On Tour For DUMMIES

A Fans Guide To Being On Tour

 

MERCHANDISE

 

Is there anything better or more important than a button badge? Go on, admit it, you weren’t expecting to read that were you.

I’m going suggest to you that wherever you are when you read this, that the first piece of merchandise you ever owned or wore was a button badge. The single white T Shirt, or the Coco Chanel little black dress, or the black leather biker jacket, just like those one offs of classic fashion design, the button badge is up there with the best.

But let’s be honest, if I mention merchandise, you like everyone else will instantly think of T Shirts and tour T Shirts. The money makers money maker and haven’t we all suckled on its billion pound nipple for years.

Personally, I have three double wardrobes bursting at the hinges full of T Shirts, going back over 40 years.

In recent times I’ve met someone who is younger than me, when she told me her birthday, I thought, that rings a bell, yeah, you guessed it, I was at a gig that night and I’ve got the tour shirt to prove it. Funny as fuck. My moral compass kicked in and we are just friends. Shame really because she is fit as fuck. Moving on.

I love the idea of a band T Shirt, it’s a marker, a uniform, a call to arms, a membership card, a friend walking towards you that thinks and feels the same way as you do, about the same band, it’s also a great conversation starter, the ultimate ice breaker, “Nice shirt mate”, “Cheers mate”, and you’re off and running.

Tour shirts and Event shirts are the ultimate, they are best of the best, if Carlsberg did band T Shirts (now that’s the power of advertising).

When it comes to buying tour T Shirts, it is a straight race to who can get their hands on a tour shirt first and wear it to the next gig first, or down the pub first. It is nothing but pure ego, don’t let me or anyone else try to tell you differently, it is pure bragging rights.

It really is about who can piss up the wall the highest.

Long live button badges and T Shirts and the emotions that they awaken with us all.

 

Noggin xx