"Oh, it's not my bible or anything..."
"Why not?" was my first instinct, but I decided to play it quiet, just this once.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I use it for information, but I don't, like, buy any records because of it."
"Oh!" I said, dropping the Trouser Press Record Guide, 4th Edition, edited by Ira Robbins, the exact same volume I have, on the ground, "Well, who does? I just use it to learn about things. Did you know Lach had a listing?"
"No, I didn't..."
The conversation moved along.
When I first bought the Rolling Stone Rock and Roll guide, it was already old. I didn't recognize how old it was, and how relevant that was, until years later.
I first owned it in 1986, and read, in the Jackson 5 entry, how Michael Jackson had recently released a new solo album, which promised to do well. It was called THRILLER.
When I bought the Trouser Press Record Guide, an encyclopedic source of information on alternative bands and musics, it was less than two years old. Still, in early 1992, when I got my greedy hands on the long-coveted book, I noticed the listing for Nirvana. "Their album, BLEACH, is good. This is a band to look for in the future."
I'd just gotten off a four month jag of hearing nothing on radio but the grunge megahit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit." That's around when I discovered the local oldies station.
The Trouser Press Record Guide was easily the best print source of music information I'd ever seen. Still is. Still, it's not my bible or anything...
A day or two later, I was biking uptown, and hit NYCD, the only CD store on the upper west side with an east village vibe. Unfortunately, that means it's the only place with alternative music, and cheap prices, and used CDs.
While looking through their extensive two-dollar record selection (the likes of which I buy most of my gilt), I see the Humphries. Now, I don't realize it at the time, but I've only seen the Humphries once, at Under Acme, on a bill with Bubble and Teenagers for Nixon. That was a long time ago, in my relatively new musical lifetime.
I kinda liked what I saw, and I was into buying their release, especially at such a steal price.
I also saw the Woodentops.
When I first heard of the Woodentops, in some Rolling Stone magazine or something, they seemed like the latest in too long a stream of haircut bands. They looked offensive to my more "hard-rocking" sensibilities.
But Trouser Press, as I suddenly recalled, had called them some kind of hyperkinetic pop band, loud, fast, powerful. I'd been passively searching out their music ever since I'd read that, had even had a dangerously close miss with their live album, heartily reviewed in the guidebook.
For two dollars, I saw I had the opportunity to get WELL, WELL, WELL... THE WOODENTOPS. Their singles.
I jumped at it, and left the store with the Humphries and the Woodentops.
The Humphries were a little like I remembered them. The Woodentops were nothing like I imagined. I had expected a hard pop epiphany, but got a haircut band. They were almost exactly what I'd anticipated. They didn't change my life, as I'd expected from the glowing review in Trouser Press.
I was disappointed, to say the least. The book had never steered me wrong before. I felt betrayed, as if god had come down from high to say, "buy!" in 1929.
But it's not like it's my bible or anything...
