I'm With The Band

merch, identity, and lots of youtube videos to watch

If you’re a teen starting at a new school this Fall, I have one piece of advice for you. Forget everything you have heard about making a first impression. Forget perfecting a strong handshake. Forget going up to the biggest kid in class and punching him square in the face. There is only one strategy to implement to ensure you find your people: wear a piece of your favorite band’s merch.

Before ubiquitous band t-shirts and Paramore patches sewn onto Hawaiian print Jansport backpacks (speaking personally here), one had to put in a lot more effort to communicate their taste in music. A leather jacket or a mod haircut, for example, might tell the student body that you were more on the alternative side. Implied fandom. It’s all we had in our closets before merch.

Our taste in music is often a reflection of so many other things in life. Our values, our politics, our outlook on society. It divides the cafeteria into like-minded individuals: punks, goths, hypebeasts, normies. Merch from specific concerts acts as wearable, tangible proof that you not only talk the talk, but you were there in the flesh on the day. You’re not a casual fan, you’ve seen Chappell Roan in person (mostly on the big screen, with 500 people H-O-T-T-O-G-O-ing between you). Borrowing a term I’ve only heard used by chefs and sommeliers, concert merch evokes a sense of place. It’s not just a t-shirt, every stitch is infused with the terroir of Outside Lands (notes of $16 Modelo tallboys, friendship, and wintergreen Zyn). Merch is the best, most efficient way to find your community in a sea of terrifying teenagers. So that’s my advice. Wear the band tee.

I am obsessed with the way we communicate our insides with what we wear on our outsides. I am obsessed with the inextricable connection between the DIY undergrounds of yore and true blue American capitalism. Merch has a log in every fire. It’s made by hand on your kitchen floor. It walks the runways of New York Fashion Week. It is a behemoth industry catered to our need for individualism. It’s just a t-shirt, sort of, but it’s also our means of communication with the world around us. It tells the stranger sitting across the train, “Go ahead. Look at me. Get to know me. I am specific.”

In the spirit of getting to know each other, I want to be honest. This edition of Rudeletter has been on a journey. Band merch was one of the first topics I scribbled down in my Notes app when I decided to start publishing long-form content over a year ago (yay!). I have pushed its publication date again and again because I felt like I didn’t have a thesis. It’s one of those topics that I could talk about for hours and still lack a take. The more research I did, the more confused I became.

Music has always been a way of life for me. My parents have held every title in the industry, from personal assistant to a rockstar, to tour bus driver, to record label executive. They put me to sleep as an infant with Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads on repeat. There is a forever debated chicken or the egg scenario regarding Rancid’s song Ruby Soho and my name, since my mother toured with them while pregnant. Participation in music culture holds a dingy romanticism in my eyes. It’s printing your own fan zines at Kinko’s. It’s loading and unloading drums from the back of a van. It’s me after kindergarten with earplugs in, slurping down a Shirley Temple, my feet swinging and my coloring book sticking to the bar.

To further illustrate the ambiance of my childhood, here is what my dad replied when I asked if he ever made merch for his band.

Merch is both a Drake x SSENSE collab and a rusty saw blade sold by my father at his band’s record release party. I asked him if people were upset when they thought they bought a record and instead found themselves with a rusty saw blade. To which he said “No. People liked it.” I asked him how he expected people to be able to listen to their music if they didn’t have the record, to which he had no answer but agreed it potentially contributed to the band lasting no later than 1989.

Merch has incredible economic power. It’s Travis Scott selling $20 million (TWENTY MILLION!) worth of unwearable virtual t-shirts during a virtual concert within the videogame Fortnite. It’s also me frantically spending $40 on the last shirt (a child’s medium, equally unwearable) at the Green Day/Fall Out Boy/Weezer Hella Mega tour in 2021.

As written in For The Love of Merch: a History -

“Merch is a distinctive category of thing among our other things. After all, most of our stuff comes from need or desire — a new coffee grinder or a jacket that you just have to have. Merch, however, is born of a relationship — with a band, team, brand, product, place, or event (from “I survived the Company Picnic of ‘87” to “Coachella ‘09”). Merch is fundamentally wound up with our identity. It’s a memory, a badge of honor, a flag in support of a cause. It’s our membership in a club.”

I’m going to show you some really cool examples of merch on the market today. But first, let’s dive into its origin. Sit back as I turn the radio dial, surfing through static until we hear that familiar voice. Give it a few seconds…

Merch begins with Elvis. In 1956 a company called Special Products Inc (they usually made promotional materials and merchandise for Mickey Mouse, Peter Pan, The Lone Ranger, et cetera) was permitted to promote the image of Elvis alongside the launch of his career. That year Elvis released 2 albums: “Elvis Presley” and “Elvis”. His brand was strong from the beginning.

Special Products Inc made 30 Elvis products, including hats, T-shirts, jeans, handkerchiefs, sneakers, blouses, and belts. They even made an “I Hate Elvis” button to sell to people who weren’t fans. This rollout made $22 million in sales and was reported on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Suddenly the purchasing power of The Fan was undeniable.

