My Band T-Shirt

102. Oasis, Last English Gig (2009)

I’ve been an Oasis fan for about half of my life now, and this is by far not the first t-shirt of the band – there must have been more than ten at some point. This particular t-shirt, however, tells the story of a long-lasting dream finally come true and of good timing.

Ever since I fell for Oasis my dream was to see them playing live in England. As this blog is written and published in England, I should add that I live in Germany. Well, you might say, going from Germany to England isn’t too difficult, so why didn’t you do it earlier? It simply didn’t work out. For most of the time I was at school or uni, so money was tight, and when money was available, the date would be problematic. But finally, in 2009, I was all ready to go – a ticket for July 11 at Wembley was duly booked ten months earlier, yet arrived only five days before I left for England. Better late than never, eh?

When arriving at Wembley and after having a beer and enjoying the view from the stadium’s top floor, I made my way to the merchandise shop and bought this very t-shirt. Not that I worried to forget that night, but it’s always nice to have a souvenir, isn’t it? Especially if it’s one I’ve been wanting to get for years.

The show started with Reverend & The Makers, who were alright but had to play to an arena that was, at best, two thirds empty. Kasabian were next in the line-up, and that was something different. Still not fully packed, the crowd went near crazy and the atmosphere was already great, even though it was only about 6am and Wembley was still full of daylight. When the sun went down, the frenzy was complete. Oasis entered the stage and about 70,000 people went nuts. Even in the highest row of the Wembley stands people were jumping, dancing, freaking out – I can testify to that because I had a ticket for exactly that row. You could hardly recognize someone on stage, but I have to admit it was comfortably warm and dry up there while the people in front of the stage, though obviously having the time of their life, got soaked. And the atmosphere still was electric up there!

Well, what can I say? It was an epic night and every little bit like I thought an Oasis concert in England should be like. Don’t get me wrong, their shows in Germany were (mostly) great, but I think every band is at their best when playing at home – even though the crowd was quite international. Plus you wouldn’t get 70,000 people (three nights in a row, one shall not forget to mention) to enthuse in such a way at an Oasis concert in Germany. It was just perfect.

And my trip was perfectly timed as well – as said above, better late than never. Who would have guessed that some six weeks later, the band would be history? How lucky was I to be able to go and see them in England just before it was all over? I was planning to visit another show in Germany with some fellow Oasis fans that was about to take place in Konstanz (as can be seen on the back side of the t-shirt, which was ready to be worn, of course). We met in Munich the day before and were in high spirits – only to wake up the next day, finding texts and messages telling us about the end of Oasis. We were gutted. Our favourite band for the past 15 years had parted ways – one day before we were to see them yet again.

We decided the only way to cope with this was to cancel our trip and to start a boozy tribute day and night with lots of beers, memories and dancing to some of our favourite tunes. My friends envied me for having witnessed one of Oasis’ last shows on British ground, which was manifested by the t-shirt I wore. Whenever I wear it now, the fond memories of this unforgettable night come back and give me goosebumps.

Sebastian Ulkan

101. Dodgy, Green, White and Blue (1996)

Britpop. As musical movements go, it hit the skids faster than it had hit the headlines for a couple of hours in 1996. For every Oasis there was a Menswear and with every Blur you got a Northern Uproar. And then there was Dodgy. Two Brummies, Matt Priest and Nigel Clark, and Londoner Andy Miller threw a few stones on the musical waters in the early 1990s and watched the ripples – they’d picked up some guitars and formed The Dodgy Club in a west London garage. Apparently they were big in Hounslow.

But I hadn’t heard of them at this point. They first appeared on my radar in 1995 with the single Making The Most Of. I was hooked. I then devoured their back catalogue: quadruple A-Side, Melodies Haunt You, and the sublime So Let Me Go Far proved to me that their dreamy sounds had absolutely nothing to do with Britpop. Then there was the bootlegs, cassette singles (remember them), 12-inchers, Japanese imports, travelling to gigs all over the UK and the ubiquitous tee-shirts – all helping to make me poor and Dodgy rich.

