For and about collectors of Rock memorabilia

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Crew All Access Pass | From the Crew | Rock On Vintage Tees | Fashion Alert | Fans Tell-All

2. 2 3
In a 2009 Tampa Times interview
with Jay Cridlin, Matt Simmons also
recalled a unique moment 24 years
ago at the USF Sundome when he was
randomly chosen from the audience
to come up on stage and play with the
band U2.
Rewind to May 2, 1985
“U2 is at the USF Sun Dome on
their Unforgettable Fire tour. Matt and
Rosemary, 17, skip school, arrive early
and stake out a spot up front. And as
U2 plays I Will Follow, Sunday Bloody
Sunday and New Year’s Day, they
edge ever closer to the stage. Late in
the show, Bono — not known for his
guitar skills — emerges for an encore
carrying a six-string, strumming four
chords: G, D, A-minor and C. “Those
four chords on a guitar are more im-
portant than all this lighting rig, the
amplification, fancy stadiums, the lot,”
he says. “Because they’re the same four
chords that anybody in the audience
that has a six-string guitar can play.”
The bit serves as the intro for one of
Imagine: Larger-than-life light shows. Two-story high
speakers. Flying apparatuses. Video screens and elaborate set
designs - all in the name of rock and roll baby! Attending a rock
concert in the 1980s and 1990s was a once in a lifetime event.
Rock music of the ‘80s and ‘90s, now categorized as classic rock,
is making a comeback with younger generations. Rock bands
from eras gone by, such as Def Leppard and Aerosmith, are re-
surging their careers and still producing the same larger-than-
life concerts. Only now concerts are called events showcasing
two-story high LED video screens, narrative slide shows, and
yes...pyrotechnics and light shows beyond the limited imagina-
tion. Now, just imagine working as a crew member for one of
those shows as a spotlight operator or video/sound technician.
Many of these technicians have had the opportunity to work
up close and personal with the classic rock bands we have all
come to love. Dave Rauch worked as a spotlight operator at
the USF Sundome during the 1980s and an audio-visual tech-
nician for Busch, Disney, and Opryland productions from the
1980s thru late 1990s. His memories are sparked by his collec-
tion of All Access crew passes while working every one of his
shows. Kenneth Joyner also worked as a video crew member
at the Starwood Theater, Vanderbilt University Memorial Gym-
nasium, and Operyland Hotel in Nashville during the 1990s.
Accompanied by band stats and photos ,Rauch and Joyner
member share their collection of All Access passes and vintage
concert tees while recollecting memorable stories and experi-
ences of past shows.
Throngs of people
threw their hands
up in the air.

3. 4 5
VintageRock
AllAccessPass‘80s
History of The Unforgeable Fire Tour
• U2 shows moved into indoor arenas (U.S. leg)
• Consisted of six legs/112 shows.
• Tour commenced in Australia in September 1984.
• Programmed sequencers used prominantly to
translate elaborate/complex studio-recorded tracks
to live performance
• Songs criticised as being“unfinished”,“fuzzy”and
“unfocused”on the album - made more sense on
stage.
• Rolling Stone magazine - critical of the album
version of“Bad”- described its live performance as a
‘show stopper’.
Fact:
• Band was reluctant to use programmed sequencers.
Since then, sequencers are now used on the
majority of U2 songs in live performances.
U2.com
MattSimmons|LookingBack
Picture it: You’re 15, a gangly
high schooler wearing Bermuda
shorts, pink sneakers and a
mighty mullet . . . in the middle
of the show, the lead singer
[Bono] picks you — you! — from
a crowd of 11,200, and pulls you
onstage to play with the band.
U2 - The
Unforgettable
Fire Tour
11 O’Clock Tick Tock
I Will Follow
Seconds
MLK
The Unforgettable Fire
Wire
Sunday Bloody Sunday
The Cry
The Electric Co. / Give
Peace A Chance/
Amazing Grace
A Sort Of Homecoming
5/02/1985
USF Sundome,
Tampa , FL
Bad
October
New Year’s Day
Pride (In The Name
of Love)
Encore(s):
Knockin’On
Heaven’s Door
Gloria
40
Set List
the simplest songs in the history of rock music:
Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. After a
couple of verses, Bono pipes up again. “Any gui-
tar players here?”
