intention), Farrell fills the absurd Ritual de lo Habitual with ravings that, when they manage to coagulate into coherence, describe the joys of shoplifting ("Been Caught Stealing," the pathetic bleat of a spoiled rich asshole that inexplicably begins with barking dogs), masochism ("Ain't No Right"), supposed solidarity with black people ("No One's Leaving") and a nebulous eleven-minute opus about a ménage à trois ("Three Days"). The band's swirling demi- metal — still limited by Navarro's slow progress toward the true guitar heroism he would ultimately achieve — is loudly functional, but Farrell's expanding ego and detachment make the album unbearable. (Because of the front cover sculpture's graphic sexuality, Ritual was also released in an alternate sleeve that simply offers the text of the First Amendment.)

After Jane's headlined the first traveling Lollapalooza festival, which he conceived and mounted, Farrell dissolved the band and formed Porno for Pyros. Jane's reformed in the 21st century.

The 1993 reissue of the pre-Jane's Addiction Psi-Com EP makes widely available the amusing sound of a young Perry Farrell attempting to channel the voice of Siouxsie Sioux in a transparent effort to catch the British new (goth) wave. Although no one is identified by name, it's impossible to miss Farrell amid the swirling, atmospheric rock, a proficiently transparent imitation of the Banshees and Cure. After undergoing some lineup shifts, the group finally splintered when the guitarist and drummer became Hare Krishnas. Post-EP bassist Dino Paredes subsequently formed Red Temple Spirits.

How about the perry farrell, kelly rowland, 50 cent NFL spot with all the flashing Pontiac auto logos ... I saw it this past Sunday and my jaw hit the floor - horrible sounding song ... or maybe I was just depressed after hearing one of my buddies' bands cover 'Mountain Song' the night before ...

Hahaha, I love Jane's (version mark I) but I adore that review still. A masterpiece of outrage.

(xpost)

Well hey, Perry called it for his own career almost 20 years earlier: Nothing's shocking.

This is just one of those late at night things that run through my head, but it would be great if ilxors and writers otherwise who pop in and out of the ilx universe were to take up the long-dormant mantle of the TPRG. I don't know who would even be interested in publishing it, and I don't know how many articles would have to be written (the third edition boasts 1,900 bands critiqued and 6,200 records reviewed), but it's fun to think about anyway.

In pre-internet days, this book used to be my music buying bible.

Yeah, agree it shouldn't languish. I even wrote a handful of entries, but isn't Ira Robbins still involved?

Oh, I didn't mean we should LITERALLY take up the TPRG mantle. Just put together an ilx version. But if Ira could be talked into publishing an updated edition, I'd be the first to order a copy.

I thought about that but I personally like the historic integrity of it. Newer bands and trends should "get their own". It's bad enough we have to read about Jane's Addiction in it, although the review is funny.

Doesn't it seem like the problem with updating that or the Spin alternative record guide isn't just the internet but how alternative music doesn't mean as much, or means too much more, than it used to?

http://pitchfork.com/

fyi, the search box is in the upper right hand corner

Screw that. I WANT A BOOK! (And not that Pitchfork book with 500 records.)

Just noticed a cool feature on the revamped Trouser Press site. Within every artist entry there's the usual discography listed on the upper right corner. If you put your cursor over a particular title, these little record or CD icons appear, and if you click on any of them, it takes you to the Discogs listing. (For albums that were reissued by different labels, the different labels will appear with the icon next to each one.)

I did notice that the other day, and was terrified at these little records popping out.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/22/a-diy-fanzine-fifty-years-on

Robbins has been planning a party at Bowery Electric, in March, for a fiftieth-anniversary compilation titled “The Best of the Trouser Press,” which he hopes will also draw attention to his recent resuscitation of the name, as a small imprint called Trouser Press Books. “It’s self-publishing, with a little cachet,” he said. Stranded at home during the pandemic, having just retired from a job in syndicated radio news, he found that his labors became retrospective. “I have the mind of an accountant,” he said. “I inventoried my record collection, and then I did an anthology of my writing.” The anthology, “Music in a Word,” fills a thousand pages and three volumes.

Cool!