This t-shirt was originally bought for, and worn by, our seven year old son: it was purchased at their Big Top gig in Exeter (we were holidaying in Devon at the time). James later donated it to Doris, our cat, when, many years later, Phill Jupitus broadcast his BBC 6 Music Breakfast Show live from our house. (Phill came up with Phil Wilding the night before - we had a few beers and a bite to eat courtesy of the BBC and next day, at the crack of sparrows, they rocked up to do their morning show, where lashings of tea, bacon sandwiches and good music (I chose it!) were the order of the day. The Phil(l)s fell in love with Tom and Doris, so much so that when they did their pets in band t-shirts gallery, T & D took pride of place. Doris was adorable then and still is to this day - though it’s been a long time since she’s worn a t-shirt, Dodgy or otherwise.)

As for Dodgy, at the height of their powers, they had a lovers tiff and committed commercial suicide. They imploded. And as with all implosions, what was left was a big void. Nothing. Until now.

Dodgy’s first album for sixteen years came out last month: Stand Upright In A Cool Place is the record they were always going to make. There’s also talk of a tour to promote it. Mmm. I wonder if there’ll be a merch stand?

John Medd

100. Orbital, Orbital 20 (2009)

The day Keith Drummond turned 40, he announced that he’d stopped wearing band t-shirts.

Leaning back on my office chair, grimy trainers on the table, jeans stained with copy-editing ink, my upper body in a bright green top bearing the legend “Woozy With Cider” – a James Yorkston album title on a bit of Fruit Of The Loom cotton – I despaired. Our art director in proper shirts? Word Magazine’s page-jazzer-upper, our office larker-abouter, canning the casuals to be a smart middle-ager? To behave like – I couldn’t believe I was saying this – a proper adult?

Inches behind my head, the Word reviews cupboard sagged and bulged. Here were the fragments of pop culture that we shored against our ruins. Promo CDs stacked up in Jenga towers. Pin-badges stuffed into gaps between jewel cases. Cloth bags, bottles of Woozy Cider, even a promotional banana. All of them liberated from padded envelopes, spreading themselves out, creating their own peculiar landscape.

It was not what you’d call a grown-up environment.

The next day, Keith came in, shirt neatly ironed, collar starched, cuffs buttoned. The day after that I went home, and put my t-shirts in my bottom drawer. I was nearly 30, after all – about to reach a milestone itself, another new tick-box. And my life with band t-shirts had been, up to then, as fanciful sorts say, emotional. It had begun with the baggy REM chequerboard top I would later write about for a newspaper, bought secretly from classified ads in the back of a music weekly, worn tentatively at first, then later with confidence, under my knee-length, dark-green leather jacket from Barnardos in Llanelli (the one my Dad chucked in the skip five years later “before it walked there itself”). Then came Oasis’ Shakermaker (I picked them for a while, before swopping for Blur, and an End Of A Century ringer T), a burgundy Ash top bought by Welsh Dan for my birthday, and one bearing a picture of The Smiths outside the Salford Lads’ Club, the picture inside The Queen Is Dead gatefold.

I bought the album and t-shirt on the same day. I remember the woman behind the counterin that arcade– curly perm, lots of bangles – asking if I was sure. I was surer than I’d ever been. And I knew I was right a month later on a tertiary college trip, the morning after a disco at Kings College London, driven not by booze – our teachers were there – but by coffee and butterflies. And the vague ghost of a boy whose name I can’t recall now, taking a shine to me because he liked Bigmouth Strikes Again too. Looking back now, I know that still matters. Because band t-shirts weren’t a simple badge of honour. They took you to other worlds. Worlds that smelt of boy’s deodorant and aftershave, tasted of lip balm and chewing gum, that felt like your mind and your heart were about to  explode.

Then came the blue Orbital t-shirt, and the important friendship that came it, which, along with lovely Ian’s Blur t-shirts, started this blog. After university, the t-shirt wearing tailed off in my early twenties, partly because I knew certain worlds well enough now, partly because I had hardly any money when I first lived in London, and partly because my brother Jon had nicked most of mine, including The Smiths one, never to be seen again. Apart from in a photo, him standing next to two girls.

But when I started working for a music magazine, they crept back into my life again. It helped that I got some sent to me, and that I was lazy, and also a scruff. A black-and-white tribute to Maps’ We Can Create, and a Digitalism black-and-neon-green number, both tight as hell, were regular wears. As was the Woozy With Cider one, one also sent to several colleagues. I’m still amazed that Rob Fitzpatrick and I didn’t wear ours concurrently – although, on one particularly horrible press day, we did drink the scrumpy.

