Most rock shirts serve their purpose, if that's ensuring that a fan can proudly display their favourite band/artist on the front, and the tour dates on the back, so everyone knows that they were "there".
The best rock shirts, however, become wearable pieces of art. Some bands enlist artists to create new graphics solely for the shirts, with no connection to songs, the tour or album that is aligned with. And sometimes those end up being the best shirts of all. Simply a logo on the front normally isn't the greatest design, unless the band's logo is one of the greats. At the end of it all, go with your gut and your personal taste, whether it's subdued or a little more on the wild side. We won't judge. Well, maybe a little...
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...can't decide which is cooler: Plague Vendor's name or their musical style - "voodoo punk". At the very least, both live up to their names. The California band's music is catchy, groove-laden, aggressive and dark all at the same time. The guys came up with the band name after reading a Mexican folk tale, and in typical rock n' roll tradition, a misreading of one word becomes history. Formed in 2009 and playing their asses off into a deal with Epitaph Records, their second release, BLOODSWEAT, was recorded in two weeks(!) and runs just over 20 minutes. Here's the first single, 'Jezebel': And we would be remiss if we neglected to mention that the Plague guys were recently part of probably the best band/beer collab ever. With a Canadian brewer, nonetheless?!?
If there was a musical artist version of The Odd Couple, Lionel Murphy and Sebastien Laroux might very well be it. Lionel boasts dreadlocks, a Fu-Manchu mustache and a yen for tunics. Sebastien, on the other hand, feels naked without a three-piece suit. But when they're on stage as Astral Daggers, they are one entity, and boy, does that entity kick some serious alternative dance music arse.
"Yeah, we get into some serious fights. Hell, Sebastien slapped me with a white glove and challenged me to a duel over a drum beat I wanted to use," Lionel recalls, "but we always remember the end result, which is the music. That and the fact that we realize we're like the Spock and Kirk of music, going boldly where no DJ has gone before, eh?" Well, the Odd Couple analogy is still solid, but considering that the Daggers have a phaser sample in the first single off their IN FLUX album, "Phase 1", perhaps the Spock/Kirk reference is a tad stronger. But who's who? "I'm Spock, naturally," Lionel says. "HAHAHA! Kidding! I love saying that though 'cuz it gets Seb going every time." Go ahead: pronounce this hiphop group's name. Sounds like you're rewinding yourself, eh? Well, pretty close. Rae Sremmurd is in fact "Ear Drummers" spelled backwards. The two brothers out of Tupelo, Mississippi, Khalif "Swae Lee" Brown and Aaquil "Slim Jxmmi" Brown first went as (the surprisingly not-as-catchy) Dem Outta St8 Boyz, but soon changed their name after signing with EarDrummers Entertainment, where they became about as overnight of a success as you could get. They've just completed a host of opening gigs for Miss Lemonade herself, Beyoncé, and are about to embark on their first headlining tour. How does one describe them? Well, think as original but weirder than Outkast. Ah, heck - why are we spending time trying to pigeonhole them when you can watch multicoloured T-Rexes wearing bling while jousting each other... Warning: explicit lyrics Billings, MONTANA - on the eve of a possible and much-anticipated reunion, ex-MC Phineas "Cranium" Johnson was arrested in a local bar after police were called due to a fight breaking out between two males. The fracas happened at Shooters Casino and Sports Bar on June 28. One witness describes the incident as, "like when Barney Gumble punched Wade Boggs in The Simpsons*, man! MC Cranium and the other guy were arguing over who was the better military strategist: Hannibal of Carthage or Alexander The Great. Then the other guy sucker punches Cranium! Cranium jumps on him like a spider monkey and whacking the dude in the head! Crazy, man!" On the heels of a possible Rhyme Animals reunion, time will tell whether this amps interest or trivialize the Animals's genius... *Editor - we do not have footage of the fight. We do, however, have Mr. Gumble vs. Mr. Boggs: This is a Mogwai - adorable creature from the hit Gremlins movies back in the 80's. Who would think that this cute wittle thing would turn into a murderous fanged/clawed monster if you fed it after midnight?!? This is Mogwai - the legendary Scottish post-rock band. If you ever have an urge to melt your ears at a concert, just buy a ticket. What's the connection other than the name? Well, the band did name themselves after the aformentioned fuzzy pets of filmdom, but guitarist Stuart Braithwaite has said that "it has no significant meaning and we always intended on getting a better one, but like a lot of other things we never got round to it."