“Throngs of people threw their hands up in
the air,” Simmons says now. “The difference was,
I had a few people around me, friends of mine,
and they knew that I played guitar. So they were
pointing at me.” Bono looks at Matt, then cues se-
curity to pull him across the barricade. The singer
hands Matt the guitar and whispers the chords
in his ear. “Wait’ll you see this!” Bono shouts
to the crowd.The song kicks back up. Simmons
strums along. And to the band’s evident surprise,
he doesn’t choke. The kid is rocking out with U2.
Then Bono leaves the stage. So do The Edge and
bassist Adam Clayton. For a moment, it’s just
Simmons and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. play-
ing to the fans. But soon Simmons has a moment
of panic: He can’t remember how the song ends.
“It was going to be a big rock finish; you could
kind of smell it coming. And I looked over at the
Edge, and he tilted his neck over and gave me a
look like, It’s going to be a G.” That’s the memory
that stands out for Simmons — one of the great-
est guitarists alive, watching him play, reading
his mind, nudging him in the right direction. It’s
the moment he realized that he was actually jam-
ming with the band and that he wasn’t just some
kid who hit the rock concert lottery. His time on-
stage lasted two minutes and 23 seconds — and,
in a way, the next 24 years” (Cridlin).
Dave Rauch was asked if he remembered that
moment when Matthews was pulled up on stage:
“I absolutely do!!! WOW. I remember them bring-
ing him out as prize winner or something and the
crowd went wild. That was one of the U2 shows
that I worked [spotlight] probably the “Unforget-
table Fire” Tour!
Rauch’s concert collection of All Access passes
totals 35, with an additional collection of accom-
panying t-shirts.

4. 6 7
VintageRock
AllAccessPass‘90s
History of Livin for You Tour
• May 16, 1995 BOSTON’s “Livin’ For You” 1995 Tour
kicks off in Mankato, Minnesota. Scholz also an-
nounces that BOSTON has left MCA Records,
though other sources indicate that the breakup
was mutual.
• August 6 The BOSTON 1995 “Livin’ For You Tour”
wraps up in Detroit, Michigan.
• Following the conclusion of the tour, Scholz an-
nounces that BOSTON will next release a Greatest
Hits album. It was initially planned for an August
1996 (the 20th anniversary of the first album), but
the album’s release would eventually be pushed
back nearly a full year. The album is set to be re-
leased on BOSTON’s original record label, Epic,
which is now owned by Sony.
1995 Set List (USF Sundome)
Rock & Roll Band Play Video Peace of Mind Play Video Surrender to Me Play Video
Hollyann Play Video Livin’for You Play Video Don’t Look Back Play Video
Don’t Be Afraid Play Video More Than a Feeling Play Video A Man I’ll Never Be Play Video
Amanda Play Video We’re Ready Play Video Walk On Medley Play Video
What’s Your Name Play Video To Be a Man Play Video I Think I Like It Play Video
Party Play Video Foreplay / Long Time Play Video Feelin’Satisfied Play Video
Something About You Play Video Smokin’Play Video
Cool the Engines Play Video Encore: Magdalene Play Video
Band Stats
• August 8, 1976 -- The group’s debut album, Bos-
ton, is released. It is almost entirely written by
Scholz, with Delp writing “Let Me Take You Home
Tonight”and co-writing“Smokin’.”
• Album stays on the charts for 101 weeks, peaking
at #3.
• By 1995 - sold over 15 million copies in U.S. alone,
making it the highest selling debut album of all
time, and 2nd-highest selling album of all time
(behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller at 24 million).
Would later be eclipsed at #2 by Fleetwood Mac’s
Rumours
• September 1976 - May 1977. Group launches a
tour with innovative technology to help the live
BOSTON compare to the studio BOSTON. Initially
open for other acts, but soon they are headlining
(supported by Sammy Hagar, among others).
