April 26, 2011

# 77. If I had planned this shirt blog better, I would have successfully grouped all my Elephant 6 shirts for a tribute week. After the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise show, I thought I'd worn the remaining E6 shirts I owned, but I just discovered one more.

Apples in Stereo are one of the poppiest bands to come out of the Elephant 6 scene, yet still retain that rough, low-fi quality that was a common thread for many of the early E6 acts. Tone Soul Evolution and The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone still sound fun, but I have to fully embrace their more recent, ELO Discovery-era sound.

April 25, 2011

#76. Mike bought me this shirt shortly after a Lobster Festival we attended at the rather dismal Ports O'Call in San Pedro. The shirt wasn't purchased there but it commemorated one of the few lobster meals we've had together. Actually I didn't even eat lobster that day. I don't really like it much.

I wish I had a shirt that commemorated the one lobster meal I liked, and that is the lobster roll I had at the McDonald's in Maine.

April 24, 2011

#75. From deep in the archives, this shirt is from my 2nd trip to New Orleans, and my first (and as of today, only) trip to the Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Lots of things about this trip are cloudy. Trying to keep up with the locals, and my friend who had been living out there a few years, I drank way too much. But I do remember seeing Dr. John, Danial Lanois, Dirty Dozen Brass Band and...um...well...I ate and drank a lot.

April 23, 2011

#74. Love this band. I'm most fond of Mars Audiac Quintet and Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and the shows played during those releases were stunningly hypnotic.

Sadly, Mary Hansen died in 2002 after being hit on her bike. She added great counterpoint vocals to Lætitia Sadier by swirling and circling around her voice. She is missed.

April 22, 2011

#73. Obviously still adding to my collection, this shirt is from last week's Coachella.

Although it's not one of my favorite Coachella designs, this year ranks as one my favorite years at Coachella. And that makes me happy to say this after the mess that was Coachella 2010.

One of the great things about Coachella is we could both go, see completely different bands, and both have the time of our lives.

This year's new discoveries for me were The Joy Formidable, Tame Impala and The Presets. For established acts, BAD and Duran Duran both played impressive sets. And for the Coachella Moment that will rank with Pixies, Daft Punk and Kraftwerk, the Arcade Fire set is still giving me goose bumps.

April 21, 2011

#72. For 8 of the past 9 years, I have attended the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.  And for most of these years, I have paid a visit to Hadley's for snacks and a date shake.  But 3 years ago I discovered Shields in Indio.  Not only do they offer samples of whole dates, not the little cubes Hadley's offers, but they have a superior date shake.  

I also buy a bag of grapefruit at Shields, although this last trip a local admonished me.  "Why are you buying those?  No one buys grapefruit here."  I still bought them, but I tried to find the trees she claimed I could pick my own from.  No luck.

Shields is also the only place I know that continuously screens The Romance and Sex Life of the Date. 

April 20, 2011

#71. This shirt was a gift from a friend. I hope he was being ironic. I never thought of myself much as Grumpy, but after this past weekend in the windy desert, I am probably more like Sneezy.

April 19, 2011

#70. I didn't hear of Dream Theater until 1999's release Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory. The funny thing is I heard about this while waiting for a show to start at the House of Blues, and these guys were talking about how underrated the post-Gabriel Genesis years were, yet went on and on about this horribly pretentious prog metal band Dream Theater were. Well, that made me want to hear them. I fell in love with that album, and saw them at the House of Blues where they played the album in its entirety.

I have seen them one time since, and now I'm sorry I didn't see them more since the incredible drummer Mike Portnoy left last year.

April 18, 2011

#69. I wish I had one of the original Pez Psychedelic dispensers. Since I don't, I'll have to settle for the shirt.

April 17, 2011

#68. When Ren & Stimpy premiered on Nicktoons in 1991 I was already familiar with them since they had been introduced a few years earlier at Spike & Mike's Festival of Animation.

The first season was unlike any cartoon being aired at the time, with highly stylized animation and grotesque visual gags that seemed out of place on Nickelodeon. The exectives at Nick had problems with the creator John K and by the 2nd season he was out. And that is when Ren & Stimpy died for me.

I have a few more Ren & Stimpy shirts, but I chose to wear this one at day 3 of Coachella 2011. And good thing too, since the pizza vendor liked my shirt so much he gave me my food for free (a Coachella first for me).

April 16, 2011

#67. Taken at day #2 Coachella 2011. Bought this shirt many many years ago during a Spike & Mike's Festival of Twisted Animation.

Before Beavis & Butthead, even before Ren & Stimpy, Spike & Mike gave an outlet for animators to get some sort of distribution in the theaters. They had a more traditional festival, but the Sick & Twisted ones, usually shown at midnight, always lived up to its name.

