Here’s another salvo of tour shirts that I once called mine before a cabinet filled to overflowing forced a culling of the casual wear one is most likely to see this Monk when encountering me in what used to be called “meat-space.” What do they call reality now? The lackluster images are the actual photos I took for the eBay postings with the second gen 1.3 MP first digital camera we got in 2001.
THE CRAMPS: Stay SIck! 1990
Looking at this garish wonder of a shirt now, I must have been sick in the head to even consider parting with this bad boy! With the electric lavender, pink, and sickly green color palette it screamed bad taste. The essence of The Cramps, yes? Plus it had the dates on the back [Orlando is at the bottom of column 2] and the show was actually on the design. It’s not always like that owing to liquid tour planning.
In 1990 I had waited a whole decade from first becoming a fan before finally seeing The Cramps live. What felt like an impossible slog through time back then! Four years later, Bryan Ferry would finally happen after a 20 year span! In 2025, I’m looking to see my first DEVO show after 47 years of fandom. Surely a record I won’t see beaten in my lifetime as DEVO date back to the year I first got a stereo.
The show had Flat Duo Jets opening and was a bracing cocktail for the senses. Watching Lux Interior climb the stacked amps in size 12 FMPs was borderline painful; waiting for the seemingly inevitable fall and splatter onstage of the practically nude frontman. The Cramps were having a moment in the sun with the “Stay Sick!” album. Where they were possibly at their peak of popularity.
Cocteau Twins: Heaven Or Las Vegas 1990
It was six years after becoming smitten with them until Cocteau Twins finally did a tour of the States large enough to actually catch. I flew to Atlanta to see the show with my Atlanta friend Jeffrey [who graciously put me up in his parent’s home] as we were thrilled to see Les Cocteaux.
This was a wonderful show at Center Stage; a well-appointed PAC of modest size where I once had tickets to see a David Sylvian show that never happened. We waited to catch the band after the show and were able to chat for a minute with Liz Frazier. Telling her what it meant to us to see them live. No autographs; that would have been wrong.
This is a beautiful shirt. It’s kind of a shame that I let this one go. It’s the only cover art of theirs that was not by 23 Envelope that still looked fabulous. Of all the Cocteau Twins albums, I think that maybe I should have kept three: “Head Over Heels,” “Treasure,” and this one. But space is at a premium in the Record Cell. I’d not played any Cocteau Twins in twenty years I’m guessing.
Webb Wilder: Doo Dad 1993
This was another Webb Wilder shirt I bought that first night I saw them. I got the “It Came From Nashville” color design and the second of two “Doo Dad” shirts. I kind of went hog wild, I guess! But it was Webb Wilder! He once helped put a rubber stamp truck driving school out of business!
This “Doo Dad” shirt featured a guitar pick design with the bottlecap “Doo Dad” man from the back cover. With Webb’s tagline “pick up on it.” And The Credo on back.
KMFDM: KMFDM Sucks Money 1992
I was sort of a KMFDM fan as I was listening to a lot of “Industrial” music in the late 80s-early 90s. For this I blame Cabaret Voltaire and though the band were prolific I ended up wanting more. The trouble was; most of the bands in that space were not Cab Volt! Worse yet, after a while, neither were they!
I had always loved the single “More + Faster” that I’d videotaped off of 120 minutes. When I saw that KMFDM were coming to Orlando, I bought a handful of their releases and got ready. I was working at a company doing computer-based training then and one of the interns also liked “Industrial” music, so we saw here there with her boyfriend. She did not know Killing Joke so I made her a mix tape and saved her life!
KMFDM tickets were ridiculously inexpensive – $5 as I recall, and the band were playing at “J.J. Whispers,” a huge night club complex where we rarely ventured for either dancefloors or gigs. The band by 1992 were right on the cusp of becoming a Metal act as the cross pollination of guitars into Industrial was souring the machinenmusik that had originally attracted my ear as Aggro at any cost was becoming the norm. So there were no other KMFDM shows in my future.
But this was a long sleeved tour shirt with the Virgil Finlay-esque cover art by BRUTE for the “More + Faster” single! I had to have it – especially since the ticket price was so low I felt guilty. The lyric quote on the back was certainly congruent with my sentiments.