• March 1977 -“Long Time”charts at #22 in and the
follow-up“Peace Of Mind”hits #38 in June.
• Nominated for a Grammy Award (“Best New Art-
ist”) and voted by readers of Rolling Stone mag-
azine as Best New Band; Time magazine praised
the album as one of the Top 5 of 1976.
BostonHerald
MashSouthern.com

5. 8 9
be taken to the catwalk about 80 feet above the
stage, the reply came, “300 pounds of puffed
wheat.” The production manager said it was
to be dropped on the band as a joke during
the show. The facility manager said there was
no way anybody was going to be in the cat-
walk while there were people in the house and
there was certainly not going to be anything
dropped during the show from there. “How
about a cow and a machete?” the production
manager asked. “What’s THAT for?” asked By-
ron, the facility manager. “We’re going to sac-
rifice the cow in silhouette behind the scrim,
backlit so nobody will actually see it happen,”
was the answer. “It’s a Sunday night. The cow-
rental places are closed. No cow sacrifices.”
Undeterred, the production manager asked,
“How about two crew hands and a cow suit?”
Byron, at this point, just walked away shaking
his head and saying over his shoulder, “We’re
done here.”
At Starwood I usually ran a camera provid-
ing image magnification for the people in the
cheap seats out on the lawn. There were three
screens hung on the back edge of the “shed”
where the good seats were. I almost always
FromtheCrew
From the Crew
David
Rauch
First concert I ever
did was the Oak
Ridge Boys at the
USF Sun Dome
in Tampa, FL...
that’s were all the
US and world concerts I did were. I got there and
was told I was doing truss spot, which is a posi-
tion 35-40 feet over the main stage floor, i.e. over
the band, where you sit in a “truss chair” that a
spotlight is attached to and is where you mainly
backlight the main singers / band on the front
line. This, after a few more shows, became my fa-
vorite place to be when I did spotlight, however
it came with many stories to share! One climbs up
a small aircraft cable ladder up onto the trussing
system, again 35-40 ft in the air, then you make
your way across the trusses until you reach your
assigned spot. This is standard ops for this posi-
tion, however at this concert when I saw the last
truss I had to climb out onto it was slanted at a 45
degree angle and the chair I was to sit in was at
the same degree. The kicker was that when I ar-
rived at the chair I was directly above the drum
kit, there was no seatbelt / harness to hold me in
and one, just one foot rest, not two, to put my
feet on. I somehow got into the chair wrapped
my two feet around this foot rest and for the
next two hours held on as tight as I could to the
spotlight handles...sitting at a 45 degree angle...
praying I wouldn’t fall and hit the drum set as
I swung from side to side to cover the “boys”!!
Truss hanging crew must have been on dope
that night!!
Rod Stewart concert!! Great concert, again
doing truss spot around 35ft in the air and was
just right of center stage and had Rod as my
main coverage that night. That night I had a
great spot-chair which was much like the chair
in the Millenium Falcon when Luke and Han
were warding off the tie-fighters in the origi-
nal Star Wars...they swung left and right and
up and down...pretty cool! I was surrounded
by and just above a row of Vari-Lights (mov-
ing / intelligent lighting)....I settled in and the
show was great. Near the end of the show and
all of the shows he does, Rod, being the soccer
fan that he is, brings out a huge box of soccer
balls and commences to kick them out into the
audience...however; that night he had a slight
“miss-kick”...he grabbed one of the balls, threw
it in the air and kicked the crud out of it...how-
ever; it wasn’t heading out into the audience...
it was headed right toward me. It hit the vari-
lights just below me and shattered one of them
sending glass and parts flying past my head! He
Kenneth
Joyner
The first show
I worked as a tech
was at the Starwood
Amphitheater in
Nashville, TN. It
was the Fourth of
July, 1986 or ‘85, maybe. I was a grunt unloading
trucks pulling cable. It was sort of a mini-festival
with Stephen Stills, America, The Outfield and Star-
ship. Over the years I was local crew at Starwood
more than at any other venue. I did quite a few
shows early on at Vanderbilt University’s Memorial
Gymnasium as a follow spot operator. I worked
for Iggy Pop, Elvis Costello, Squeeze, The Pretend-
ers, Simply Red, Nick Lowe and a string of bands
whose names I can’t remember at Vandy.
