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Apr 15, 2024 By Hays Davis

In the pre-internet days, magazines were a primary resource for music fans, and Trouser Press is fondly remembered for joining its readers as an invaluable companion during a decade of fascinating musical evolution. Presented as a 440-page, large-format paperback and an ebook, Zip It Up! The Best of Trouser Press Magazine 1974-1984 offers some of the magazine’s best articles, fifty years from its start, as well as a detailed look at how Trouser Press formed and launched from its early days as Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press. Zip It Up! includes article sections on the Sixties, classic rock, glam, prog/art rock, reggae, roots of punk, punk/new wave, and more.

While countless websites and books have presented plenty of text for decades relating to bands, musicians, and music within the span of 1974-1984, reading the Trouser Press articles collected in Zip It Up! is like dropping the needle on that period’s in-the-moment rock journalism. For readers who devoured it at the time, Trouser Press could be as integral a part of the experience as the music it covered.

“I know your type. This is the worst nightmare… If you weren’t a journalist you’d never be invited to anything hip,” said Lou Reed to an interviewer in 1979. Thankfully, the hardy staff of Trouser Press were sufficiently thick-skinned to weather bullets as well as softballs. (trouserpressbooks.com)

Author rating: 8.5/10