But after Keith dropped his bombshell, I went the same way. Yes, I was a bit younger (sorry, Keith), but I was getting grey too, and lines had started to form around my eyes. And there was something adolescent, I felt then, about wanting to tie my body to a band, to feel part of this bizarre music industry by slapping its slogans across my bosom. And Christ, I was grown-up now, long grown up, even – albeit making a living by writing and editing things about pop music, naturally.

In Christmas 2007, I left The Word to go freelance. Four months later, I turned 30. I wore a lovely dress to my birthday party, shared once again with Welsh Dan, who I had known for half my life by this point. The sky burst open blue, the drink shone, and the pub became my palace. Standing outside with a large glass of wine in my hand – I had even graduated from cider – I felt like a proper adult. I remember standing in the evening light, with the sun in my eyes, recalling my mother saying to me once that she thought she’d wake up one morning, and suddenly be a grown-up. I felt then like I’d stepped into this bar tonight, a switch had flicked, and there I was.

And then, just over a year later, something changed. For his 31stbirthday, I took Welsh Dan to Brighton. We shared a twin room in a rough hotel opposite the pier, our beds inches apart like Bert and Ernie. We spent the late afternoon reliving our old days, and remembering how important they were, before buggering about on the front for a bit; naturally, we had to repair to a pub for some ciders too. Then we had some sensible food before we went to The Dome for Dan’s birthday treat – to see two brothers we had both adored when we were teenagers. They had stopped playing as a duo five years ago, but were now back for their first set in ages. I hadn’t brought that blue and yellow t-shirt with me that started this blog. It was lying at the bottom of a drawer, long forgotten, back home.

Going in to the gig, I remember how tentative I felt. I was too old to stand up, to dance, to feel excited, I thought, as we slowly went in, and fitted ourselves into a corner. I remember us joking that all Brighton’s babysitters must be busy tonight. Then the lights started to dip, and I tried to deny it, but I couldn’t. I realised something had changed in me in recent years. Cynicism had soaked into me, took hold of my bones. Not looking daft had become something I cared about. Being grown-up had become about fun in strict, controlled ways; I had to be dressed right, and held right, living some approximation of a child’s grown-up fantasy. It was as if the years had taken that big, beaming soul of mine, and held it tighter and tighter, until all the air was squeezed out of it.

And then I felt the heat, our first drink, our second, our third – cider, cider, cider – looking at each other, and felt the tightening go. There were silhouttes, lit-up glasses – Phil and Paul – then our roars. Then Satan and Belfast and Chime and The Box then the beat then the beat then the beat then the beat, then I looked around, we looked around, and I thought, that’s enough. I’ve had enough of This Is What You Should Do. I’m over This Is How It Should Be. Instead, I watched as my bag and my coat landed messily on the floor, then my arm as it swept around the neck of my friend.

A few months later, I would see a picture of Keith – now working for a contract publisher, far from the world of Word – on his Facebook wall. He was all grown-up and glorious in it, and wearing a band t-shirt.

After the Orbital set, I bought a t-shirt from the merchandise stall. For a second, it felt wrong. But ever after, it’s felt right.

99. The Chemical Brothers, Freestyle Dust (1997)

When Jude and I begun My Band T-Shirt, we thought it would be fun to celebrate some of the garments that brought back certain memories and occasionally rofl at our collective past misdemeanours such as ‘having a metal phase’ and ‘pretending that WE know we’re cool’ behind our occasionally ill-fitting merchandise. As the site grew, we got so much more than that – life experiences, marriages, deaths, births etc. It has all been very amazing and sometimes quite tearful. So to celebrate our first 100 posts, we - Wadey and Jude - decided to delve once again into our past and write about two other t-shirts that have always stayed with us.