One night at Vandy, on the last night of this
particular tour, the name of which escapes me, the
production manager for the opening act asked the
facility manager for access to the catwalk above the
stage and two hands to help haul some “stuff” up
there. When asked what kind of “stuff” needed to
FromtheCrew
From the Crew
immediately looked up at where he had seen it
go, covered his eyes as the pieces came down onto
the stage and then looked up directly at me as I
was staring down at him at this point. He smiled
and gestured that he was sorry about the same
time as the LD (lighting director) came on headset
and asked if any of the lighting instruments were
damaged...much less me!!
Short and sweet...worst concert I ever did...
Run DMC! As I entered backstage that evening of
the show, I was immediately handed a “riot plan”
by the manager of the Sun Dome. I looked at him
and he stated it was for our safety...that the night
before in NYC there had been a riot at this show
and people had been shot...well that started off the
evening on a positive note...then I told him...”hey
I’m up on truss spot tonight, if anyone tries to mess
with me I’ll be grabbing anything and everything
that I can up there and throwing it at them...pray-
ing that there would be no gun shots and / or try-
ing to tear down the truss from a true riot!!! The
show was horrible and even though I had in some
of the best ear plug protection you could buy and
a “two-ear” headset for hearing lighting cues...I
was deaf from the volume of the event for at least
2 hours after I left! There are a lot of cool stories...
getting Ann Wilson’s guitar picks after the Heart
show. Meeting several of the acts, etc.
Run DMC in concert

6. 10 11
ran the camera in the “pit”, the area between the
front edge of the stage and the barricade that
keeps fans off the stage. There were odd occa-
sions when we’d be allowed to put the cameras
on the stage and sometimes even go handheld on
the stage. Aerosmith always wanted us on the
stage because they were very interactive with the
cameras. One night I was handheld onstage with
Aerosmith and I
had been remind-
ed that after ev-
ery song Joe Perry
changed guitars
and that I had to
make sure not to
be caught between
him and his guitar
rack at the end of
any song. The is-
sue was the chance
that I could trip
him with my cable even though I had a cable page
(a hand pulling my cable for me to help keep it
from getting tangled on anything). I was given a
“home position” to get to where I would be out
of the way between songs. I was apparently too
conservative because Stephen Tyler began urg-
ing me to be more active, in not so many words.
Brad Whitford was doing a guitar solo and Tyler
told me to get out in his face and “mess” with
him (only he didn’t say “mess”). I obeyed and
was really working it! I was shooting down the
guitar neck . . . I was really earning my pay and
breaking new ground in handheld camera tech-
nique. I was so involved in what I was doing I
accidentally stepped on and broke Stephen Ty-
ler’s tiny fluorescent light that was illuminating
his set list on the front edge of the stage. As I
walked back toward him he stared at me, hands
out, palms up as if to say, “Are you kidding me?”
Later, I was in my safe area, he was out singing
to some young lady in the front row and she gave
him a flower. He made a beeline to me, got right
in my camera and stuck the flower between my
fingers. He was right in my face and I was try-
ing to hold my shot. It was awkward because of
the way I happened to have my left hand on the
lens to focus when he approached me. He stuck
the flower between my
fingers and then began
poking me in the stom-
ach with his finger. He
was delighted every
time I jumped. And ev-
ery time I jumped when
he poked me the direc-
tor yelled at me on the
com, “HOLD YOUR
SHOT! HOLD YOUR
SHOT!”