Funny thing though... although the band has reinvented themselves on each and every record since forming over 20 years ago, Mogwai the band sounds a lot like what Mogwai the creatures are like: pleasant at the beginning, a whole lot of chaos until you expose them to sunlight or they stop playing. "Please, do not call us leaders, we are merely numbers".
I would normally pursue this further, but when a burly man tells you this in a deep yet calm Germanic voice, you tend to listen. That, and the fact that he, also known as ZWEI547262, is right. Initially interpreted by the public as a cheap marketing gimmick, the 'numbers' that each member of Ein Zwei Drei go by are actually, according to the band, representative of the mentality of the common worker, and that we all merely numbers. "It starts for most with their employee number, then their Social Employment/Insurance/Security numbers, banking numbers. Why is cybercrime one of the most nightmarish situations one could go through nowadays? Because we are all merely numbers on computer servers." One thing Zwei and myself can agree on, however, is that their debut album, BINARY, kicks major Arsch (German for, well, you know...) "We've combined the best elements of our favourite groups, Kraftwerk, Rammstein, Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, Skinny Puppy... and made our own sonic world from this combination. The live show reflects this too. We want to reduce our audience to basic cellular matter by the end of each concert. And yes, go away reflecting on the harsh reality of our over-technological times. If that's possible when you are mere protoplasm." I'm not sure, but I'm still getting a front-row ticket.
I had heard the name Diarrhea Planet before, but passed it off as a ridiculous, gimmicky handle, much like Rainbow Butt Monkeys, where the name grabs you, but the music will make you regret you made the effort to take a listen.
As the French would say, 'au contraire, mon frère'. This six-piece band out of Nashville, Tennessee has depth in its songwriting mixed with melodies and hooks to keep most folks satisfied. Oh yeah, they can rock out too, with their FOUR-GUITAR attack... If there is truly a Diarrhea Planet somewhere in the galaxy and it is anything close to this phenomenal, I'd like to colonize it. Marcus There's comes a time for many bands where they cross the line from cult heroes to mainstream icons.
This will never happen with My Sweaty Cats. "We've signed a contract that we will break up if we sell over 20,000 copies of any record, have more than 100,000 downloads and more than 1,000,000 views, total, of all our videos," says Greg Montagne, bassist and co-Cats founder. "We binge-watched VH1's 'Behind The Music' during our last tour and had nightmares about becoming the next MC Hammer or David Crosby. So we've made sure that we will always have a career supported by a smallish but devoutly loyal fanbase." But what if a My Sweaty Cats album, song etc. becomes a true hit? What then? "On every video we've uploaded to YouTube, we've inserted a pop-up window stating that once that any clip reaches 100,000 views, the band will break up." Montagne boasts. "There will be warnings once views reach 900,000 views as well. Agreements come with album after the 17,000 sales mark, and with any download after 80,000 mark. We're even open to having our current fans scare any other potential fans away from us to make sure this happens. I'm confident that our group will do it too." New business model for the music industry, or sheer madness? Only time will tell... I was 13, and my buddy got tickets to the Motley Crue show on their "Dr. Feelgood" tour. I was amped for the Crue, but mainly for the opening act, my favorite band at the time, Tesla. Even though they're now known as 'Tesla - The Band' (thanks a lot, Elon Musk!), the band was flying high back in 1992, touring the world with the excellent second album, The Great Radio Controversy, and its #1 song, Love Song. We got to Skydome and looked at the merch booths before finding our seats. My buddy, who was a huge Crue fan, naturally found a shirt to his liking. I was torn, because my love of the Crue knew no bounds, and their concert shirt game was tight. Tesla's was not as impressive. However, one shone like a beacon from amongst shirts with the generic album covers and requisite shot of the band. Nikolai Tesla's eyes almost bored a hole through my skull and drew me in like a moth to a flame. The shirt was designed by legendary rock artist Pushead, who had done many classic shirts for Metallica, The Misfits, The Exploited, the Crüe and many other great groups. He is the Rock Shirt Whisperer.
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The officially unofficial blog of Faux Rawk. Everything you read is true, although some of what you read is 100% false. Whoa... trippy, man. Archives
June 2017
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