IRON MAIDEN, THE DARKNESS Members Comment On Resurgence Of Rock Fashion

Eric R. Danton of The Hartford Courant has issued the following report:

Consider the rock T-shirt. It's not just a piece of clothing; it's a cultural totem, a tangible memento of personal taste. At least, it was.

Once the province of concert merchandise booths, wearing a rock shirt meant that you or someone you know went to the show and laid out an extra $10 or $20 for the bragging rights, which you wore right there across your chest for all the world to see.

Concert attendance is no longer mandatory. Sometimes, in fact, it's impossible. When goofball actor Ashton Kutcher shows up on "The Tonight Show" wearing a black "Rolling Stones '72" shirt — a tour that took place six years before he was born — it's safe to assume Kutcher didn't buy the shirt in the parking lot of the Hollywood Bowl after the gig.

He probably bought it at Target or JC Penney. Both stores, along with mall punk shops such as Hot Topic, sell reproductions of vintage rock tees in the name of fashion. Want an AC/DC shirt from the "Back in Black" era? Maybe a floating-pig tee from mid-'70s PINK FLOYD? There are DEF LEPPARD and CURE shirts available, if the '80s are more your thing. You can buy the real ones, too, if you have the money — a genuine SANTANA shirt from a 1973 show will set you back $102 online.

"Anything to do with fashion basically trivializes most things, particularly anything to do with rock music," IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson told the BBC. "I view heavy metal T-shirts surfacing in Justin Timberlake videos as not something to write home about."

Indeed, the tees are part of the resurgence of rock fashion, with its emphasis on studded belts, Converse sneakers and shaggy hair worn by people who are more interested in fashion than making a defiant, if passive, statement through their appearances.

"To me, metal's cool because it used to be the choice of the person who walked alone, the lion who strides confidently through the jungle knowing full well that 'this AC/DC T-shirt says a lot about me,'" Justin Hawkins, singer for THE DARKNESS, told the BBC.

A T-shirt still says a lot about you, but what it says has changed. In a broader cultural sense, the ubiquity of the rock tee is part of a trend toward branding ourselves with corporate logos. You can buy shirts emblazoned with the names of the stores selling them, or show how clever you are with a mass-produced tee bearing slogans about the volume of tequila you can drink or why it's cool to throw rocks at boys (hint: They're smelly).

Read the rest of the report at this location.