I was shooting Me-
tallica from the pit and the pyro they had as part
of the show almost took my face off. I was ready
to leave at that point. Later in the show a Jack
Daniel’s bottle flew just inches over my head and
smashed on stage. I told the director I was done
but he talked me into staying there. When a fan
tried to get on the stage security grabbed him
and pulled him down right next to me. The bass
player grabbed the security guard from the stage
and put him in a choke hold. There was a fight
between the band and event security on my cam-
era riser. At that point I unplugged my camera
and went backstage. I figured things had broken
down to the point that we might not be able to re-
cover from. I’ve also sat down and had dinner in
the catering area backstage with Pat Benatar and
Neil Geraldo and their kids. I’ve been offered
“anything, and I mean anything” for my back-
stage pass by women who wouldn’t look twice at
Roadie wearing tank top that states-- NO BACKSTAGE PASSES, ca. 1970.
http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com

7. 12 13
Rock On
Vintage Tees
MY FIRST was REM. It was white, loose and
had a chequerboard on the front. I bought it -
secretly - from the back pages of the rock music
newspaper the NME; I ran for the postman ev-
ery morning, before my mother did, to check if
it had arrived.
The day it came, I ran upstairs, locked the
door and put it on. Fifteen years old, there I was
in my first band T-shirt and, just like that, I felt
part of something.
The band T-shirt is one of music’s most po-
tent totems. Wear one and it points out an al-
legiance, however
confident or timid the
wearer. Six months ago,
Ian Wade and I started a
blog, My Band T-Shirt, to
tell their stories. I began
with a story about an Or-
bital top given to me by
a boyfriend; Ian followed
with a tale of living in a
Blur top for a year.
Inviting others to post stories, we were stag-
gered by the emotions bundled up in them:
people gave birth, lived and died in the shadow
of their screenprint; life’s rich tapestry was re-
vealed in these scraps of cotton.
Band T-shirts first appeared 50 or so years
ago. The Beatles and the Dave Clark Five were
early adopters, two bands that understood mer-
chandising. Then came the hippy phenomenon
of tie-dye with a logo slapped on top.
Johan Kugelberg, author of Vintage Rock
T-Shirts, doesn’t put their success down to the
power of music. ‘’What broke band T-shirts was
mass distribution, just like everything else.’’
The idea of branding yourself with a musi-
cian’s name wasn’t new, according to Kugelberg.
‘’Bobby-soxers [in the 1940s] began the trend of
writing the name of their favourite singer across
the back of their jackets - a flourish of Frank, or
a swirl of Sinatra. Band T-shirts were a later ex-
tension of that.’’
By broadcasting love for an artist on their
chest, Kugelberg says, a person could suggest a
mystical connection between themselves and a
superstar.
Band T-shirts reveal contradictory impulses
in owners, a desire to be
seen differently, but also
to fit in. On our blog, Ste-
vie Chick claims, tongue
in cheek, that his T-shirts
reveal ‘’exquisite taste
and enviable cultural
nous’’; Sarah Drinkwa-
ter confesses to using her
Blur Mile End Stadium T-
shirt to pretend she was at the 1995 gig, when in
fact she cried off at the last minute, afraid of her
father’s reaction if he found out she’d been.
Kugelberg thinks T-shirts are status sym-
bols. ‘’They’re middle-class luxury items, no
doubt. It’s luxury consumption. It’s what brand
you slap across your chest.’’
This doesn’t explain the hymns to self-made
T-shirts that have been sent to our site - includ-
ing a David Bowie logo reappropriated from a
too-tight pink top, or the disastrous Sweet T-
shirt made by Mark Wood (‘’The end result was
bits of melting Sweet faces all over the place and
an iron that had to be thrown away.’’).
More than anything, band T-shirts are about
LivetheT-shirt

8. 14 15
communicating hidden messages. In hindsight, I
know how much meaning I ascribed to my Oa-
sis Shakermaker T-shirt, worn to my first day at
college, bought with paper-round money. It said:
‘’be gone, school; be gone, uniform; be gone fi-
nancial dependence; hello all you new people
who might understand me.’’
Dick Hebdige’s 1979 sociological classic Sub-
culture: The Meaning of Style framed these feel-
ings in academic lingo.
‘’It is through the distinctive rituals of con-
sumption, through style, that subculture at once
reveals its ‘secret’ identity and communicates its
forbidden meanings.’’
