Band T-shirt Etiquette

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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!"