Ten years later in 1966, a man named Stanley Mouse (ironically the son of a Disney animator and an art school dropout) created the now-iconic Grateful Dead imagery of the skeleton and roses motif. It was a nod to the aesthetic of anti-war protests in San Francisco. This fact is like candy to me. Disney, the most commercial entity in the world, and 1960s San Francisco, a hotbed for progressive thinking, all wrapped up in one skeleton. I love it.

The art itself wasn’t original to the 60s. It was discovered by Mouse (Stanley, not Mickey) in a library book of 11th-century Persian poems called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Mouse cut the page out with a pen knife and made a copy, adding color and lettering. He said that the image “felt pretty copyright-free” at the time.

From Dell Furano: On Changing the Game:

"Ironically, back in the ’70s, few bands wanted to sell merchandise, as it was considered very unhip, uncool, and way too commercial," Furano said. "However, [the Grateful Dead] looked upon selling shirts as a 'community thing' and were pleased to have their fans wearing Dead shirts… In the ’70s, it was not cool selling merchandise, so we had to be careful. Groups would say, ‘OK, you can sell, but don’t ­embarrass us. Stand in a corner.’”

Honestly, I find the Grateful Dead to be unlistenable. I’m sorry. I have REALLY tried. But if you’re into that sort of thing, here is some of the earliest footage of the band, from the same year their skeleton merch hit the streets:

The merchandise industry stepped into its adulthood in the 1970s and 80s. AC/DC was the first band to make more money from their merch sales than their concert tickets. KISS sold bobbleheads in their likeness. Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm Maclaren created a look for The Sex Pistols, including classic imagery worn by the band and sold on t-shirts at their shows. I’ve written a lot about them already, so I won’t drag you into my Ted Talk again. You can read my deep dive here.

Issues of art licensing and fairness began to emerge. Artist John Pasche only received £50 for creating the iconic Rolling Stones tongue, which has been used on their merch for over 50 years. Even the Beatles failed to sign any merchandise contracts with their record labels, and only received 10% of merch profits until they fought to renegotiate their terms and walked away with 46%. A change worth tens of millions.

In 1985, the Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association was formed. There was no going back. Merch was big business. Whatever your thoughts on New Kids on the Block might be, you cannot deny the fact that they made $400 million from merchandising between 1989 and 1990. You cannot deny the fact that alongside her 1994 tour, Barbra Streisand offered her fans silk jacquard blouses and limited-edition jewelry. You cannot deny that that happened!

This clip is potentially the most intense, most bizarre, most emotional piece of concert footage I have ever seen. One thing about Barbra is that she has the audacity. I love that about her. She has the audacity to publish a 1,000-page memoir. She has the audacity to begin her concert with a fancam of herself. She has the audacity to wear that sparkly vest. Just picture the merch tent off screen, full of silk blouses. She has officially moved up in my ranking of Divas.

I guess my thesis is that art, commerce, and identity are inextricably intertwined. Merch is both cool and lame. It’s both big business and DIY. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry that somehow still feels so personal to everyone who participates in it. Isn’t that fascinating??!! Hello???!!!

Here are a few pieces of merch. Each one currently available to purchase on the very internet you are looking at right now.

The girls are doing a great job. This ‘Hit Me Hard And Soft’ zip-up from Billie Eilish is simple and so good. I can really believe she wears it, and I would feel cool wearing it too. These ‘GUTS’ rings from Olivia Rodrigo are a creative, knuckle-dusting offering. And the casual selfies by the girls themselves on their websites?? Incredibly chic.

I’ve said it once today and I’ll say it again. I hate the Grateful Dead. Aurally. Aesthetically, I love everything going on there. Online Ceramics dedicates a lot of its collections to the band, and their graphic design is always impressive. I have a Texas Chainsaw Massacre tee of theirs and it remains one of the highest quality t-shirts I own. On the right is a 1970s New York Dolls shirt going for the low low price of $1,150. Filth Mart is unmatched in their vintage band tee curation - definitely check them out.

If a musical artist moves into fashion design, everything they make is merch. Forever. That is just the rule. If you shop anything GolfWang, you are buying Tyler, The Creator merch. Despite the fact that he often parked his Lamborghini in the loading zone of the coffee shop I worked at not too long ago, ignoring several signs asking him not to, I still commend him for this psychopathic, gorgeous cardigan.

A few honorable mentions for these pieces of merch that just scratch an itch in my brain. Phoebe Bridgers has provided us with so many great songs over the years, but the contribution to culture I thank her most for is The Easiest & Comfiest Halloween Costume. Grab a white wig and skeleton sweatpants and you’re set. I love Renee Rapp’s unapologetic use of Times New Roman on this ‘Young Ex Wife’ tank top. And this Le Tigre tote bag brings us back to the early days of merch with a nod to screenprinting misprints.

Let’s end the day with a moment of respect for this Fleet Foxes t-shirt. Only a stroke of genius could have combined the Celestial Seasonings bear with lowercase Comic Sans.

Thanks for reading!

xx Ruby