Musicians Wearing Shirts from Bands That Sound Nothing Like Them

Firstly, it's not "Interpol" it's Paul Banks' solo band. Interpol do not *do* t-shirts, or jeans. It is against their ~design aesthetic~. Or, erm, something.

Secondly, I actually have no idea what the name of Paul Banks' solo band's drummer is. Sorry. I totally fail at fangirl. It would, however, be quite funny if Banks' band were comprised of all those hard rock and metalish dudes and yet still managed to sound not in the slightest bit hard or even rock. :-P

I would really love an actual

YOUR
FAVORITE
BAND

shirt

As opposed to a YOUR FAVOURITE BAND shirt, which being in the U.S. would look like an affectation. Just like all the band t-shirts I wear!

http://news.qthemusic.com/2012/09/qa_paul_banks_-_the_interpol_f.html

Banks confirms in this interview that it's Seb from Trans Am.

i saw a girl in a t shirt the other day. it wasn't even a rock n roll shirt, it was just the honey nut cheerios bee. but it made me wonder - has she ever even had honey nut cheerios?

― contenderizer, Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:32 AM (12 hours ago)

ps lol I am totally stealing this

No one IRL ever actually gives a flying fuck or is sexist about any band t-shirt I wear or have worn in my 15+ years of IRL bad fashion sense
I had hoped for years as a teenager in a podunk town that wearing a Sonic Youth shirt would be a great way to meet likeminded souls
Turns out it's true but all the likeminded souls are men twice your age who just want to read a teenage girl's boobs

maybe being too harsh with that last line

NB tho I don't perform music

Really, I swear to god I was trying to research whether that was Paul Banks' drummer or not, but then I fell into a hole on Tumblr and after 40 pages of haircuts I completely forgot what I was looking for so cheers, yeah?

http://media.tumblr.com/9e130d7615563fe779529e038f2d8889/tumblr_inline_mtcd315V2S1qfyule.jpg

WAIT. Actually, reading the interview, and remembering tweets from him and various fans and his band, the guy in the photo is Charles, not Seb. The other guy that isn't Brandon Curtis is Damien something or other.

Aw, reading that interview reminded me how much I really like that Banks record. It's a cute record.

(I am now totally going to make a YOUR FAVOURITE BAND shirt for myself. And not just in photoshop, either)

I had hoped for years as a teenager in a podunk town that wearing a Sonic Youth shirt would be a great way to meet likeminded souls

Ha yeah, except my boobs were never worth reading even for guys twice my age, so it never worked for me on even that level. Still tho it's not like I've ever gone the other way and struck up conversation with someone about their t-shirt so I guess I am the problem too.

(OK, I did once: I excitedly told someone in a Kitty Kitty Corporation t-shirt "nice shirt, I love Quickspace and Ligament!!1" at a gig I was sort-of-running and she looked mutely terrified and left the gig before the music started and I suspect never came to any of our other gigs again. Sorry to that person.

I was probably being a gatekeeping asshole myself anyway bcz I was probably secretly hoping they would say "I have never heard of Ligament, you are better at having heard bands than me and I am unworthy of this t-shirt" or sth. I have no idea what this post is even about, sorry)

I have totally, in the past, struck up conversations with random strangers about the brilliant T-shirts that they were wearing! (I also used to drink a lot more heavily in the past, so I would strike up conversations with random strangers over just about anything.)

**now goes back to studying guitar solos in live Interpol videos jesus fucking christ how does he do that**

I often strike up convos with people based on their outfits. They generally seem happy to be talking with me.

someone told me i couldn't wear the doctor who shirt i was wearing because i didn't know it was a doctor who shirt. I just thought it was a shirt with a messed up police box on it.

I met one of my best friends in this town through him seeing me wearing semi-obscure tweepop band t-shirts and coming over and saying hi and stuff, mind you maybe 75% of my t-shirts are band ones. Another 20% being record label tees.

i am pretty sure that no member of Metallica excels at puppetry tbh

i will occasionally compliment people on their band tshirts, but because i know in advance that it will be completely weird & awkward, i try do it in a glancing way, so that by the time my comment registers, i'm already halfway out the door (figurative if need be). more social interaction should be conducted in this fashion, imo.

all my social interaction is conducted in that fashion

ha, saw someone last night wearing a flying saucer attack t-shirt and wanted to say something but didn't (was most curious about how new it looked, was pristine)

Kitty Kitty Corporation t-shirt

i wish i had one of these. the logo is super cute.