After pissing about as a chef and then working in a record shop, in 1995 I decided to go to university and further my writing ambitions by studying journalism. I ended up in Southampton. Not a joyful place by any means, but I was assured that it was ‘only up the road from Brighton’ where some of my friends had talked about moving to, so I thought it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Having felt like the elder in a class full of youngsters (it was literally myself and another chap who were over 20 at that time) I felt a bit ancient, but also a bit cool because I’d occasionally nip up to London to do some cover work at Melody Maker (where I’d done some work experience and they liked me, and so whenever they needed holiday cover on the PA desk or in the pictures department).  Anyway, during my first term, I’d overheard a classmate talk about what album she was hoping to purchase with some birthday tokens, butted in and suggested Different Class by Pulp and before you knew it, I’d made a new friend. Her name was Gemma and I fell quite hard in love with her, despite battling with whether I was a full time homosexual or not. ANYWAY. Come the next year, she moved into the house I was living in, and soon we were fairly inseperable. I’d cadge fags off her, and would listen to Maxinquaye in my loft room. Much of her time was taken up by another housemate named Sarah who was a bit of a total nightmare, so it became a bit of a sod spending much time with her without the very high maintenance Sarah getting in the way.

Towards the end of the second term, another housemate John had suggested that we attend the ‘dance day’ at Brighton’s Essential Festival, as it was basically quite amazing with a du jour line-up featuring tents for the Big Beat Boutique (Fatboy Slim! Lo Fidelity Allstars!), Metalheadz (yeah, Goldie’s Timeless was never off the stereo, so we were up for some drum and bass. Ahem) alongside the likes of Death In Vegas, David Holmes and a main stage ISDN beamed “performance” from Future Sound Of London. What we were really there for was The Chemical Brothers, who I’d somehow not actually seen live at that point, despite getting into them when they were The Dust Brothers and had heard them DJ. I’d got a promo of Dig Your Own Hole which was fast becoming the sound of that Summer, and they’d just scored their second chart-topper with Block Rockin’ Beats.

So off to Brighton we went. Me, Gemma, John and his girlfriend Clare, and it soon occurred to me that Brighton wasn’t very ‘just up the road’ after all. No matter. We had a lift, a few smokes and we had come to DANCE. Gemma and I had split up from John & Clare at around the point that John wanted to check out some acid jazz type effort on one of the smaller stages, but we’d agreed to meet up afterwards in the multi-storey where John had parked his Golf to get home.

The Chems were headlining one of the bigger tents, and were well, bloody amazing. It being the era it was, we seemed to be stuck behind some TFI Friday goons, but no matter. It remains one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced. There was some quadraphonic sound thing going on, with speakers in each corner of the tent, and combined with Tom & Ed’s acid noise marvels and the projections, it was like being on proper killer rave drugs rather than the several shandies we had actually had.

After that assault on our senses, we popped to the merchandise stall before dashing back to the car park to catch John & Clare. We knew we were doing okay for time as they said they’d be going around 11pm, so when we did arrive at the multi storey and saw no sign of John’s car, we panicked a bit. Had it been stolen? Should we see if they were hiding? Oh God Oh God Oh God.

Soon we realised they’d left us already, so we went to see if we could catch a train. No joy. The last one had left 40 minutes previously. The coach station was shut too, which was kinda unhelpful. So into the night and streets of Brighton we started a-wandering. I had a brief and very vague idea of where things were having been there a couple of times before, but we had nowhere to stay, next to no money between us and once the night started to kick in and we’d taken the piss a bit by making a cup of tea last 90 mins in the all night café, we set along the seafront. Now, with just light summer dancing apparel on, and a pair of shoes that were making my feet hurt, the balmy Summer evening turned grimly cold, and we were both beginning to get a bit irritable having spent the day on shandy and light drugs. We found a warm blast of air coming from the vents of The Grand Hotel, and huddled together like a pair of tramps to keep cosy. We must have been there for a couple of hours as I know I nodded off at one point, and Gemma was putting a brave face on the whole experience, this coming a fortnight after we’d got trapped overnight in London after seeing Beck. Having cursed John & Clare a fair bit, the sun was starting to come up so we decided to see if any tea shops were open yet to kill time before getting on a coach back to Southampton (and a row with John & Clare). As we walked along we spotted Tom from The Chemical Brothers with a ladyfriend and then felt all cool again. We were too nervous to run up to him and go “YOU’RE AMAZING” but it made up for a wonky few hours of trampery.

This t-shirt, which I had actually bought from HMV Oxford Street a year or so before, was what I had on and I’d spent most of my time at university in. I’d wear either that, a Teenage Fanclub Teenager t-shirt, my Elastica Drivelhead or an XL Haagen Daaz one (I was a big lad back then). It more than any Blur/ Britpop garment, reminds me of that era and that night in particular.

