Rock 'n' Roll Billboardism
My man Rick in the Alabama office besought me to touch upon the issue of rock t-shirts. I thought it was a fine idea, but quickly realized that I'm probably the last guy that should be expounding on the issue of Rock-weartm. Rick sent a lengthy list of rock t-shirts from yesteryear that still grace his wardrobe: Hammerhead, Thee Hedons, KARP, etc. I never had too many myself, for a variety of reasons, the foremost of which being that god damn it, most rock t-shirts are of dubious quality and fit very poorly. In my experience, it is very uncommon for most small-time bands to make an investment in hi-quality t-shirts upon which to festoon their logo. Most bands buy the cheapest bargain-bin shirts, which I can totally appreciate, from a fiduciary standpoint. But you ain't gonna catch me wearing one of them see-thru, three-sizes-too-small jobs, no sir. For whatever reason, I feel very anxious and self-conscious whenever I'm wearing t-shirts that are too tight; it shows off my man-boobs.
Second: I don't know if this is still the case, but a few years back when I was an active show-goer, it seemed that the vast preponderance of bands were selling black t-shirts. I strongly dislike black t-shirts, mostly just because there are too dang many of them afoot in the rock world, but secondarily because I instinctively regard black t-shirts as metalhead apparel, and for quite a long time I had a very strong aversion to anything associated with the metal realm. I think I'm past it now (as evidenced by my predilection for singing Iron Maiden lyrics in falsetto around the house), but I still don't think I'm ready to don a black t-shirt. I do own a black Figgs t-shirt that I've worn maybe thrice.
There are a few bands out there that I'm aware of that have gone to the effort to print up high-quality, visually arresting t-shirts. The PosterChildren have a long history of printing up cool shirts. Man or Astroman has put out some top-shelf designs. Since about 1995, I've been sharing a long-sleeve Killdozer shirt with Rusty Smetanka that is probably the coolest rock t-shirt that I've ever come across. That one has a kinda funny story associated with it, if you'll permit the diversion: we were at an after-hours party after a Steel Pole Bathtub show circa 8/25/95, and Mike Moraski, the guitarist of SPBT (and Bozeman, MT native) was at the party and he was wearing the Killdozer shirt in question. Rusty and I were both on a huge Killdozer jag at the time, particularly the "Uncompromising War on Art Under The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" album, which to me is the pinnacle of the Killdozer experience: simultaneously the most hilarious and most annoying record ever made. Anyway, at this after-hours party, Rusty and I were making a big show of our adoration for Mike Moraski's Killdozer shirt. We were following him around the house shouting the lyrics to Killdozer's "Knuckles The Dog (Who Helps People)" at him --in the Killdozer voice, no less (kind of a drawn-out Cookie Monster thing, but much more basso)-- which would be beyond irritating to anyone, I'm sure. As our crapulence progressed unabated, we decided that we had to get that shirt from him. Moraski probably figured the only way he was gonna get away from us two freaks would be to trade us for that shirt. We enlisted Amanda, my girlfriend at the time, to go out to her car and find something worth trading. I don't remember what it was that we traded to him... some thrift store leather trenchcoat or something. The shirt is so cool though; a long-sleeve gray Hanes Beefy-T that looks roughly like the "Uncompromising War..." album cover (see below), but with a bunch of funny other Marxist propaganda on it. Rusty and I would keep the shirt for a few months at then give it to the other guy. He must have it, because I haven't seen it since I moved away from Missoulax.
Exhibit A: Killdozer's 1994 landmark album "Uncompromising War on Art Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"
Back to the reasons I choose not to wear many rock t-shirts. I think I've mentioned this before*, but if not: I think I'm opposed to any onstage rock adornments and/or festoonery which tries to convey the bands immediate stylistic influences sartorially to the audience. I say "I think I am," because this particular philosophy of mine is very much a work in progress and open to debate and/or ridicule (not to mention a poor use of time and brainpower). I'm essentially trying to finalize a universal theory as to when rock t-shirts onstage are... uh... virtuous and when they are not. The tricky part is to distill it down to absolutes, and that has proven to be most elusive. For instance, imagine the Strokes taking the stage and the bass player has a Ramones shirt on. Intuitively, I know this to be a bullshit ploy. Pragmatically, I could not make a visceral, convincing case that a member of the Strokes wearing a Ramones shirt is any more or less bullshit than a member of the Devil Dogs wearing the same shirt onstage. Well, maybe I could convince you, because as a Yalestar.com reader, you're intrinsically very sage and wise to these matters of aestheticism.
