Dave Schulps
Dave Schulps’s 30-plus-year career as a music journalist of sorts probably can be said to have begun under a laboratory hood (i.e. a large vent for eliminating noxious fumes) at a science high school in the Bronx, which he and lab partner Ira Robbins hid behind in order to read Melody Maker during lectures. Although he didn’t write (actually, co-write) his first piece, a review of Lou Reed’s solo debut, until a couple of years later, the spark was ignited then, and fortunately did not blow up the lab.
In 1973 – the week of the US release of Mott the Hoople’s epic Mott album, to be exact – he and Robbins visited the home of a local record fanatic where they were introduced to former college paper music editor Karen Rose. For some reason, the three, inspired by the two music 'zines they’d seen at that point, Alan Betrock's amazing Rock Marketplace and Greg Shaw's groovy Who Put the Bomp, decided to start one themselves. Dubbed Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press at first – and later cleverly shortened (along with the cuffs) to Trouser Press – the expected first-and-only issue somehow managed to sell out, leading to a decade more of same. Well, sort of. The original hand-stapled, 24-page mimeographed (look it up, youngsters) sheets sold in front of concerts gave way to ever-increasingly more professional production and distribution.
For Schulps, though, things weren’t quite the same at TP after the cataclysm that was 1977 (though, in truth, he continued listening to Elvis, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones alongside the Clash, Ramones and Pistols) and some time in ’79 he left his managing editor’s post and huge salary behind to (gasp!) manage a rock band.
Two years later, after finding out what he was not put on this earth to do – and acquiring a taste for Hank Williams, George Jones and Lefty Frizzell during a painful year’s unemployment – he returned to writing with the music trade Cashbox, only to skip out when a nascent radio syndicator made him an offer he couldn’t refuse (the offer being, it’s not Cashbox). 23 years later and thousands of uncredited interviews later, he’s still there and so, amazingly, is Robbins, who came aboard some years ago.
Those interested in checking out Schulps’ very occasional output outside Trouser Press can consult the morgues of Circus, Gig, Crawdaddy!, Hit Parader, Sounds, Musician, Guitar World, Walrus, BAM, Grindstone, Uncut and The Big Takeover...if you can find them!
Dave resides in Los Angeles.
50 articles
List of articles in the library
Review by Dave Schulps, Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press, October 1974
1. POMP: COULD the band who sing "We're the Worst Band in The World" possibly be pompous? ...
Adam & the Ants: Kings of the Wild Frontier (Epic NJE37033)
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, April 1981
IMAGINE AN obsessive singer who calls to mind an earthbound version of glitter-era David Bowie, and a guitarist who draws from sources as diverse as ...
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, September 1980
IN A BUSINESS geared more and more towards pushing product, Kevin Ayers is a rare commodity. He's never sold great amounts of records, but has ...
Kevin Ayers, Soft Machine: Kevin Ayers
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, September 1977
BACK IN TP 16 Myron Bretholz wrote a lengthy run-down of the life and times of Kevin Ayers, English eccentric, banana artiste and wine connoisseur ...
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, April 1977
Sessionman asserts himself ...
Solomon Burke: An interview with Joe Henry
Interview by Dave Schulps, Rock's Backpages, June 2002
This brief interview with Joe Henry was conducted on the "red carpet" arrival line at the ASCAP pop music awards in May. Henry received an ...
Solomon Burke: The Bishop of Soul returns
Special Feature by Dave Schulps, Rock's Backpages, June 2002
MICK JAGGER may have insisted once upon a time that "it’s the singer not the song," but that doesn’t necessarily mean that even the greatest ...
Buzzcocks, Human Sexual Response: The Ritz, New York NYC
Live Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, February 1981
DO I DETECT the beginnings of a love affair between New York and the Buzzcocks? The Mancunians packed the Ritz solid on a Sunday night, ...
John Cooper Clarke: Disguise in Love (CBS 83132)
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, June 1979
NB: To be briskly recited aloud in a thick Mancunian (due east of Liverpudlian) singsong: ...
