The Trouser Press Record Guide [Paperback]

Ira A. Robbins (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 763 pages
• Publisher: Collier Books; 4 Sub edition (December 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0020363613
• ISBN-13: 978-0020363613
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,022,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars lost bands of outsiders are found inside this book, January 24, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Trouser Press Record Guide (Paperback)

The out-of-print Fourth Edition of the Trouser Press Record Guide is the great lost guide to rock's great lost cause - the 80s indie scene. Nothing else published in the English language has ever come close. Its nearly 800 pages of artist biographies and discographies map the sprawling wilderness of the post-punk era. Here lies the buried treasure of the alternative dark ages, when far-flung spontaneous ragtag erruptions of creativity thrashed and crashed and burned brightly in doomed glory.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book could be your life, April 6, 2004

By 

Paul Gehred (Dayton, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Trouser Press Record Guide (Paperback)

I got hooked on the TP Record Guides in the mid 80s by luck browsing a cool bookstore. Love at first sight. Ira A. and crew approached a gigantic task with a process and a great sense of humor. Their reviews are amazingly complete for some amazingly obscure bands. I actually feel honored to own music of obscure underground bands that were somehow unbelievably, under their radar. They treat most bands with respect, excepting bands of the "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" ilk, heck I trash them too even if I don't know any better! How's that for loyal?

A couple examples of the wonders that drift among the pages. One of my favorite reviews is Simple Minds. The reviewer carefully goes over the bands' brilliant first releases and then lashes out at an apparent total sell out after they got sucked into big production movies. And this book, plus the 1990s edition following it up, will give you an enduring look at the rise and fall of underground music.

Try this at your local library, open this book to Nirvana...read the terse review of the band. Now thumb to Nirvana in the New TP Guide to 90s Music, written many years later, but right next to it in the stacks (dream on). It says things like "every generation has events like hula hoops and Nirvana, they explode out of nowhere" These books are a look at what is important to young people at an important time when their brains look beyond the mirror, even farther outward than the next meal, and they turn to music. It's all-together mindbending and probably important.

This book is a quest giver. Ever hear of the Morels? Me neither, but from what Ira says in his review in this book, I've been on a quest to find some of their musical legacy and so far I've failed. But I'm persistent, they're out there somewhere on some dusty shelf. I'm zealous about this book because in this world you've got to edit.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The bible of early indie rock & more, August 13, 2004

By 

Martin Mulcahey - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Trouser Press Record Guide (Paperback)

Before there was such a thing as P2P music downloads and other ways of getting ear candy for free (hopefully just to listen before you buy the real CD from the artist you like) you had to rely on word of mouth or radio. Since radio did not play most of the great music listed here, take it from a Suicidal Tendencies/Thin Lizzy fan, this was the one way I KNEW the music I risked my money on was worth it. As far as guides go, this one surpasses them all.