Is there any stronger cultural signifier than a concert T-shirt? It shows that you're a fan to the end, willing to brave the mob to rock out live. These eleven shirts are some of the coolest concert exclusives ever made.
I think it's fair to say you're going to be seeing an awful lot of metal in this gallery - heavy bands seem to always have the best graphic design. Take this sweet shirt from Ozzy's legendary '83 tour. It's got everything - gore, comedy, religious symbolism, hairy arms. If you rock this shirt you will get so many compliments from guys with weird mustaches.
The very first metal supershow, the Monsters of Rock festival started out as a one-off show in England before riding the heavy music craze to dominate the entire European continent. 1984 was the first year the show hit the road, but the most notorious year for the festival was 1988, when two fans were crushed to death during Guns 'N Roses's set. Naturally, sporting a shirt from that show is the mark of a true headbanger.
Another tour that I would have cut off my left arm to see, 1990s "Operation Rock & Roll" teamed up speed metal legends Motorhead with Judas Priest and Alice Cooper on a smashmouth ride through the North American continent. This was right before alternative rock displaced metal from the charts, so donning one of these shirts sends a message that you never gave up on the rock.
Van Halen's tour to support 1980's Women And Children First is widely considered the band at its peak, with the balance between Eddie Van Halen's guitar pyrotechnics and David Lee Roth's showmanship at optimum levels. If you were at this show, you knew where hard rock was about to go for the next decade. Throw in the iconic VH logo and this is a shirt that will score you serious props.
Licensed To Ill transformed the trio of New York rapping whiteys into a worldwide phenomenon, and it's no surprise that they would take 1987 to tour the world behind their blockbuster debut. There were a few shirts made for the tour, but the bossest took the iconic cover artwork of the album and give it a twist. Rock this and act like you can remember when the Beasties weren't hipster dads or whatever.
Let's all be honest with each other here: You didn't see Black Flag in 1986. Neither did I. I was ten years old, for God's sake, and Hermosa Beach's finest were on the brink of collapse. After the breakneck touring of '85, the bluesy In My Head perplexed longtime fans and the group played their last show in Detroit. If you have one of these shirts and can claim you were there (even if you were ten years old), you will be King of the Hipsters.
If you saw the New Barbarians live, you must have been paying extremely close attention - the supergroup led by Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood only played twenty-one shows in their entire lifespan, but the lineup was hot. In addition to Wood, the band featured Keith Richards, Zigaboo Modeliste of the Meters and other heavy hitters of the era. So this shirt has double power - it looks crazy awesome and it can let you drop some heavy music trivia knowledge on tender ears.
If you don't have the heavy cred to sport some of these sweet metal shirts, why not go the other way and try to position yourself as an O.G. nerd? The Us Festival was a three-day spectacle entirely funded by Apple bigwig Steve Wozniak, who lost $12 million on the deal. Bands that played included Oingo Boingo, Talking Heads, the Police, the Cars and many more. Repping the Us Festival is a curveball, but you can make it work.
Even if Andrew W.K. never accomplishes anything else in the world of music, his iconic album cover for I Get Wet will go down in history. The headbanger's merch table was at one point selling these hilarious take-offs of the design featuring mouthless Japanese cartoon cat Hello Kitty, but the notoriously litigious Sanrio shut them down pretty quick. If you can get one, you're a lucky sap.
It may seem unfair to have two Ozzy-related shirts on this list, but let's be frank: a Black Sabbath shirt is like the Holy Grail of concert wear. The British band laid the groundwork for everything that we know and love as Heavy Metal, and even though they were already moving away from their trademark doomy sound by 1978, it still would have been a fantastic time to catch them live. The shirt's awesome-looking too.
And you know, sometimes you want to drop the whole hipster I-was-there act for a second and just exult in the majesty of some classic American goon rock. Is there any better proponent of that genre than Bob Seger, the man who gave us "Night Moves" and "Old Time Rock & Roll?" And what better iconography to express pure Seger-ism than a bald eagle being struck by lightning? Wearing this shirt sends the message that you don't give a F about being cool, and what's cooler than that?
