I Grew Into Them Eventually

Why can't I wear a T-shirt for the band I'm going to see?

I remember the night I saw the Chili Peppers in Philly with my friends. This is the same show that I referenced at the end of my last post about my AI-generated RHCP biopic. When we met up before we set sail for Philly, they noticed I was wearing an RHCP shirt. You know the one. White shirt, red asterisk, black text. Definitely a Hot Topic buy, and I wish I still had it. It was a medium, because despite being like 4’11” at this point in Freshman year of high school (I grew late), I wore medium shirts for whatever reason. And now, being a very respectable 5’10, medium T-shirts fit me pretty much perfectly, but that shirt is long gone.

I had some cool T-shirts, actually. Had a cool Bouncing Souls one. Had a really cool Nirvana one that bootleggers are recreating now. I don’t have as many cool band T-shirts now. I have a great Jimmy Buffett shirt my friends got me for my birthday, a couple cool Menzingers ones, but not a ton else. I drank too much at a PUP show and got a shirt once, but never really wore it. My favorite band shirt is one I made in high school for my friend’s fictional joke band called Screaming Camel.

Anyway, my friends started giving me shit about wearing this Chili Peppers shirt to a Chili Peppers show.

“You can’t wear a shirt for the band you’re seeing in concert!”

I didn’t know this rule. Nobody had told me that. Before this, the only real concert I had been to was Green Day, and no one warned me that it was uncool to wear a Green Day shirt, which I 100% did. That one was a small, and I don’t think I’d fit in that one anymore.

At this point in the day, it was too late to change. Philly was a two-hour drive away from Camp Hill, and we had to get moving. I’d just have to spend the rest of the evening being one of those uncool people wearing a shirt for the band they were about to see. Actually, by the end of the night, I was wearing two Chili Peppers shirts, because I had picked up a tour T-shirt (black, medium), and threw it on over the white one to both avoid holding onto something while enjoying the concert, and to also take advantage of the T-shirt layering style of the time (2006).

I wish I still had that T-shirt, too. I need to dig around in my parents’ house one of these days.

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I’ve been thinking about that rule of never wearing a shirt for the band you’re going to see live, and where that rule is broken.

Probably that same year, or maybe a year after, I went and saw CKY at a random venue attached to a Holiday Inn in my town. Now Harrisburg gets great shows like Joyce Manor and The National and Death Cab. Pretty sure Turnstile just played there, too, but where aren’t they playing these days?

At this point though, there was not a huge draw to Harrisburg for bands, much less its surrounding suburbs. The concert calendar in the region revolved mostly around Dave Matthews playing Hershey every summer.

Now knowing the rules, and also not owning any CKY gear, I wore some other band’s shirt (I don’t remember the band or size). But when I got there, the whole band was decked out in their own merch. Drummer Jess Margera is almost always seen on TV or music videos wearing a CKY hat or shirt. Chad Ginsburg’s guitar has the band’s logo on it. 

Honestly, this makes sense to me. Being a musician and making money is so hard. It’s becoming harder every year, as streaming pays fractions of pennies and touring is expensive as hell. Why wouldn’t you try to market yourself at every opportunity?

There are a few bands that wear their own gear on stage. Slipknot is a good example.

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The way we as music fans have to show our affection but not too much is a weird little flirty dance that only exists within this realm.

Say you’re in a band called The Brendans. The Brendans are doing a big interview for a cool publication (like this one), and a photographer is taking pictures. They plan what they’re going to wear. Now, do they wear one of the countless The Brendans shirts they have in boxes for sale on tour? Absolutely not. If they wear a band shirt, they wear a shirt by a generally accepted band that gives the viewer an idea of what they sound like based on that influence, and whether or not they are cool and worthy of their time.

And fans who go see The Brendans are under no circumstances “permitted” to wear The Brendans gear to the show – thus showing how much they love The Brendans – even though they paid money to see them. They are also to wear shirts from other bands – bands who are not playing this show. That way, it’s a fun game of hard-to-get, where the fan has to pretend they like the band but not too much, you know?