That explains why band T-shirts are often
embraced by alternative genres and why, after
tie-dye, the rock T-shirt market was dominated
by the black cotton of heavy metal. Grunge did
similar business, but there was also irony, with
logos of soft rock bands such as Boston worn as
a sign of self-awareness. Later, this trend was ad-
opted by the mainstream, and soon band T-shirts
trickled into high street fashion. David Beckham,
at the peak of his turn-of-the-century fame, was
pictured wearing a T-shirt with the Crass logo
picked out in diamante studs. Here, T-shirts were
simply the vehicles for the communication of a
vague kind of ‘’cool’’, unrelated to the messages
the original wearers had wanted to convey.
Sometimes T-shirts would become better
known than the band. The Ramones probably
sell a great many more T-shirts now than they
did records in their heyday.
But why do we still cling on to band T-shirts
as adults? It’s partly nostalgia, Kugelberg says,
but it goes deeper than that. ‘’A T-shirt can help
us acknowledge the changes we’ve gone through
in our lives. When we’re approaching middle
age, we want to show why we were part of some-
thing meaningful.’’
Perhaps it is telling that the most touching
posts on our site have been about T-shirts that
were discarded. John Earls got rid of his when he
moved in with his girlfriend. The boyfriend who
gave me my Orbital T-shirt, which I still wear to
clean the house, regretted his own T-shirt cull:
‘’As a public information warning, I urge you:
don’t throw them out.’’ GUARDIAN
The Clash, The Clash,
and Ultravox, Handmade (1978)
(submitted to mybandtshirt.com by
Bartdog)
This is the only band t-shirt I have ever
bought. In 1978 you couldn’t buy punk clob-
ber in Bradford - you had to hit the train and
head for Leeds which had one new wave
boutique - X Clothes. That’s where I had
bought this red/purple/lime green screen
printed tee (above). I don’t have it or the hair
or the waist line any more. At the insistence
of my younger brother, my parents also
bought me a Jam glitter t-shirt as a holiday
souvenir. As much as I loved The Jam, glitter
tees were never going to be cool were they?
I wore it inside out and drew an Ultravox
logo on it and the words ‘Hiroshima Mon
Amour’ - a favourite ditty of theirs. Much
cooler. Twenty years later I was a teacher in
a Lancashire town. There was a poor lad in
my class who was often picked on or sneered
at by other kids. His estranged mum had
drunk herself to death, and his dad wasn’t
much of a father to him. We used the hard-
ship fund to pay for a place to the outward
bounds centre in Wales we were using that
year for the Year 10 residential. Wayne’s dad
had got him some bits of clothes from local
charity shops I guess. At least he was trying.
Wayne turned up for the abseiling activity
in a black tee shirt, shapeless, a bit too big
for him with a peeling white logo.
‘What’s Ultravox?’asked one of the other
kids.
MyBandTshirt
One day many moons ago, Jude Rogers and
Ian Wade started talking about band t-shirts
– “how they said things about us, told stories
about us, took us back to times, places and peo-
ple, never really left us behind.” So they set up a
blog about band t-shirts people owned, that still
mean something to them, and asked them why.
We want you to share yours with us too! Tell us a story, in as few or as many
words as you like, and remember to send us a picture of your t-shirt - now
or then. Then email us at mybandtshirt@gmail.com. And follow us on
Facebook and Twitter! ~Jude Rogers and Ian Wade
VintageRockTees
LivetheT-shirt

9. 16 17
Fashion Alert
Investing was probably the last thing on the
minds of Iron Maiden fans as they flicked their
Bics to the heavy-metal band in concerts back in
1982.Andyet,iftheyboughtaT-shirtattheshow,
they made a decision that would make Warren
Buffett proud. Twenty-eight years later, that $10
purchase would net them as much as $1,000 --
an enviable hundred-fold increase in value, al-
most 10 times better than the performance of the
Dow Jones Industrial Average. Stocks? Gold?
Real estate? Neither can compare to the vintage
rock T-shirt as an investment class. But most
people who rock vintage T-shirts do so largely
out of a passion for rock ‘n’ roll -- the music, the
attitude and the style. “I started buying shirts
because I loved music and thought they looked
cool,” says Cleveland tee aficionado Gregory
Boyd. “I never imagined they’d get this pricey.”