At the time, Quiet Please was one of the most offensive things I had ever seen so of course I had to have the shirt. All these years later, I don't know if anyone remembers this short. But the shirt lives on since it's not something I can wear everywhere.

I wish I still had my Bambi Meets Godzilla shirt.

April 15, 2011

#66. Jimmy the Idiot Boy at day #1 Coachella 2011. Jimmy is a character from Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, but he never really took off. He can be seen in the sadly overlooked Ripping Friends.

You can't read the first word, but it says "sins in heart".

April 14, 2011

#65. What better way to gear up for Coachella than by wearing a Coachella shirt? I can count on inquiries and stories about Coachella throughout the day. Nice preamble to tomorrow.

Everyone who has attended Coachella has their Coachella moments. Ranking high on mine was seeing Leonard Cohen at the Outdoor Theatre followed by Moz and Macca on the Coachella Stage in 2009.

April 13, 2011

#64. Although I caught 5 shows during the Licks Tour, and have shirts from most of those shows (not sure why I didn't get one in San Jose), I also got caught up in buying shirts from shows outside the US when the Stones web store would have sales.  This shirt from Germany is one of them.

April 12, 2011

#63. From my trip to London.  Mike had already warned me about the gap, having not minded it when he visited.  Although the trip was built around The Libertines 3 night stand at Brixton Academy (now known as 02 Academy Brixton) I had never been to London before, so I only went one showand spent the other 2 days being a tourist. 

Every ride on the tube was an adventure for me.  Besides loving the ease of the system and the relative politness of Brits (well, relative to what I experience every day on the LA subway), I just loved the Englishness of the tube.  I was constantly singing "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight", thinking about The Kinks everytime we passed the Waterloo station, and smiling every time I heard the soothing British woman's voice telling me to "mind the gap".

My favorite station stop quickly became Marble Arch.  It amazed me that so many things I was hearing had been referenced in British music throughout the years, yet Marble Arch had remained untouched.  It sounded like a perfect band name, especially one that would have come out of mod London in the 60's.  I quickly decided that I was going to start a band and call them Marble Arch.  I still haven't done that, but I have dibs on the name.

April 11, 2011

#62. In 2001, Radiohead appeared on South Park. Also in 2001, Radiohead played South Park in Oxford, which is also where they hail from. What a perfect blending of all these elements on this shirt from a concert I did not attend.

April 10, 2011

#61. My favorite band to come out of the original wave of the punk rock scene. Melodic and hooky by punk standards, they released some of the most infectious singles that stand the test of time. Just check out some of these A/B sides-"Orgasm Addict"/"What Ever Happened To?", "Love You More"/"Noise Annoys", "Everybody's Happy Nowadays"/"Why Can't I Touch It?".

The artwork on the 45 sleeves were practically worth the price of the single (imports here in the states). This shirt recreates the art for one of their better known songs, "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)"/"Just Lust".

April 09, 2011

#60. One of my earliest Wilco shirts. This was one of a series of four shirts, all limited to 250 and each hand numbered. I bought two, one to wear and one to save.  This one is #42/250.

Wilco have since exploded, and a shirt run this limited would probably be next to impossible to score these days.

April 08, 2011

#59. Another band I've seen at IPO at the space that was once The Knitting Factory. The band is The 17th Pygmy, and apparently they have been around since the 80's.

Their music at IPO was a nice Byrds-y slice of psychedelica. But the real treat was their merchandise. The CD packaging for Ballade of Tristram's Last Harping was clearly hand designed and the shirt they were selling was a clever and witty take on the Magritte's The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images), better known by the statement on the painting, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe")

I listened to their album today for the first time since I bought it, and found the music to be really enjoyable. Nice to know this band was more than some interesting design choices

April 07, 2011

#58. The Residents might scare you. I know they scared Mike when I took him on one of our first dates. I don’t think it was intentional, but it turned out to be a good test of how game he was. He never heard of them, thought them kind of evil, but got a quick look into what he would get into if he hung around.

I have a couple of shirts from that show (the Cube-E tour), but this isn’t one of them. I picked this up a few years ago, probably at the House of Blues show, and it’s the wonderfully parodied artwork of Meet The Beatles from their debut album Meet The Residents.

If you want the aural equivalent of their twist pop mash ups, check out The Third Reich ‘n Roll from 1976. If you prefer your Residents in bite sized doses, check out The Commercial Album from 1980, which is comprised of 40 songs, each 60 seconds in length. There are also some perfectly twisted videos made for these, which had quite an impact on me when I would watch those late Night Flight shows on the USA Network in the fledgling days of cable TV. How about spending the next minute with The Residents?