I figure talking *to* someone (note operative preposition) about their T-shirts is fairly relaxed, because it is something they've chosen, a taste marker they are displaying, and hence it's not *inherently* rude to politely compliment.

But like any other human interaction, yes, this is depending on following, y'know, basic guidelines of respect, and before you protest "OMG who would not show respect" realise that there are many many people who do not, or who just think that music fans who code female don't *deserve* that respect. Coming up to me after soundcheck and saying "Great Hawkwind T-shirt, what's your favourite album" would get you a 5-minute conversation on Doremi vs Quark Strangeness and Charm. Standing in front of me as I pack up my big muffs, and loudly saying "I bet she can't even name a Stooges song!" will get you a punch in the nose!

Show respect and treat the person as your equal! Even if they are a musician who happens to look female! And if you find yourself only ever directing t-shirt questions at members of your target gender, but never your own, Don't Be That Guy.

There's a big difference between "wow, that Spacemen 3 t-shirt looks so beat up, I bet it could tell a few stories" (or even "that's a pristine shirt, did they reform or something?") vs the guy who stares at your breasts for 20 minutes before accusing something like "that is in the Spacemen 3 font but it is not a Spacemen 3 t-shirt who ripped it off what a poseur" because they have never heard of Other Music despite being at a drone show. That weird kinda half-bravaggio half-contempt tone that some dudes get when they talk to female persons like I don't even think they realise how gross it is. There is nothing wrong with the thing in itself, but there is a hell of a lot wrong with how some people do it!

(I mean, what pisses me off about that story I told on the other thread is... y'know, the actual band t-shirts I have got actual shit for, these bands were *not* even obscure or anything. Like, how fucking insulting is it to assume that a musician in a garage band has never heard the Stooges, y'know? That's what made it so over the top sexist.)

Our Alice (probably about 10 then) saw a Ramones t-shirt in the window of Oxfam Reading, so she cadged the fiver off me and went in for it.

The Scottish guy who runs the shop was a little "Oh, you like the ramones then?" but she gave him chapter and verse about the first album and how "Rock and roll high school" was her favourite film when she was five, etc. He was very "Really? Wow, ok then"

Film That, Nick Hornby!

Yeah, what BB said..

There is that 'hey, justify yr t-shirt' edge maybe, but sometimes people have liked my t-shirt or asked about it and I daresay Alice would get people seeing her wearing it and just assume it's bought in topshop, but as she says "If it has Tommy's name it's probably not a real one"

Fuck bands, I'm now going to start wearing t-shirts with the names of heritage apple varieties.

YEAH MAN I JUST PLANTED A PEABODY NONESUCH. I bet you've never so much as eaten a pippin; get tae fuck.

nice. " actually, it's a better cider apple..."

ILM in 2007: Hey, let's post pix of bands/artists wearing band shirts of bands they don't much sound like! What fun!
ILM in 2014: Let's discuss the philosophical expressions of wearing band shirts.

Fucking progress, man.

We have grown.

Your thread sucked. Now it is better. Deal with it.

Go fuck yourself.

your favourite thread sucks

ILM in 2007: Hey, let's post pix of bands/artists wearing band shirts of bands they don't much sound like! What fun!
ILM in 2014: Let's discuss the philosophical expressions of wearing band shirts.

both of these are perfectly OK timewasting activities

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/stevecardiacs.jpg

Steve from Embrace wearing a Cardiacs t-shirt. This is not unusual if you know him. He'll be wearing a Sleaford Mods t-shirt next.

I'm happy with the turn this thread has taken, btw.

https://24.media.tumblr.com/162a4a4ff880036768d90d62ae9fe10e/tumblr_n1indrqNAN1qaxybpo1_400.png

Demi does this a lot.
http://i58.tinypic.com/2rr6nph.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/3358vvk.jpg
http://i57.tinypic.com/2ent108.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/2lvbel3.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/adks2s.jpg

I know we had this conversation to death upthread but the ideas up there make cardamon want to do some typing, so.

