A question to those of you who wear "concert" t-shirts.

I wouldn't wear it now though.

and if it isn't, that's even better.

Except for the friend's band, all my band shirt-buying was done between 1996-98. After that, I no longer felt the need to tell the world that I liked indie rock. I like the shirts I have, though, and don't feel weird about wearing them. Old people seem to like the Tortoise one.

Sorry that the question seemed so uppity. It was just a honest question. I have three (I think): A !!! I got free from a record store clerk when I bought the album, a James Brown one I got as a gift, and a Wire tee I was given from Colin Newman during their last tour. I've only worn the Wire tee, and just once,wwhen I painted a house this summer. I noticed that the last one I wore with any regularity (Mekons, circa 1986) is used as a rag now because it only has about 14% of its molecules left.
I find mice elf having a quick internal debate anytime I see a cool one (or even, ya, an "uncool" one), about the fact that the urge I once may have had to wear one (to let everyone know how great my taste were, to start a conversation, to get sneered at, etc.) is pretty much gone. I've never owned a shirt with a movie or book or tv show on it.

I was just wondering if any of y'all felt the same.
No judging, Alex.

i wear them til they fall apart and even then i might keep them. I have a ratty old Black Flag shirts that looks pretty frightening.

my favorite shirts: the aforemntioned Flag shirt, my Aphex Twin shirt, and a My Bloody Valentine shirt which is a size too large for me.

I have more band/concert t-shirts than a man my age should probably have. Once they cross the rubicon into hole-ridden raggedness, I tend not to wear them (but God Forbid I throw them out). Like photographs, I hold onto them like mementos. I have parted with a few of them (I just gave my rarely worn "Live from the Hate Fuck Captial City of the World - PUSSY GALORE" shirt to my next door neighbor, and gave a Dead Kennedys logo one to Salvation Army,.....sorry, Jello).I should probably go through'em and get rid of more of them, actually. In any event, after a while, they just become shirts....you don't think about it (however, that doesn't mean they lose their meaning...i.e. I may not be thinking about the fact that I'm wearing an Agnostic Front t-shirt at whatever time of day it is, but if you come up to me and quiz on my Agnostic Front, I can damn sure answer you with facts, song-titles, band members, tours, albums, etc. etc. ad nauseum). There are, of course, days when the last thing you really want to do is advertise anything on your chest (lest you have to have a needless conversation/exchange about it), so that's when you reach in your closet for something else. Right now, I'm wearing an XTC shirt (and no, Smashmouth sound fucking NOTHING like them). I'd be wearing a Ramones shirt, but Shania and Ubran Outfitters put a stop to all that.

Do people get too old to wear them? Fuck, I don't care. I'll wear'em until I decide I shouldn't.

Its just, you know, only a made up moniker for this board, that might suggest that I think that I don't take mice elf too seriously.

And, ALex, thanks for writing back. I appreciate your thoughts, theories, opinions and rants, just like most others on ILM.

If it meets all of those then it's nothing more than a nice t-shirt. I don't really think they say anything more about me than many of my other items of clothing.

they are 8 sizes too big

the neck is hella stretched out

they're ugly as sin

if any of these criteria are true, and/or you're only wearing the shirt because you like the band, not because the shirt looks good on you, then wearing them screams "come closer I will bore you with discographies" to all in the vicinity.

Hahahahahahahahahaha

But like I said earlier, I only wear t-shirts to bed now. I like being able to button and unbutton shirts and roll sleeves up and down these days.

Last concert shirt purchased: Kraftwerk
Ones I still have: Spiritualized glow-in-the-dark for Pure Phase, Spectrum 2001 tour, Spectrum "Forever Alien" tour, Mogwai "animals", Scenic, Curve "Cuckoo" tour, Experimental Audio Research, Pink Floyd "Division Bell" tour (I know I know...)

Also - I like the way the Alex guy thinks.

I just thought it'd be interesting to hear the different reasons why they're worn.
Or why we don't wear tshirts with pictures of our favourite food on them.
Or why, for some of us, they're not worn as often.

I would so wear a t-shirt with caprese on it. I love it that much, I does.

I actually made some of my (thus far) lifelong friends in college thanks to silly rock/concert t-shirts. Had I not been wearing a Circle Jerks "Wild in the Streets" t-shirt in the library that one day during the first week of orientation, my friend Jay might never have come up and said, "dude, you like the `Jerks? How do you feel about JFA?" (and from thence, a relationship based on silly punk rock trivia blossomed).

Concert t-shirts.......bringing people together!

Shirts that got me jeered at by heshers: Prince "Jam of the Year" shirt with big symbols on both sides and slogans about sex & stuff all over it; Lovesexy tour shirt with a particulary gay-lookin' Prince pic; completely awesome Cure Disintegration tee.

Your standard black Ramones or Motorhead tee never seems to get commented on one way or the other.

Wearing the tee of some local band while you're in a far-off location can be a nice conversation starter.

Haven't been able to wear my metal shirts in public in years, but that's due to quite radical social/work circle changes. My old denim jacket with the Venom/Metallica/Slayer/Sepultura patches was mistakenly given away to some charity, I really hope some fucked up third world kid is walking around in it and doing it proud.

You're making me think of science fiction scenarios where there is a planet of aliens called Ned's and they all have atomic dustbins and...

Anna, that is a great story about the guy who wanted to talk about Cabaret Voltaire. The European preference for electronic music is still something I grapple with sometimes. Yet I love the Cabs, don't get me wrong.

I have an acquaintance who claims that anyone who wears a band T-shirt after 40 years of age is a c*nt, sad f*ck, etc. I begged to differ, although I have cut back on band T-shirts, and I'm not 40 yet. I still have - and occaisionally wear - a tatty black Nick Cave shirt from a show in 1998. I saw a teenage girl with a Ramones shirt when I went to see the Killers. That was odd/interesting. She was actually very pretty compared to all the other teenage girls I could see there, and since I had to wait 3 hours to get in, I saw plenty.

I have a black Beta Band shirt and a black English Beat shirt. I recently donated my Jeff Buckley and Red House Painters shirts to United Cerebral Palsy because they didn't fit.

How come High Fidelity never mentioned T-shirts? Or did it?

I used to wear a lot of overly large band T-shirts, now that I think of it. But not anymore. One of them I no longer have was a Chameleons one, white, with the cover of What Does Anything Mean on it. I remember a man approaching me in a McDonalds in Manchester when I visited there, asking me about it.

Alex is right, of course. T-shirts are about bringing people together, and I hate to have the unnecessary conversations about them, too.
My fondest memory of a T-shirt started conversation, though, was some guy who approached me in New Jersey when I wore my Bauhaus shirt in 1989. I don't know why.

Outside a Mexican restaurant yesterday I saw a *very* elderly little man wearing a Kiss Alive II tee with an extremely vibrant full-body design on it. I was briefly tempted to go all Alex in NYC on his ass, but decided to give to old geezer a pass. Hell, it was probably Peter Criss.

"well, i have been tempted to buy a t-shirt from my fave thai restaurant in SF

― ken taylrr (ken taylrr)"

i own a shirt for the local carton-sold iced tea company Turner's Iced Tea. that is one of the hottest shirts i own, it's all orange and has the design from the fucking cartons on the back and the Turner's logo on the front. that is some hardcore fucking pittsburgh shit. i will represent for anything i love if they have a cool shirt.