Elvis Costello: I Fought the Law!
Profile and Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, December 1977
RARELY HAS MYSTERY surrounded the arrival of a new rock performer the way it has Elvis Costello. Totally unknown a year ago, courtesy of Stiff ...
Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Rockpile: Rockpile: Nick Lowe & Dave Edmunds Face Off
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, August 1978
Rockpile's Alternate Leaders Reveal Differing Strategies for (Riviera) Global Domination ...
Dave Davies: This Man He Laughs Tonight: Dave Davies Spearheads Kinks Attack!
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, August 1980
SIXTEEN YEARS AFTER 'You Really Got Me', the Kinks are entering the 80's in better shape than anyone has a right to expect them to ...
The dB's: Stands for DeciBels (Albion AB105)
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, June 1981
PERHAPS THE most fertile period for pop-rock experimentation were the years between the end of the Merseyboom and the beginning of the Woodstock/FM radio era. ...
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, September 1977
A Three-Part Series — Part One: Pre-Yardbirds ...
Dave Edmunds, Rockpile: Dave Edmunds: New Wave, 1955
Profile and Interview by Dave Schulps, Musician, July 1981
"MUSICALLY, WE didn't find a niche for ourselves. It amounted to a couple of songs from a Nick Lowe album, a couple of songs from ...
Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True (Stiff SEEZ 3)
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, October 1977
WHO IS THIS little fella striking a defiant Presleyesque pose on the cover of My Aim Is True? Why, it's Elvis, of course. Not the ...
Rory Gallagher: TOTP meets Mr. Gallagher: The Story on Rory
Interview by Dave Schulps, Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, April 1976
LET'S START AT the beginning. Your first band was the Fontana Showband. What exactly is a showband? ...
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, February 1979
IT HAS TAKEN the Jam merely three albums to go from a young band with a lot of energy and a love for mod-era rock'n'roll ...
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, May 1980
HAS IT really been three years since the Jam made its first live appearance in America? Since three teenagers in matching suits and skinny ties ...
Profile and Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, May 1979
Jam's Paul Weller knows where he's going ...
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press, February 1976
DS: WAS JOHN'S Children your first band? ...
Joy Division: University of London
Live Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, July 1980
THERE IS NO joy in Joy Division. And no division either. At the University of London the band presented an hour of unrelenting, uncompromising bleakness; ...
Review by Dave Schulps, Feature, August 1978
"If left is right and right is wrong, you'd better decide which side you're on."– Tom Robinson ...
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, December 1978
WINTER 1974: When I saw the cover of the first Kiss album, I laughed. I mean, here were these four geeks looking like rejects from ...
Interview by Dave Schulps, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1975
The somewhat-stoned Backstreet Crawler guitarist looks back at his time in Free – Alexis Korner, Tetsu and Rabbit's involvement – and gives his opinion of Rogers and Kirk's post-Free Bad Company.
File format: mp3; file size: 14.2mb, interview length: 15' 22" sound quality: **
Report and Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, April 1979
Probing reporter Dave Schulps sees the show, talks to the Records' Will Birch, and delves into the acidic past of Wreckless Eric. ...
Pete Townshend, Ronnie Lane: Pete Townshend & Ronnie Lane: Rough Mix
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, October 1977
WHATEVER THE reasons may be for Pete Townshend's self-imposed exile from both recording and commenting on the current music scene, it's a relief to have ...
Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page: The Final Page
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, November 1977
JIMMY P. on LED Z. The Conclusion of a three-part interview ...
Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page, The Yardbirds: Jimmy Page: Paging the Yardbirds
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, October 1977
JIMMY PAGE gives his version Part 2 of a three-part interview by Dave Schulps ...
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, January 1981
THE MUSICAL trend of the year in Britain, a nation which obviously relishes its fads, was the emergence of the neo-ska bands. Buoyed by a ...
Profile and Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, December 1977
SO YOU THINK Stiff are the only one allowed to go slightly batty with their advertising, eh? Well guess again. These Motors boys got 'em ...