As if the band will see a fan at their show wearing a shirt with their name on it and think What the hell is that guy’s deal? Ew. Kick him out. Actually, you know what? I changed my mind. Kill him.

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Imagine this:

As the Sixers continue their series against the Boston Celtics, photographers are in the arena tunnel taking pictures of the players arriving. James Harden is dressed as Cookie Monster. Tobias Harris is ready for any minor flooding that might happen from a burst pipe. Joel Embiid, the unanimously voted NBA MVP, arrives in a Larry Bird jersey. People would lose their fucking minds. Let’s even take it away from the enemy team here, and say he shows up in a Nuggets Jokic jersey. How is this different than a band showing up to play in another, similar band’s T-shirt? 

It’s not, really.

Not only do sports figures wear their own team’s gear, obviously, they wear stuff with their own name on it. They all have their own brand with their own name, number, and maybe even face on it. It’s how college athletes are finally able to make money out of the whole deal.

This phenomenon of not wearing the T-shirt representing the event at hand does happen in sports to some extent, but it’s weird when it happens.

I was visiting some friends in Denver once and we went to a Rockies game. They played against the Cincinnati Reds, and I joked that I would wear my Phillies hat to the game. When we got there, I spotted about 12 different teams represented in the bleachers. Being that Denver is such a hub for people from all over the country, this made sense, but it still strikes me as weird. It’s weird to just be like “I know I paid to watch these two teams, but I really like this third team.” But, in music, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.

Or, imagine a politician showing up to a campaign event rocking a T-shirt from another, similar politician. I’m not talking about someone like AOC wearing a Bernie Sanders pin. I’m talking about like if Beto showed up to a 2016 presidential debate wearing a Lincoln Chafee T-shirt instead of his usual At the Drive-In T-shirt.

Why, in music, does our support of artists have to come with this silly little caveat? We have to keep things at arm’s length so we don’t appear too genuine in our love of something? We’ll gladly stop an artist at a show to tell them how their music saved our lives and soundtracked a crucial time in our lives, and that we have lyrics tattooed on us, but it’s a mortal sin if we’re wearing a T-shirt with their band’s name on it while we do it.

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It’s weird. I don’t know that there’s a real point to this. Writer’s block and actual paying gigs have been bogging me down lately, but I wanted to keep up the publication schedule.

I guess the point of the story is that I think more bands should wear uniforms. And if you’re a kid, and you haven’t hit your big growth-spurt yet, it’s smart to buy shirts that you’ll grow into, especially if they’re bands that will remain relevant and even become more stylish as the fanbase gets older and they get a sense of irony-but-not-irony mixed in. Don’t go crazy. You’re not going to get that big. But if you’re on the cusp of probably growing and you’re wondering whether to buy a small or medium, go medium. And, when you do grow into those T-shirts, don’t get rid of them or let them get lost in the shuffle of your parents’ house as you move away to college and start your new life two hours away. 

Also, we don’t talk enough about the marketing hustle of CKY. That logo was everywhere. Granted, it was just the Ozzy Osbourne font with fewer letters, but thanks to TV show appearances, etc., that band really outkicked its coverage. No reason for them to be as famous as they were in the mainstream sense. Also, a lot of CKY has aged well. I pitched an anniversary piece on “Infiltrate - Destroy - Rebuild” that didn’t get picked up, and that’s OK. I’ll go to bat for the first two CKY albums.

Also, if you’re at a sporting event as a neutral fan, don’t wear your own home team’s gear. But also don’t wear something like Rob Lowe’s NFL hat. Just kind of be a neutral party. That’s OK sometimes. We know you like baseball, because you paid to go to a baseball game, not because you wore a Braves jersey to Orioles - Red Sox.

Finally, if I could go back in time to that day in 2006, I’d tell 14-year-old Brendan to have fun at the show, forget what his friends say about his shirt, that he’ll grow to a very normal height of 5’10”, that RHCP will put out a few albums that you won’t care about that much but then John will come back and you’ll enjoy the new stuff within reason but not as much as you do now. And that’s OK.

Also, I’d tell him to invest in certain stocks and to get a colonoscopy.

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Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Pet Symmetry.