There's something really refreshing about ppl who 'shouldn't' be wearing this or that band's shirt doing so. (Especially if it's a band I like; and even if I've superficially got over teenage rockism.) It's a corrective to the mystique around certain bands – the idea that they are unknown to a largely docile public, known only to an aware group of fans – and the status they have because of it.

It also breaks the false sense of community that can develop around a band, and reminds us that because this thing we like has such universal appeal it can't 'only' be for us or people similar to us.

I'm assuming here that the part of liking a piece of music that has to do with ingroup membership – the part where you're 'a person who likes the velvet underground', or whatever – is like a kind of boring encrustation that distracts from the actual sound hitting your ears, and that it's good to have your sense of affiliation with the people who made whatever music it might be shaken up.

because our sense of affiliation is always false somehow

Lol @ these Hollywood divas that don't get the exquisitely nuanced counterculture message of Love + Rockets, The Cure etc... yeh sarcasm etc....

are the l-r ones supposed to be like exhibits for the prosecution, or how-to guides

That Love & Rockets shirt is cool

yeah I like how it states that she was gainfully employed in something that took place before she was born. kicks it up a notch

that's a nice collection if they're not modern repros. i'm not invested in the authenticity of the person wearing the old-timey shirt, just the shirt itself. i always wanna look at the tags; if it's screen stars or spring ford then good job wearing that shirt, whoever you are.

also if a band has cool t-shirts that everybody likes but only a select few can appreciate the music maybe that's the band's fault one way or the other.

also if a band has cool t-shirts that everybody likes but only a select few can appreciate the music maybe that's the band's fault one way or the other.

or maybe the fact that the music is appreciated by a select few is the very thing that makes everybody like the t-shirt.

i mean, there's nothing particularly interesting about that new order t-shirt, for example, except that it's a new order t-shirt.

there's nothing particularly interesting about new order tbf

some nasty bootleg t-shirt aesthetic going on there, takes me back to going round basingstoke market on a wet saturday - the smell of the fish stall, odd bits of rotting fruit and veg on the ground, dodging the strangely oily puddles in your soggy old trainers

yeah they're mostly similarly shaped/ sized v-necks, probably all the same contemporary repro fashion company using the same blanks. assumed the new order at least was real for the reasons mentioned; there are more iconic images to reproduce that would sell better.

or maybe the fact that the music is appreciated by a select few is the very thing that makes everybody like the t-shirt.

tru more often than not, but i was thinking about this idea:

Pop kids these days wear Motorhead or Ramones t-shirts the same way that pop kids wore Bauhaus or Siouxsie and the Banshees t-shirts in the 80s - sometimes, when I'd confront people on it, they'd admit that they weren't even aware that these images/logos were for bands - they just thought that they were logos in the same way as wearing an Ocean Pacific t-shirt was in the 80s (hey, look at me, I'm a cool surfer chick, even though I live 1000 miles from the nearest ocean).

or

Wear a Tshirt of some band you never heard and when quizzed on it talk at length about the sleeve designer and say are you a fan of their work then

the design aesthetic overlaps the music but also exists as its own thing, so the cure logotype or the pc&l cover or whatever become as zeitgeisty as a keith haring image and ends in themselves rather than just functioning as signifiers of a band and the community that surrounds it. i figure if a band exists as a purveyor of visual imagery as well as musical expressions then some people are just going to interact on that level and why wouldn't they if it's good design.

The only thing I got out of this new shitshow is apparently a dude from Trans Am is in Baroness?? Holy shit

The real problem with that Darkthrone-shirted keyboard dude above is the hat. It just... doesn't work. You're not allowed to wear a hat like that with a Darkthrone t-shirt.

I wanna see pictures of death-metal guys wearing things like Katy Perry shirts

I can't find it now, but I remember having a old shot of Napalm Death pinned to the bulletin board at an old office wherein one of them was wearing a LUSH (as is Miki Berenyi/90's shoegaze) t-shirt.