CHRIS ISAAK: San Francisco Days 1993
One of two Chris Isaak shirts I bought when seeing him the second time at the Orlando Arena opening for Tina Turner in 1993. Chris and the band worked hard to make the 18,000 seat box feel more clublike as he and saxman Johnny Reno went wireless in the stands. After their set Chris told the audience to come to the merch table and say “hi” which never happens at an arena show!
So I did. I bought another design that Chris signed and drew a caricature of himself on it which I still have. But it’s getting pretty long in tooth by this time! This would be the second time I bought a Tina Turner ticket just to see the opening act having previously seen Level 42 open for her in 1987 on their “Running In The Family” tour. I never saw Tina Turner ever. And now I’m selling off most of my Chris Isaak and Level 42 collections! ironic, no?
MAN OR ASTROMAN?: Destroy All Astromen! 1995
This was from the second Man or ASTROman? concert I attended with my soon-to-be wife on our first “big date” in early 1995. We trekked to Tampa and saw MOAM play in the Stone Lounge. It was inside of a former gas station and was a very cool Punk Rock club with oodles of charm. By this time I may have been an official member of the MOAM Fan Club! The only music fan club I ever joined! You got T-shirts, membership card, various ephemera, and most importantly, a discount at the merch table, which I definitely took! For at least seven years I bought every MOAM 7″ single I saw; which was quite a lot! I liquidated them to help fund the big European tour last year.
DICK DALE: Tribal Thunder 1994
Dick Dale was a name I remembered from my early childhood in Santa Monica, California. One of my friends would go on about Dick Dale all the time, and when I saw he was playing at The Junkyard, a big Rock/Blues club in Casselberry, Florida, I made sure to go with him and his girlfriend. My friend Sandra and her fiancee might have been there as well – my memory is a bit fuzzy. So I was expecting an evening a fun surf guitar.
What we got was POWER. The sheer power of Dick melting picks on his high gauge strings as this total guitar badass was pinning us back against the wall. Never before had I seen a show that so clearly leapfrogged my expectations by a factor of at least 20! It was all I could talk about for a month afterward! THIS was the power of music writ large. A life changing moment as this lifelong music fan finally felt the earth move under my feet. I can get pretty analytical about music and my relationship to it but this concert dared me to get slack-jawed afterward.
It helped that Dick said less than 20 words for the first half of the show. He totally let the music do the talking. Afterward he unzipped his mouth and got pretty loquacious. We all stayed behind afterward and talked with him like meth-heads, probably. Dick was an unbelievable 55 years of age then.
The show was so white hot that we told all of our friends about it and trekked to Tampa the next night with pals Rick and Jenny in tow. If Sandra and Dan weren’t there that first night they definitely went to Tampa on the second. Dick was playing the WMNF-FM Tropical Heatwave Festival and we didn’t regret the travel one bit. And it was hilarious seeing Man or ASTROman heckling Dick from the same crowd we were in.
I bought two T-shirts at The Junkyard and a VHS video I still have. I also still have the classic Tribal Thunder shirt as autographed by Dick. Dick thought that his fans who followed him around needed a name, hence this design.
Next: …Iggy Needs A T-Shirt
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Post-Punk Monk 
I was at the Seattle stop on that Cramps tour. Great show. Couldn’t afford a shirt at the time.
p.s. – so glad you’re finally getting to see Devo!
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Devo is great in concert….tbh the only shirt image I like in this post is the one with the robot from “Lost in Space” (I think that’s the show – it was a bit cheesy and had that soap opera live filming look on TV)…don’t forget to get the DEVO shirt – mine was the 50th anniversary one from the Apollo Hammersmith show in London…all gold – I like the red hats better, but that’s alright – great experience.
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Deserat – Yeah, starting to anticipate the DEVO show coming up! Had to pull “Oh No! It’s DEVO/Freedom of Choice” CD this morning as I had a yen to hear “That’s Good.” And the robot on the MOAM T-shirt is Robby The Robot from the movie “Forbidden Planet.” Though “Robby” did a memorable guest turn on Lost In Space as the “crush-kill-destroy” evil robot that challenged the more lovable Robot as it was known. The next day after that episode aired every boy on the elementary school playground was emulating its inexorable cadence!
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Finally saw Bob Dylan for the first time late last year after being a fan since I first started buying records in the early seventies – over fifty years ago. He’d played the UK numerous times in that period, I guess I was just too lazy to bother! I suppose we’re both running out of time now!!
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