Okay, while Mike's away I have a discussion question for you. It comes in multiple parts:
Q: What was the last rock concert T-shirt you bought?
-When did you buy it?
-Is that the last one you're going to buy?
I ask this because I saw some big guy wearing a big concert T on the street (with some anthemic paint-spatter-font slogan on the back, etc.). And I thought: you know, it's been a long time since I bought a concert T. I started to think back ... and it's been a LONG time since I bought a concert T.
I thought back to more recent stuff -- late-era Elvis Costello, Cake, Gogol Bordello, the Moonlighters -- and realized that there are several things going on. First, and most importantly, I'm much more likely to buy a CD, if I buy anything. Also, I definitely wanted T-shirts from those shows, but they either sucked, didn't quite seem cool enough, or didn't exist. (I see a lot more tiny pre-T-shirt bands these days).
So I thought back to the 90s...
So I thought back to the 90s (in non-chronological order and non-inclusive): Jane's Addiction, Peter Gabriel, Lenny Kravitz, the Pixies, Presidents of the USA, REM, Beck, the Reverend Horton Heat, Shonen Knife, the Palladins, a lot of club shows, mid-era Elvis Costello. (Did I see Pearl Jam? I lived in Seattle in the 90s, I must have seen Pearl Jam, right?) A lot of the 90s were lean years, or years where money was going into other things. And maybe I thought I'd outgrown the classic concert T.
So I went back even farther, to the 80s, where there were definitely some concert Ts: Stray Cats, General Public (since the Beat no longer existed), Devo, the Cars, Jimmy Cliff, UB40, lots of (relatively) early era Elvis Costello. Definitely had all those shirts. But that was back when I could wear a concert T in the way I think it was meant to be worn: a size Medium draped on a skinny-ass frame. Whether that's being-16-skinny-ass or being-on-The-Smack-skinny-ass, doesn't matter; if you hold out your arms in a concert T, it should look like it's being held up by a rake. Surely I'd had something since then.
So instead of reviewing my memory by show, I went back to mental images of my dresser drawers. And indeed, in Seattle in the 90s, in addition to Japanese hipster band Shonen Knife, I also saw Japanese hipster band Pizzicato5 and purchased the subdued but cool black concert T with the word "PIZZICATOMANIA" in dark colored letters. Hell, I still wear that one.
But that inverse process actually, finally lead me to the last concert T I bought: John Doe. I was listening to John Doe in X in the (early) 80s, and saw him and Exene as the Knitters in the 90s. But it wasn't until 2005, in the little town of 600 people on the Oregon Coast where I lived for a year, that I finally saw John Doe -- a personal rock god of mine -- play in a renovated high school gymnasium. It was a revelation. And though the shirt was not exactly as awesome as I'd hoped and though I had very little money at the time and though it would not hang on me like it would on a rake... I bought the hell out of that shirt. "F*CK JOHN DOE" it says, which is pretty fun. I got him to sign it (there were only 600 people in the whole damn town so the line wasn't that long).
So I guess I still buy concert Ts, but now only on rare occasions. But here's why I forgot it: see, I put it aside, thinking I would get the signature embroidered onto the shirt, so it would last forever. Kind of a cool idea, in a dumbass way. But thinking back, it sort of misses the point of a concert T, which is supposed to weather and fade and decay like your memories and your dreams. And see, I'd already forgotten. Yeah, I need to dig that shirt out and wear it.
And I need to go see some f*cking shows.
| Music |
Last shirt I bought for myself: White Stripes, Coney Island show, September 2005
Last tour gear bought, period: The Sounds, small black zip-front hoodie for wife, March 2006.
Neither one is the last tour merch I'll be buying ever. But tour-merch-purchasing is becoming a somewhat less frequent phenomenon, as we're on a tighter budget and I attend fewer shows.
This is something of a golden age for tour T-shirts, thanks to American Apparel and Trunk and other merch-makers that have arrived on the scene: simply put, the shirts themselves aren't ugly. They're cut to fit a body in a flattering way – as per your memeory of the '80s-'90s shirt that just sort of hangs – and they come in colors other than black or white. I set a policy for myself of avoiding black or white tour shirts nearly a decade ago, and it's definitely gotten easier to find alternatives.
My White Stripes shirt, the most recent acquisition, is actually black – but it's one of the coolest black T-shirts I own, with an awesome mottled-apple logo (very New York) that looks great with jeans and a blazer – which is why I violated my policy for it. But in recent years, I've also scored great shirts in purple (Prince, natch, in '04); light blue with dark blue ringed collar (Franz Ferdinand, also '04); bright red (Radiohead '03); and a kind of cream-color with cool comic panels on it (Flaming Lips '02). Weirdly, when I finally saw Madonna back in summer '04, I didn't buy anything – mostly 'cuz her merch was gouge city.
The coolest vintage gear I own is my Cure '89 Disintegration Tour shirt, which spawned a LiveJournal post two years ago: http://molanphy.livejournal.com/28665.html
I am on the bubble between men's size medium and large, and unless I start working out again, I'm probably going to make a permanent move to large. Which is depressing, but all it means is I'm gonna need to get a new array of tour shirts in the next few years to fit my expanding frame.
Comment #1 :: link :: July 22, 2006 06:58 PMJeepers, I can't remember for sure the last concert t-shirt I bought. Probably at Smithereens/Squeeze at Great Woods in Massachusetts (a venue now named after some beer, I think) sometime in the late 80s. I got the Smithereens shirt, which lasted me quite a long time, and which would be quite the retro shirt these days, except that the kids probably don't know who The Smithereens were.
Then again, I'm outside the target demographic for this question, since I've only been to something like 2 gigs in the last 5 years, and those were the same band in 2 different places.
Comment #2 :: link :: July 28, 2006 12:42 PMOh, and I'm just a *little* jealous that you saw X in the 80s and John Doe.
Comment #3 :: link :: July 28, 2006 12:55 PMThe last concert I went to was Talking Heads during their Stop Making Sense tour. Or maybe it was the tour before that. I also saw Jerry Garcia at the Keystone, if that counts as a concert. But the last time I bought a concert tee, that would have been 1978, the Yes concert at the LA Forum. Donovan ("Mellow Yellow") opened for them -- oh, you should have heard the boos!
Comment #4 :: link :: July 30, 2006 11:30 AMI have two concert shirts that still fit me. (Ahem.) The first is a fairly recent acquisition from the "Jewzapalooza" festival last year in Riverside Park. It's a black tee with a Star of David made out of musical instruments. Kewl.
The other one I have isn't mine, I stole it from Debbie but she lets me wear it anyway because she lurves me. It's a red Ziggy Marley and Melody Makers tee from when they played Yale, and it proudly says "CONCERT STAFF" on the back.
Comment #5 :: link :: July 30, 2006 06:01 PMDude. I remember that Ziggy Marley concert. It was in the basketball court (now the John J. Lee Amphitheater), and it could have been better. Much better.
Comment #6 :: link :: July 31, 2006 10:56 AMSee, that's the thing -- I didn't actually go to the concert. Nor was I on the Concert Staff. Does it still count?
Comment #7 :: link :: July 31, 2006 11:17 AMWhy would they Boo Donovan??? Yes should have been opening for him. Donovan had dozens more hits then YEs including 14 top 40 singles. Fans are ruthless. Donovan is a legend now and was in 1978. Did more for music then YES ever did or will do.
Comment #8 :: link :: August 14, 2006 11:14 AM