But it's a very slippery slope to try and qualify what folks wear onstage! You could make the case that it is unvirtuous anytime someone takes the time to consider what they wear onstage (apart from a matter of available laundered garments). But me taking that position would itself be unvirtuous, because as the drummer of Humpy for six-some-odd years, I almost always wore a pair of blue nylon Umbro soccer shorts onstage. This was mostly a matter of comfort, but I would be lying to you if I told you that there was not a tiny little bit of Henry Rollins homage involved with it. And even my hero Mike Watt will openly admit that his penchant for flannels and Levi's is a tribute to John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival (although I doubt that would have occurred to anyone who ever saw the Minutemen play). And more recently, Mr. Watt has taken to sporting yellow-tinted shades onstage in tribute to Ron Asheton of the Stooges. A bullshit maneuver? Nuh-uh.
Nonetheless, it doesn't take a genius to notice the great number of bands &emdash;esp. latter-day bands&emdash; whose members use their onstage t-shirt choice to act as a shortcut to how they want you to think about their band. Some of these fuckers obviously thought to themselves, "I'd like the people in the audience all to know that our band has all absorbed the Rolling Stone version of historical accounts of the late-70s glam/punk CBGB scene and we've all got all the New York Dolls records and studied them to the point that we'd be able to sound authoritative (yet convincingly glib!) about them." Now, tie this in with all the awful overly referential music writing you've read, and you can get a feel for how using an onstage t-shirt as a shorthand of sorts can contribute to all sorts of rock-related unsavory-ness.
So, like I said, I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with a sound theory on this issue that isn't clouded by my own elitist hipster hubris. If you have a similar theory in the works and can break it down for me, I'd be, as they say, all ears.
* Yes, yes, it was when I was castigating Quitty from Tight Bros From Way Back When for wearing an offset porkpie hat onstage, which I assumed was some sort of lame Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute (not that SRV was at all lame, but the tribute I thought was kinda forced), kinda analogous to those middle-aged guys in bar bands that wear vests and sunglasses onstage. He later wrote me and told me that the porkpie hat was in fact just an attempt to cover his bald spot.
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In other matters sartorial: Dig my new shoes!
Now, I know you must be thinking they're a little bit on the radical side! Especially for a guy like me who dresses in shop teacher chic circa 1974. So these shoes are a bit of a departure from my ho-hum wardrobal routine. At my workplace we have a rotating cast of German engineers that show up intermittently, and I noticed that two of them sport shoes similar to these. So I figure if they're good enough for German engineers, by golly, they're good enough for Yale Kaul.
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NoMeansNo- Live and Cuddly
Being in bands in Seattle and Portland for the last few years, I've played witness to the disturbing new trend of fashion-rock bands. These are the bands whose foremost function is to display their thrift store finds (or very expensive thrift-store-looking duds); music and creativity taking a distanty back seat. One thing that I noticed amongst these oft self-serving clique members was the inclination towards 80s metal/butt rock T's. So many donning the white belt and Poison t-shirt combo that they'd look at you weird for wearing a button up shirt, let alone an oversized Donovan McNabb Eagles jersey. I always admired the band Caustic Resin for looking like crazy loggers--sporting beards and wearing Corona baja pullovers that say, "Life's a Beer" on them, all the while playing rocking heavy music.
- T. Jim November 17, 2003 22:16Well, I always thought that if somebody was a strappin' a billboard to my flabby chest then they should be payin' for that ad, or at least my t-shert. I always take the freebies for rags.
I've been enamored by a band or two in my day but right about the time that feeling peaked my brain wanted more beer so I could puke. I've bought two rockinband t-shirts in the last few decades. Being on stout hanes beefy-t's, they still live, albeit slightly modified by the wearer, my wife.
The thing is, these promotional items, we shouldn't feel like we should wear ‘em. That's how the man works. The most honest and humble band in the world probably feels like seeling t-shirts. It's a damn shame. The figurines, posters, keyrings and all that disposable snapshot crapola. The system knows how to leach offa ya in exchange for the remnants of your measly paycheck. They want you to wear a t-shirt for a band you never heard, so they can sell more related products. Perhaps they're Coke.
You wanna promote your favorite band? Burn cd's! Rip mp3's! Steal, promote, divert, confuse, say things to people etc. Ain't nobody gonna buy into your t-shirt shit ‘cause you paid extra for somebody else's silkscreened ink and creative artwork. Let ‘em know the real deal, let them hear it. I guarantee you, given the choice between a fresh CD/Cassette/Wax Cylinder, and another radio cycle of Boston/Floyd they'll choose the former. A precious few musicians have made a buck in the current system, many have killed themselves in frustration once there. Maybe you pass the word a score of times – it's cheaper than a t-shirt – and somebody will pick up on the music, they'll buy a CD perhaps, a t-shirt maybe, maybe they'll pay attention to the artist, give them a dollop of immortality. If you want to support the band put them on your recent prolific compilation, radio's almost dead - but CDRs are cheap.