Andrew Loog Oldham, The Rolling Stones: Andrew Loog Oldham
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, June 1978
ONE OF THE most interesting personalities of the first decade of British rock was the Rolling Stones' sharp-tongued, red-headed manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. ...
Graham Parker: Another Grey Area
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, June 1982
IF, AS GRAHAM PARKER declared on Squeezing Out Sparks, "passion is no ordinary word," then Another Grey Area should by all rights have been no ...
Review by Dave Schulps, Crawdaddy!, April 1978
BESERKLEY RECORDS certainly keep things interesting. Slightly over a year ago they became the first American New Wave independent to secure a distribution deal with ...
Tom Robinson Band: Tom Robinson: Right On, Mister!
Profile and Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, June 1978
THE ABILITY TO walk into a room and make someone you've never met feel like they've known you for years is called 'charm.' The ability ...
The Rolling Stones, Ronnie Wood: Ronnie Wood: New Stone Tries a Solo
Report and Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, July 1979
WHEN TP FIRST interviewed Ron Wood, back in the fall of 1974, the Faces' guitarist and ex-Beckite was more than happy to answer questions about ...
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, October 1977
"ASK US WHY we called the album Max, c'mon, ask us." ...
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Alex Harvey (1975)
Interview by Ira Robbins, Dave Schulps, Rock's Backpages Audio, Fall 1975
After dealing with his current stage persona Vambo – and virtually demanding the invention of punk rock – the Scottish veteran takes us back to the roots of British rock'n'roll: the showbands; Tony Sheridan; the Hamburg clubs; the rip-offs, right up to the formation of his Sensational Alex Harvey Band...
File format: mp3; file size: 55.2meg, interview length: 57' 32" sound quality: ***
Sex Pistols: 'I hear you like Dolly Parton down here... are you still celebrating Elvis' birthday?'
Report by Dave Schulps, Sounds, 14 January 1978
...or how to win friends and influence people i Memphis, Johnny Rotten style. The Sex Pistols hit America and DAVE SCHULPS gives an American's-eye view ...
The Smithereens Get Non-Technical
Interview by Dave Schulps, Musician, August 1988
LEARNING TO DO MORE WITH LESS, INCLUDING — GASP — REAL INSTRUMENTS AND REAL SONGS ...
Profile by Dave Schulps, Musician, August 1981
IT'S CALLED the "new romanticism," and it is to England '81 what Two-Tone ska was to England '80; that is, the year's musical craze. ...
Television: Adventure (Elektra)
Review by Dave Schulps, Crawdaddy!, June 1978
TELEVISION USE the energy and the imagery of the Big Apple, cross-pollinating them with a musical vision akin to what was coming out of the ...
Television: Tom Verlaine: In Search of Adventure
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, May 1978
IT HAS BEEN over a year since Television's debut album, Marquee Moon, and for the band's American fans most of that time has been a ...
Profile and Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, February 1976
By Dave Schulps with A. Mindswallow *All puns unintentional ...
Pete Townshend, The Who: In Which Pete Townshend Gets Personal
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, May 1978
"SHADDUP," YELLS Pete Townshend. Then he slaps his leg and Towser the dog comes running over. "Do you want to go out?" Pete asks, getting ...
The Vibrators: The New Yorker, Toronto
Live Review by Dave Schulps, Sounds, 26 November 1977
Vibrators victorious: Canucks crumble ...
Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, April 1978
KAREN TOWNSHEND answers the door wearing a puzzled look. "Hello. I'm here to see Pete. We've got an interview scheduled for ten o'clock." The puzzled ...
The Who: What's Next For The Who
Report by Dave Schulps, Circus, December 1975
"The report of my death is greatly exaggerated"– Mark Twain ...
Ronnie Wood: New Stone Tries a Solo
Report and Interview by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, July 1979
WHEN TP FIRST interviewed Ron Wood, back in the fall of 1974, the Faces' guitarist and exBeckite was more than happy to answer questions about ...
Review by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, February 1979
XTC'S FIRST ALBUM, White Music, released earlier this year, was a stunning debut from a band that defies easy labeling. ...
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