Band T-shirt Etiquette

They wouldn't be so bad if they didn't all take their cultural cues from a generation that basically sold the world down the river

Like there was a generation that didn't??

And Primal Scream ARE hippies! Stinkin' loved up higher than the sun love, peace & Stones boogie HIPPIES!! Bless their hearts.

Me, I'm just really proud of my Mod jacket with pins on it. My ambition is to own so many of those that they cover every last part of the jacket (will probably never happen- so far, I've only got six: Johnny Cash, Eddie Chocran, The Smiths, The Clash, The Specials and Dennis Brown.)

You could put a gun to her head ask her to name three Motorhead tracks, and she'd fail miserably.

I have a House of Pain T-shirt that I bought for $2 and makes a very functional nightshirt. Is that not reason enough?

Augmenting old rock t-shirts with rhinestones = bad how exactly? Rhinestones are a big country music/liberace thing i.e. to metropolitan types they carry this overtone of kitsch, so what these T-Shirts are really saying is that rock, especially vintage rock is itself kitsch now, with the further implications that i)no of course I don't know three Motorhead tracks, ii)if you care about having your dead culture taken the piss out of then you're a bit sad.

i.e. Alex is right to hate them, but only cos they hated him first. They're a fairly brutal anti-rock statement. Anyone who wears one of them and a selection of current rock band tees is either a right chump or very clever.

the rhinestone woman in the motorhead stuff has fucked with alex's so she owns this thread

Augmenting old rock t-shirts with rhinestones = bad how exactly? Rhinestones are a big country music/liberace thing i.e. to metropolitan types they carry this overtone of kitsch

Rock was also a big country music/liberace thing, so it's all good.

then there was the time both damon a. and justine f.
gave me a good natured hard time at elastica's 1st gig
up north ('93)cause i had my suede 'metal mickey' t. shirt on.

got punched in the head once at a party in chester, and
i'm not convinced it wasn't because i had a baby pink
skin-tight elastica t. shirt on.

As for etiquette, well, I think that when a band is on tour and has no time to do laundry, they will probably borrow some shirts from the merch counter and that is ok.

yeah, I think she could be a motorhead fan (I really do!!). why can't blonde chicks like motor head, what's so unbelievable abt it.

so i guess thats not good ettiquitte?

Not been into band t-shirts for about a year as suits took over my wardrobe but am desperately seeking a classy Motley Crue shirt since being converted to the side of hair metal upon seeing the AWESOMENESS that was G n R live at Leeds last month. But will need this shirt soon before I get bored of metal - anticipating another month of giving it up bigtime to 'Shout at the devil' before I start thinking "well it's all a bit trite isn't it?"

Another point, I'm a bit concerned about this ironic-metal t-shirt thing that's going around. I mean, I don't have the hair or dress of a rrreal rawker (more of a maudlin mod) so will I just look like some smug student prick, or can I pull it off? I mean, this ain't no ironic flit with the beast that is rawk, uh uh, I have genuine admiration for those who live the rrrock ideal to its fullest (be they fat, bald, stupid, whatever). It takes balls to rock and I'm not sure I've earned the right to display The Crue across my piegon chest yet. So please, sate my fears or explain how yes, I am a tit so I can deal with it. And yeah, if anyone knows where to get a decent Crue t-shirt from, please tell.

Also Once when I was wearing my Merzbow T-shirt to a Spiritualized concert. (oops) somebody made fun of me say "You got the Mezbox, huh, it's really big, isn't it" (or something along that line.)

I also ran into a complete stranger at a museum in NYC who had a Merzbow shirt on when I was wearing mine, and my friend said "Whoa, another Merzbow shirt" and the guy turned around and looked frightened. I was laughing. he said his friend was had released some Merzbow albums and made T-shirts to promote it.

Can such a thing exist?

I have about four or five Cop Shoot Cop t-shirts (a band I was obsessed with during their brief, tumultuous heyday), but am too much of a wimp in this post 9/11 world to wear'em anymore.

Also have a vintage Pussy Galore shirt ("From the Hate Fuck Capital City of the World...") that doesn't really win me a lot of favor.

Andrea Corr.......New York Dolls fan? I think not.

I met the bassist from Singer a little while back and offered to give him a bunch of shirts, but he said that he had several dozen lying around already.

Bands that sink their working capital into making merch before making records: C/D?

I have something like, what, 150 band shirts plus? Maybe 200. I love 'em, what can I say, and they're all from shows I was at. Yow.

chris, you have such a bad 'tude!

In all seriousness? By "the Law of John" (see initial thread query at the top), no, as Spectrum and Spiritualized (let alone Darkside, Spaceman 3, Sonic Boom etc. etc.) are technically different bands.

*BUT*

You are sorta guilty of the ol' "ooh, I'm in the know!" crime, suggesting that you're quite hip to the proceedings at work and not merely a fan of Spiritualized, but of their whole milieu. Kinda like wearing a Killing Joke shirt to a Damage Manual show or a sporting a Wedding Present shirt at a Cinerama show or wearing a Marillion shirt to Fish show (wait, who goes to Fish shoes?), or wearing a Misfits shirt at a Danzig show....almost wilfully defying and challenging the artist onstage to admit his artistic heritage, and indirectly telling all other bystanders: "Hey, by the way, I'm not just a fan of that guy onstage, but I've done my homework, buddy, and I'm a dedicated enough fan -- probably unlike you, you fairweather punter -- to know about all the other branches of the tree that produced the fruit you're now enjoying!" It's almost-but-not-quite as bad as yelling "We Love You, Declan!" at Elivs Costello....a sort've smugly unsolicited assertion of your knowledge of music trivia.