- Ole Corndog November 18, 2003 01:51Yale, would you be willing to modify your anti-rocktee stance to allow for those shirts personally crafted by band members?
- Diane Sawyer November 18, 2003 09:23I wore a shirt once. Chafed.
Hippie
- Hippiefreak@stinkypiehole.org November 18, 2003 16:53T. Graham brings up a point that has more to do with the problem of irony creeping insidiously into punk rock than with t-shirts, methinks. I herewith say to you benighted proponents of all things, dippy for the sake of their own goddamn dippiness, End It. Get Yourself Stoked On Something Real, Please. I don't hate a white belt because of what it is, I hate it because, well, it says "hey, I'm a robot who takes limited chances. Here's my rebellious uniform."
As for this whole trouble of bands parading their influence via their shirts, I'm a little indifferent. Bands that are still that fucking hung up on the Ramones probably are dull as shit anyway. Support your peers, I say. So often a weird shirt is a good way to start a rock conversation. Why have it be about the Ramones than say, Last of the Juanitas?
I really dig when somebody from a band is wearing one of their own shirts. It's like, "Yep. That's us."
As for rock shirts in my arsenal, I enjoy wearing a good quality rock shirt. The Joggers make a good shirt. Drunk Horse, good shirt too.
In Musical Notes:
- J. Vanjek November 19, 2003 16:52www.nofisoulrebellion.com
Is where you should be able to come up with Missoula's finest output in several years. No-Fi Soul Rebellion are like few others. Exciting in multiple ways, talented and stoked on performing the hell out of their songs. The new record is call "the Varitable Rainbow," I think
would you be willing to modify your anti-rocktee stance to allow for those shirts personally crafted by band members?
I'm only anti-rocktee when it comes to persons whom calculatedly choose stagewear, as if it were somehow tied to their personal merit or something. Yeah, I dig hand-crafted t-shirts! Or the idea of it anyway; most of them tend to get made on them flimsy-ass t-shirts that I can't bring myself to wear, but still, the sentiment is there, right?
You know, I remember Top 40 rockers Green Day playing at the Union Hall in Missoula circa '90 and they had their own silkscreen unit with 'em. So if you brought a blank t-shirt, they'd screen their logo on it for free. Of course, this was long before they became known mostly for crafting songs that get played at every 8th grade graduation in America. I doubt very much that you could get a shirt at a Green Day concert for anything under $25 nowadays. A black shirt, no less.
A highly uninteresting sidenote about Green Day: I saw some footage on TV of them playing at Woodstock 2002 or some shit, and I couldn't help but notice that Billie Joe had the exact same baby blue Strat that he was playing in 1990!
Less uninteresting side note: when Green Day played the Union in '90, I was in kind of a temporary hippie/punk crossover phase, and I had assembled three different-sized coffee cans into a makeshift percussion intsrument, and was sitting on the sidewalk outside the show banging on them w/ drumstix. Green Day drummer Tre Cool came outside, grabbed some sticks out of their van, and we got into a little ad hoc coffee can jam.
If only I could sell that memory on eBay.
- Apodaca Duplaga Kaul November 20, 2003 09:24What was the GD crew charging for the silk screen on the spot? That is a goddamn brilliant idea if you ask me.
I witnessed said coffee can jam out.
What was hippie though about your '90 steady state or transition?
- stets November 20, 2003 11:15What was the GD crew charging for the silk screen on the spot?
I'm almost positive it was free, but then my memories from that epoch are spotty at best. I agree; it is a great idea. But from my limited knowledge of serigraphy, doesn't the shirt have to hang and dry for several hours? Wouldn't this be kind of tricky when you're at a rock show? What do you do with the shirt while you're off getting caught in a mosh?
Any other early 90s Msla showgoers remember Bob Knudsen setting up his barbershop business in the foyer of Trendz, selling 50-cent haircuts to people as the enter the rock area? Capital idea!
What was hippie though about your '90 steady state or transition?
Eh? I'm afraid I don't follow you...
