Cool Site: Minor Thread

I came across this awesome site called Minor Thread last week. The idea behind it is that the blog's author wears a different shirt everyday, he estimates that he can do 500 with no repeats. Most of his shirts are music related and you can glean from some of his statements that he has a long history of promoting shows. Today he is on number 146. He also writes up a little something about the shirt most days. His spelling and grammar are so bad that it must be done on purpose. I'm in love with the site, i managed to read through every post in the last week.

I can relate to the guy to a certain extent. I used to feel compelled to buy a shirt at every show I attended. Over the years the price of shirts has grown. I clearly remember buying a few $10 shirts and once picket up a Robert Randolph shirt for my wife for only $8. For the longest time it seemed like shirts stayed at $20 but now $25 or $30 seems to be the norm. I've been able to break the habit or at least limit it to buying only really kick ass shirts although I still reflexively reach for my wallet when I see a shirt with tour dates on it. The short run tour date shirt is another thing that seems to have fallen by the way side. The tour shirt is one of the big draws of buying a shirt, it screams "I was there and are therefore cooler than you." Now it seems like bands don't want to do the small run anymore. I'm sure it's a lot cheaper to order thousands of a design that you can sell wherever you are instead of ordering a few hundred that are specific to that tour but damn those tour shirts were cool.

Before we moved to Vermont and again when we moved to Paris my wife made me get rid of a lot of my shirts. I ended up cutting the designs off the shirts that were ripped, stained or I just didn't wear anymore for a project. I hope to eventually turn them into a quilt/blanket. We'll see if it ever gets done but each shirt represents a pretty awesome night and hopefully will make a warm blanket.