Boyd, a 27-year Cleveland musician who drums
in the band Clovers, owns about 50 shirts, rep-
resenting everything from the Grateful Dead
to Poison to Joy Division. He didn’t get started
by going to concerts, though. He was inspired
after dancing in seventh-grade gym class. “My
gym teacher was a little weird and would make
us dance to Kraftwerk,” says Boyd, referring to
the 1970s German electronic-music pioneers.
“And I was like, ‘These guys are cool -- I gotta
get me a Kraftwerk T-shirt.’ “ He pulled out a
can of spray paint and some stencil. Presto!, k,
k”I couldn’t find a Kraftwerk shirt where I grew
up, in Canal Fulton,” says Boyd. “But I really
Vintage rock T-shirts not only make a fashion
statement but are a good investment, too
by John Petkovic
loved the band and
I started making my
own.” It’s that pas-
sion for music that
spawned the rise
of the rock T-shirt,
says Johan Kugel-
berg, author of “Vin-
tage Rock T-Shirts.”
“They’re a sidebar to rock ‘n’ roll becoming a
plausible business,” says Kugelburg, via phone
from New York. “They grew out of the rise of
the touring circuit and were initially a counter-
culture phenomenon.” Yes, rock tees have been
around since the 1960s. But it wasn’t until the
1970s that ambitious designs and silk-screening
advances made them the apparel of choice for
rock fans. “They went from a promotional tool to
an art form,” says Kugelberg. “Wearing a rock T-
shirt said what kind of band you liked, what kind
of a person you were.” For instance, Stones shirts
for “rockers.” Zeppelin shirts for “burnouts.”
By the mid-’70s, the shirts became a sort of se-
cret code, not to mention the fashion of choice,
for punks. The punk fascination with tees is
thought to have started when New York punk
rocker Richard Hell famously tore up a white T-
shirt and adorned it with safety pins. “[Designer]
Vivienne Westwood and [Sex Pistols manager]
Malcolm McLaren turned the T-shirt into a punk
fashion statement,” says Kugelberg. “Wearing
a Ramones shirt suddenly announced that you
were different from most people.”
It’s one of the reasons Ramones vintage shirts
have become one of the most sought-after -- fetch-
ing up to $1,000, says Erica Easley, author of the
rock shirt history, “Rock Tease.” “The Ramones
always sold more T-shirts than records,” says Ea-
sley, a Portland, Ore.-based writer. “It isn’t just
aboutlikingaband,it’saboutthe‘coolfactor.’”Or,
in some cases, the “ironic factor.” “Indie-rockers
started buying Styx and REO Speedwagon shirts
-- not because they were cool bands, but because
they were so unfashionable that so few people
were wearing them,” says Easley. “Some of the
designs were so outlandish that people started
buying them.” That’s what led Boyd to track
down a Rush 1990 “Presto” tee. “I don’t even like
Rush, but the design is so funny,” says Boyd. “It
has nine squares on the front. Five of them have
hands and other four have a rabbit in a hat.” It’s
the same reason he has five Poison shirts. “One is
absolutely disgusting looking, with this guy with
a tiger face and a 10-inch tongue,” says Boyd. “I
had to get it because it was so weird.” Even the
weird and the ugly have enjoyed a surge in price
-- so much so that it’s hard to find vintage tees
in thrift stores. “The collectibility of tees has en-
tered the public consciousness,” says Easley. “As
a result, more people are selling them on eBay --
and it’s driven up the price.” It’s also led to count-
less knockoffs that are falsely advertised as vin-
tage shirts. “Many sellers take the original design
and put them on a new shirt that looks vintage,”
says Easley. “You can always tell by the tags: The
originals have much smaller tags and if the tag
isn’t as worn as the shirt, you’re probably buying
a fake.” So why spend hundreds when you can
get a knockoff? “They feel different,” says Boyd.
“The old shirts are softer and feel nicer. But more
than that, it’s isn’t just about the shirt -- it’s about
they stand for: the history of rock ‘n’ roll.”
FashionAlert
FashionAlert

10. 18
wear
with
pride!
GO FORTH AND
18