The single most important item in the metallers wardrobe was and as far as I know still is the t-shirt(my daughter got a Green Day American Idiot t-shirt for Christmas), you may wear a shirt for special occasions, you will change jeans, leathers, spandex and god knows what else, you may wear baseball boots, docs, Para boots or clogs but you will always come back to the t-shirt.
My first heavy metal t-shirt came from a little shop in the galleries in Basildon’s Eastgate centre, we used to go in just to look at what we couldn’t afford. Sometime during the summer of ’89 I scraped together the money for a t-shirt, it probably only cost something like £5 but that was money better spent on cigarettes and newky brown. After many agonizing hours of deliberating over what print to get I decided on Stranger In A Strange Land by Iron Maiden(of course)
Yes the picture is of that very t-shirt and it must be over nearly eighteen years old(fuck me!), I cant throw it away its been with me longer than my wife, I have even worked with people younger than my t-shirt.
As you can see I still take my t-shirts quite seriously, as I type I am wearing a Pearl Jam t-shirt I bought at the gig I saw them at in 1992(I am desperate to find a replacement so I can frame this one, it’s the Alive one with the stick man design) and here’s a picture of the Little Angels t-shirt I bought when I saw them in ‘91.
My most recent tour shirt is New Model Army from 2003 and my most recent band shirt is a Ramones t-shirt that I got for my birthday last year from the kids.
I know im not the only one who keeps t-shirts well past their use by date and the person I’m referring to knows who he is, but it’s reassuring to know you are not the only nutter left behind after everybody else has grown up.
No comments:
Post a Comment