April 06, 2011

#57. One of the greatest rock bands of all time.  And don’t even try to change my mind.

In early 1977, I was already familiar with Cheap Trick because Rodney on the Roq was playing ELO Kiddies.  I was thrilled to see them on the bill with The Runaways at the Santa Monica Civic on April 1, 1977.  I remember the date because my dad started the day by telling me the concert was canceled.  Well, he may have been a lame jokester, but he was nice enough to take me to the show.  We both loved Cheap Trick that night, I learned a valuable lesson about always catching the opening band, and bought the album soon after.

A few months later, In Color was released and they were opening for KISS at the Forum (the show that was allegedly used for Alive II).  Gene’s hair caught fire that night and Cheap Trick were on fire on stage.  At this point I was madly in love with this band, but it seemed like most of my friends couldn’t get past the name and their look (2 pretty boys/2 not-so-pretty boys, really played up on the early album covers). 

By the time I saw them next, they were headlining arenas on their own courtesy of Heaven Tonight and the surprise hit that was Cheap Trick at Budokan.  My family rung in the year 1978/1979 at the Long Beach Arena with Cheap Trick and a very unenthusiastically received opening set from Nick Gilder.   Dream Police seemed to cement their reputation as a reliable album band and concert draw, and in 1980 I saw them headline the Summer Blowout at the Los Angeles Coliseum (this time with my mom...man I was lucky to have cool parents).

And about this time, the cracks were starting to show. 

Shortly after the Coliseum show, Tom Petersson left the band.  Sometime after that, I saw the painfully ramshackle show with Tom and Terry Reid at Madame Wong’s.  And I didn’t see Cheap Trick again until the series of shows in 1998, well after Tom returned to the band, where they played the entire Budokan show and the first 3 albums in their entirety (all great shows).  

Although they no longer headline arenas, they continue to tour and their shows do not embarrass their legacy.  Robin’s voice is still really strong, Rick still flings more picks than seems humanly possible, and until Bun E recently stepped down from behind the kit, was the original quartet with no superfluous background vocalists or auxiliary musicians. 

And I still get funny comments about being a cheap trick every time I wear their shirt.

April 05, 2011

#56. I got this shirt at a Filter party preceding Cocahella. This was back when Coachella was only 2 days and we would go on Friday and hang out.

Every year when we drive to Indio, as soon as we see the turbines, we know we are in the home stretch. I'll be doing the journey again next week. It never gets old.

April 04, 2011

#55. Although the front of the shirt alludes to Black Flag, this is a Hank Williams III shirt. Bought this at his Roxy show around 2002, and unfortunately they only had extra large. Yet I had to have this great but deceptive shirt.

Hank played a set that was his usual raucous blend of hillbilly and country with an extremely aggressive edge. The show was great and memorably schizophrenic, although we found it odd that there were quite a few people in the audience with Misfits shirts on. I mean, the music had a punk edge, but I was still surprised to see some hardcore punks in the audience. After Hank III left the stage, the lady with the bouffant and blue mascara standing next to us left, and the punks moved in. We knew something was up. And then Hank III returned to the stage and literally let his hair down with his other band Assjack. His hair, which was in a tight braid for the opening set, was in full metal motion, and the band ripped some of the heaviest punk I’ve heard. We decided to move to the back and watch the mosh put from a safe distance. That was a smart move.

I wonder if the mascara lady learned about Assjack the hard way.

April 03, 2011

#54. Surprisingly, this was my first Metallica show.  I've been a fan since Master of Puppets, but missed out on the shows as they were getting big.  I first had tickets to see them in 2004, but sold my ticket when an opportunity to go to London came up.

The show was great, but I was a little disappointed that they didn't play anything off Load.  I know it's not a popular view, but Load is one of my favorite Metallica albums.

April 02, 2011

#53. Another one of my shirts that celebrates junk food.  I'm seeing Paula Poundstone tonight, and if I had  Pop Tart shirt I'd wear it.  Since I don't, I figured I wear the shirt of what I'd wash my Pop Tarts (preferable frosted blueberry) down with.

April 01, 2011

#52. This black design on black shirt is from the last (but hopefully not final) Rolling Stones show in Los Angeles, but I didn’t attend this show.  I hate Dodger Stadium so much I opted to see Pernice Brothers at Spaceland instead of The Rolling Stones that night.  My buddy picked up the shirt for me.  This was the first time since 1981 that I missed a Stones Los Angeles show (not counting missing them if they played multiple nights at the same venue).  I trust they will return.   And Pernice Brothers were great that night so I think I made the right decision.