Your first issue of TP was which one?

Not a competition for 'who was there first'... just genuinely curious when and how you all discovered the magazine.

First issue I saw was a friend's copy of TP 63, summer of '81 (pistols at the cinema cover). He was one of those nut jobs who thought you got rid of magazines once you read them... he had no problem handing it off to me. I still have it. I was 15. I started buying every issue at the newsstand.

The next issue had tom petty on the cover, and then the Doors after that (not really cutting edge new wave, you know?). Up until discovering TP, I would read hit parader and creem.... both really good about covering early new wave.

As an aside....When I discovered new wave in 79, I thought you could tell a new wave band by the word 'the' preceding their name... the jam, the police, the knack, etc. Only the uncool bands had one-word names (rush, journey, Kansas, etc). So I would think there was a connection between new wave acts and acts if the sixties with 'the' in their name (The Who, the beau brummels, the doors).

Anyway I ended up subscribing and all the flexidiscs, except the first one (OMD I believe).

A similar tale here. My first issue was when a friend bought #61 with Elvis Costello on the cover. I was seriously New Wave by '78 and had been waiting years for this sort of zine. The best thing in it was almost those record dealer ads packed with discographical information worth its weight in gold! Not that I was ready for mail order just yet, sigh. Locally, we had a great New Wave freebie record store newspaper, Dogfood, that by my senior year, I had ended up submitting a few reviews to. That tided me over until I entered the TP universe.

It makes sense that it was the first issues that I saw since TP tells us that it was the first to get serious distribution. After seeing my friend's copy, I bought one at the Shop + Go and kept up with each issue [but missed #62]until the lure of the flexis. I already had the OMD US compilation, but I began subscribing in time for flexi #3 Japan. I rode the bus until the bitter end. I had just renewed my subscription when just a few months later, the mag folded and then I received copies of Rolling Stone's music rag ghetto The Record. Needless to say, there are not copies of[that/i] still on my shelves!



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Ah, I also received 'Record' as my replacement until the subscription ran out. Kind of a letdown to get that, along with a letter saying TP had ceased publication. Kind of a 1-2 punch, that was.

I really did keep every issue and have been lucky to find many back-issues in hippie-run used record stores. You'll find no greater pleasure than re-reading Green Circles (the singles review column for those who missed it) on a rainy day.

I remember flipping through TP when I was about 12-13 in newsstands in my hometown, probably shortly before the magazine went under. The record guide books were my first true introduction to the name. I didn't get to read any of the actual magazines till they popped up in used record stores in Boston & New York. I own about a dozen issues, from 1976-1982, now.

Never really read music mags much, as there was a wealth of radio in my realm that kept me hep, but when a school chum showed up to class with the Guide to New Wave records, well now, this was a whole other thing.

Growing up where I did, the only music magazine I ever saw was Rolling Stone. To this day I've never seen an issue of TP. But I was voraciously reading stuff like The Rolling Stone Album Guide in the late 80s, so when the '88 edition of the TP record guide came out, I snapped it up and pored through it just like I did the rest. This was right about the time I first started listening to the Pistols and the Ramones, as well as folks like the Smithereens and Richard Thompson. So finding a guide that concentrated on all this stuff had a tremendous impact. I used to make lists out of it to take with me on my pilgrimages to Houston to Infinite Records and Sound Exchange 3-4 times a year, until I moved there in late '88, when it became 2-3 times a month. (I put myself in bad credit debt doing that.)

That book and its early 90s follow-up had bigger impacts on me than any other music book, except for maybe Al Kooper's Backstage Passes. Both those and the mid-90s edition are fairly terrible shape from being re-read so many times - I'm afraid to touch them now for fear the binding will finally give up the ghost. (So thank goodness for this website.)

I should also note that the reviews in those books are also the biggest influences on my own writing in that arena. I've unconsciously ripped Ira in particular off many times. I always pore over any TP entry I submit to make sure I didn't accidentally plagarize the man who's gonna be editing the piece.

In my case, I think it was TP 39, with an Elvis Costello cover. My older sister was a big EC fan and bought it, not from a newsstand but from a record store in Washington, DC. That would have been June 1979, and she would buy copies every once in a while over the next couple of years. I read them religiously as I formed my musical taste in my early teenage years.

My family then moved back to Canada and that was the end of that as I did not have the wherewithal to get my own subscription.

Alas, none of these precious copies were kept...

My brother clued in to TP before I did. He had moved to Louisiana with us in '78, but moved back to Colorado from New Orleans ahead of the rest of my family. By the time I arrived, he had a couple issues to show me, starting with the one with Ric Ocasek on the cover (#41, according to the pictorial list here on the web site). As I've said, my brother and I connected to the new wave through Saturday Night Live, and lo & behold, here's a magazine that seems the perfect fit for our new taste and interest in music.

I opened my subscription to TP about a year later.



Post Edited (08-21-18 16:44)

Reading Michael Tolund's response, I can absolutely relate to going through a book, making lists, and spending too much in record stores. I recall the 'Spin guide to alternative' causing me to do similar behavior, as well as the TP guides.

It never occurred to me that some of you would have discovered TP through the guides. I only found the guides after the fact, in used bookstores. My small town bookstore never had them (and I'm shocked still that they carried the magazine). Ira wrote so many of those reviews twice...his original review in the magazine and the one that appeared in the Guides. HAD to be a sincere labor of love.

#17, December 76. ELO cover. My brothers found it in a St. Louis record store that was strangely hip enough to be carrying it.