I know I'm guilty of it.

But I used to make my own shirts. I had made a Lou Reed shirt - just a silhouette of his face - everyone used to ask me where I got it... I made a Pere Ubu shirt... My wife asked why I didn't just buy the bands' shirts .. I think I said something like ~ because it says their name all ofver it - and if you know who it's supposed to be, then you don't need to read their name ... or some shit answer like that... Anyway, she said, So a shirt with a picture of D.Boon on it would be even cooler because he's not a band, he's (was) just in a band. So I made a D.Boon shirt - the picture from the back of Double Nickels, but I did write his name on it because you could barely make out who it was in the picture. Mang, I loved that shirt though... until I started hearing more & more about the Minutemen .. like people had gone back & discovered them, maybe because Henry Rollins and Sonic Youth had become popluar, I dunno... So I stopped wearing the D.Boon shirt to gigs because D.Boon was no longer a secret.

Also, I never saw the Ramones live, but I do have a tour shirt from when a friend of mine went to see them & a riot broke out. People stole all of the shirts... Normally, I wouldn't condone stealing, but since it was looting during a riot... hey! I should really return that ratty old shirt to its rightful owner. Who would that be? C.J.?

For dudes like me who are mega shu sometimes it helps start a convo i wouldn't have been able to otherwise

granted, "arty kid" in that high school context meant being able to draw a variety of skulls with fine-point sharpie

https://data.whicdn.com/images/20497400/original.png

When The Occasion was still playing around NYC I once saw a friend wearing their tee and said "Nice shirt, what's The Occasion?" I'm still proud of that joke.

I have this cool Beach Boys "Black Flag" shirt:

https://www.misswit.net/images/product_image/Black_Flag_w_address.jpg

I love it for lots of reasons, but mostly because the Beach Boys and Blag Flag more or less hailed from the same place. Anyway, I love the Beach Boys but (tbh) have never really listened to Black Flag. I wore the Beach Boys shirt to Trader Joe's once, and the green haired dude working the register complimented me on it, then started talking about ... Black Flag. I kind of nodded along and made small talk, but, like, read the fine print!

My favorite shirt might be this Opeth shirt that some Egyptian fan translated and redesigned into cursive Arabic:

https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/84a36227805587.5636bbbe12a21.jpg

I like it because it's a cool design made cooler the more you know what's going on with it. Might wear it to the show tomorrow, not that anyone will know, because it will be like 7 degrees and no one sells Opeth sweaters or long underwear.

I also love my Grant McLennan shirt, for much the same reason. It's his last name, but designed to look like the Monkees logo. Though I once wore it out and someone thought it was a Phish logo.

I wore the Beach Boys shirt to Trader Joe's once, and the green haired dude working the register complimented me on it, then started talking about ... Black Flag.

As a (barely relevant) follow-up, I will note that I have regularly seen Henry Rollins shopping at Trader Joe's.

Was he wearing a shirt?

No shirt, no shoes, no service.

I had my peak "band shirt to gig" moment a few years back, went to see Mogwai here in Hobart (ass end of the earth) and thought you know what, my CAN "Future Days" t shirt is perfect so I wore that. By a chain of coincidences I ended up going out with Barry Burns and a few friends until about 4am. At one point in the evening Barry squints at my shirt and says, "I fuckin love your shirt man. Actually, I think CAN might be my favourite band of all time." This vindicated the shirt choice dilemma so perfectly that I could turn up to every gig for the rest of my life in a Ralph Lauren polo and still feel cool overall.

I've complimented two people wearing t-shirts of a band I am in and neither knew who I was

I have made lifelong friends by talking to people wearing interesting band shirts at gigs.

A teacher at my daughter’s preschool was wearing an Sweetener World Tour T-shirt… I told him “That’s so awesome!,” asked him which of the local shows he went to, etc.

He could not have been less f’in interested in having that conversation…

Also: I was at a stand-up show recently where a young woman in the front row was wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt. The comic asked her - "Are you really a fan, or are you wearing it ironically?" She replied - "No, I'm really a fan." So he asked her what her favorite Maiden album is (they're one of his favorite bands).

There was a really long, awkward pause, and she finally said: "OK... you got me."

He cringed and was like, "You said you were a fan! I wasn't setting you up!"

are you allowed to wear your own band's t-shirt?

https://i.postimg.cc/D0vBpxMZ/bafkreie2xbnphtozltjgvcx2jx44uldjiqhsmvidnzzkou7h27fh7os5a4.jpg

the answer is yes, if you’re robert fripp

Or if you've hit that point on the tour when you've run out of clean shirts and haven't had a chance to wash anything so you raid the merch box

I sense that there weren’t any rules or etiquette as discussed in thread until after Eno lost his hair.

I think the whole "don't wear the shirt of the band you're seeing" taboo is not really a thing anymore.

tbf the most embarrassing thing regarding bands and shirts is stephen stills wearing (american) football jerseys, and then getting pissy if anyone else did so

what a jagoff

xp hard disagree- you paid the ticket to see the band. No point in flaunting it further unless you’ve got some legitimately owned band merch you want to wear in hopes some bouncer/band rep/etc.

Bands wearing their own merch is great. Class act sass.

Band wearing their own merch usually means “halfway through the tour, no clean clothes left”

I think the whole "don't wear the shirt of the band you're seeing" taboo is not really a thing anymore.

It's something people who've never been to an Iron Maiden concert say.

I've long been an adherent of not wearing the shirt of the act you're about to see, but if you've gone to any large arena/stadium show in the last few years, it's clear that war has been long lost

I like t-shirts with wolves and moons, now.
Do you like magic?