- Booty Kaul November 20, 2003 11:56I was in kind of a temporary hippie/punk crossover phase
Please ellaborate
- stets November 20, 2003 12:06Please ellaborate
Oh, you know, I was just kind of exploring that boundary area. I was devoting over 50% of my time to doing that Missoula hippie thing, adopting the unmistakeable patois of that group, allowing myself to repeatedly perform the hippie paw-paw dance to "Peace Frog," going to Ramen and Soul-o-Flex concerts, pretending to be interested in peoples' Dead show anecdotes, and so forth. For a brief period I could be seen sporting long johns underneath cutoff army pant-shorts. Just a young man in search of his identity, I guess. Just checking shit out as I paddled out to sea, hoping to find the New Wave that would carry me into shore.
It was pretty short-lived, really. I never felt too comfortable with that scene as my primary peer group. There sure are a lot of implicit rules in a scene that purports to be so counter to that sort of thing, eh?
- Birdsong Kaul November 20, 2003 13:58Get Yourself Stoked On Something Real, Please
Dang, that line pert' near sums it up for me. What is it about the rock scene that makes people so averse to things that are authentic? And hell, it ain't just the rock scene-- take a gander at our urban landscapes; it's all cartoons! Olive Gardens that are but a chintzy cartoon version of an Italian neighborhood market. Applebees adorned with local tchotchkes to make you feel like you're in a corner bar. Whole towns with nothing but architectural codswallop. Uh... which somehow relates back to white belts...yeah.
whose foremost function is to display their thrift store finds
That's what immediately sprung to mind uponst walking the streets in PDX this past summer. It was like a gott-dang who's who of thrift-store haute couture! The sheer volume of hipster clones in that town almost transcends the absurd. We have a sim-yu-lar phenomenon in Boulder, CO, although it tends more toward the hyper-obnoxious, over-funded eastern seaboard crusty variety. With a bit of DJ/techno cool sweepstakes also. But I don't really have a grasp of that whole aesthetic, so I'll just shut my trap for now.
- Swipp Kaul November 20, 2003 14:55I recall in about '93, I had a girlfriend who had a younger sister, maybe 8 or 10 years old, and for Halloween, she was going to dress up as, and I quote, "a grunge."
So likewise, I'm waiting excitedly for when the thrift-store couture reaches mass media saturation, which should be any day now. Thrift Store Barbie, yo. This shit is so cyclical and predictable, kind of like the Fourth Turning, except for hipsters.
- Yale! Get back to work! November 20, 2003 15:19Being a Portlandite, I concur with your assessment of our ubiquity of hipster clones. Many times I've gotten the 'fashion retard' stink-eye from one of these tools at a rock show.
In response, I always flash them a-- 'I'm here to see the music, why are you here, fuckstick?!' look.
No fights yet. They probably smell the crazy Montana freeman on me. That stink don't wash off.
P
- PDXer November 20, 2003 15:23I struggle mightily with these issues, fellas. The fact is that Rock and Roll is and always has been wrapped up in what rockers dress like. Like all y'all, I'm real fuckin' thirsty for some authentic anything (anything besides 5 kids ratpacking some poor soul outside the back door of the building I work in, that is), but to deny the style or (ahem!) fashion side of Rock is to deny reality. I get a kick out of what folks have on, especially at a show. Laughing at them or thinking they look cool is a good chunk of the fun.
- mhaze November 20, 2003 16:33"I get a kick out of what folks have on, especially at a show. Laughing at them or thinking they look cool is a good chunk of the fun."
I couldn't agree more. Being vertically challenged as I am, I often am not able to actually see the band I went to check out, so luckily I thoroughly enjoy the people-watching aspect of it all. I had so much fun watching the crowd when we went to see Marilyn Manson that I hardly remember anything of the actual concert. At one point, a trio who was moving through the crowd stopped in front of where we were standing. There was a woman dressed as a dominatrix with a whip, and 2 men dressed in religious garb-one looked like a priest in a black robe and one a cardinal (or something) in a red robe. Anyway, the woman had them on leashes and paused briefly while the 2 guys had a hot little make-out session with each other. Definitely worth the price of admission!
- Amers November 20, 2003 19:54There were lots of other hip scenesters there, but none quite as memorable.
Where the hell was I when Thee Hedons shirts were going around? Just how is guy to get his hands on one these days? Twigg, you out there?
- Longfield November 21, 2003 18:52Thee Hedons shirts was some knockoff low-rent (to pay rent) project from Scotty. He sold me an off-centered one. I think I got conned or something.
It makes a nice undershirt. The design was "The Way of Thee Hedons" mock-up Twigg did over some old bookcover. I think it was poster for a show once. Anyway, I am not sure how many more were made. I would consider selling you my pit-stained threadbare shirt.
- R'k November 22, 2003 17:13Hell... forget that... EBAY here I come.... there must be a market for "worn" rockwear there!