I knew I loved Gemma - and she’d also met with the approval of my mum who thought we would end up married – however it was not to be. I never returned to uni, but remained in Southampton that final term commuting to and from a full time job at Vox magazine. It seemed like it was never likely to be, and, well, our respective paths meant that marriage wasn’t going to happen. No matter. That day/ night was probably one of our last and finest moments hanging out, and whenever I think of Dig Your Own Hole or Brighton or university in general. Gemma is threaded throughout that period and time.  

Ian Wade

Spent vs My Band T-Shirt - The aftermath

Thanks to all of you who came down to the Silver Bullet tavern in Finsbury Park and lost your shit at  Spent on Saturday 25 Feb. It was a bloody smashing night, made all the more special with those of you who attended in a band t-shirt. It also witnessed the inaugural appearance of the Wadey & The Lady Mobile Disco Roadshow (basically us two in capes playing PUMPERS).

We also handed out CASH PRIZES to our favourite t-shirts on the night, and the top prize of fifty notes went to Mat Clark and his amazing De La Soul number.

The two runners-up were Cyndi Lauper (apols for “focus issues”)

And Dan Le Sac

For a fuller array of t-shirts from the night, there’s a facebook gallery HERE: http://tinyurl.com/7z8sfh5

We hope to do it again soon, so keep ‘em peeled!

Jude & Ian xxx

98. Morrissey, Motörhead-style (1998)

Spent vs My Band T-Shirt is tonight. Tonight!   So here is a weekend special – Spent’s Anna Hyde with her own t-shirt confession…

I HAVEN’T GOT A BAND T-SHIRT - SORRY.

Oh, now its out in the open I feel so much better.

I did have one once. A Morrissey one in the style of Motörhead, similar to the one above, but with hard nut cap sleeves. I think I bought it at a gig – maybe one of the ones in the boxing ring for Vauxhall and I. I wore it for many years with pride down the gym. But as time wore on, and each Moz Glastonbury performance was more lacklustre than the last, it became clearer and clearer to me that middle-aged Morrissey was hell bent on being a knob. And so I wore it less.

Then one day when a journalist friend came back from court having had to apologise to the cantankerous old pantomime dame,  it made me so MAD that I dug out that t-shirt, on that very day, and threw it into the dustbin with comedy curses and stamping. Yours, Disgusted of Highbury. 

Very occasionally while listening to Hand in Glove at the end of a Duckie night, or waving my lighter in the air to the dulcet tones of Moz’s recorded crooning at some festival disco, I feel more mellow towards Moz. I maybe even feel the slightest tinge of remorse for chucking that t-shirt out, and wish I still had it. But come the light of day and sobriety, I look back at my decision with no small degree of satisfaction.

Moz, I am sure, is reeling from such a slight.

Since then I have decided that band t shirts are just too much of an emotional commitment for me, and also they never fit me anyway. Not even Dolly Parton’s. So now I am more of a band tea-towel kind of girl  and I love my Nick Cave one – but it is quite stained, so sadly I cannot wear it tonight.

Anna Hyde

Tomorrow night - it’s Spent meets My Band T-Shirt!

This weekend (tomorrow night in fact) us (Ian & Jude) will be taking the Wadey & The Lady My Band T-Shirt Mobile Disco Roadshow on the, er, road and will be playing records at the fantabulous Spent evening at The Silver Bullet tavern opposite Finsbury Park in that swinging London.

It promises to be an evening of fun, music and – OMFG – CASH PRIZES for the best band t-shirts on display, which will also – if you’re wearing one that is – get you a pound off the entrance fee. AMAZING.  

JOIN US. Expect a load of face melting experimental prog minimalism* (*or the likes of Human League, Soft Cell, Blur, New Order, wonky yore-indie, disco, 80s trash, 90s “house” “bangers”, classic pop and general doofery).

97. The Verve, T-Shirt Made On Hollywood Boulevard (1994)

In the run-up to this weekend’s Spent Vs My Band T-Shirt extravaganza (http://on.fb.me/AabfDW), here is Spent’s John Best with his own tremendous t-shirt story…

OK, so it’s not exactly a band t-shirt, in that it was never sold on a merch stand anywhere, but it does feature at least one member of a multi-million selling band, in ‘Mad’ Richard Ashcroft, seen here keeping the company of a bunch of back-roomers, among them on the left, your truly. I do have other Verve (and later, post-jazz-label-litigation, The Verve) t-shirts, but this one holds the most memories and associations, for obvious reasons. At this time (I’m going to say, 1994) I was masquerading as manager of Wigan’s chosen few, having graduated from being their publicist,  and this T would have been created in a cheap instant print shop hard by Mann’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd, hence cheesy walk-of-fame typeface.  

It still being early an Verve US jaunt, we were giddy enough with the notion of ‘America’ to want to go out and just be in the place they made the movies. We must have stepped away from our budget West Hollywood accommodation to go and fit our hands and shoes in concrete prints left by Tinseltown’s great and good.  Doing the t-shirt would have been my idea, since it’s not the only one i have with my face on it. (I also had one done with James Brown, later of Loaded, on his first trip to America back in the late 80s and, I have to say, I recommend them, as they take on unexpected poignancy with the passing of the years. Plus nothing unsettles people more about what kind of crazy egomaniac you might be than walking round with your own younger phisog stretched across your front.) 

Anyway, the pretty guy at the bottom of the picture is David Boyd, who ran Verve’s label Hut Records in the UK, and had some kind of Native American fixation that extended beyond his blonde-Geronimo good looks to the wearing of a lot of turquoise and silver jewellery, and radically short denim cut-offs (actually, maybe that bit wasn’t native American). He was the person who suggested I manage the band, after they’d spent every last penny of their advance on beer and pasties in the first short months of their deal, and needed someone a little bit more, ahem, “responsible” to step into the breach. As their publicist, I understood next to nothing of what a manager did, but having already watched Pulp, Elastica and Cranberries come to our PR office manager-less, and go onto bigger and, let’s face it, more lucrative things, I was keen to give it go.  

This would’ve been around the time of their second album, A Northern Soul, and Dicky (as we sometimes referred to him) would have no doubt been calling me Eppie, in reference to Brian Epstein’s supposed illicit attachment to John Lennon, goading me that I had beyond-bromantic leanings towards our putative star. As it went, I didn’t (I couldn’t go for someone who didn’t flush the loo after themselves), but then anyone living South of Manchester would have naturally and quite rightly aroused gay suspicions.  Truth is, later that night I would make a gauche attempt to, um, “flirt” with the other person on this shirt, one Liz something-or-other who A&R’d for the band’s US label Vernon Yard, and had signed the still excellent Low. Liz rightly gave short shrift to my half-hearted seduction attempts, and everyone had a right old laugh in the morning, for unbeknownst to me, the motel walls were so thin, they could hear my abject attempts to call her room.

Later on, we went to party at Ritchie from Acetone’s house somewhere in the unknown hipsterville of Silverlake. Acetone were our Hut label-mates and supporting us on tour. In the future - when Ashcroft had stolen and secretly married Jason from Spiritualized’s girlfriend Kate - Spiritualized would immortalise the by-then sadly late Acetoner in song with The Ballad of Ritchie Lee. I remember the house seemed super-glamorous and have an abiding memory of myself standing in the shallow end of a swimming pool in my clothes drinking a brewski and feeling the innate rightness of doing it surrounded by such balmy LA-ness.

Perhaps the same night, or maybe one shortly thereafter, I also remember Damon Albarn coming to a small room where all of The Verve were ensconced smoking draw (and probably more) and him insisting on fronting out some extrapolated North:South rivalry (based, I guess, on Ashcroft’s friendship with the Gallaghers). It was kind of a bizarre evening and constantly threatened to turn ugly. In the end I think it was suggested that someone take Damon away before it properly kicked off. Anyway, there’s no real end to this rambling anecdote, except to say that such was life on the road with the then only legends-in-their-own-minds around 1994. Soon of course, everything would change, and a few years later I would have no connection with any of these people. Only one of us would be wrestling with head-turning wealth at odds with our working class roots, and it wouldn’t be me. Still at least i got the lousy t-shirt.

P.S. Either that shirt’s got smaller or…oh, hang on a minute…

John Best