Seen the band, got the T-shirt? This summer it might be time to switch that running order around. Later this month, in a surprise change to festival protocols, a new event in Manchester will put the lowly merchandising stall — that impromptu shop at the back of the concert hall where fans can buy precious T-shirts and posters — on the main stage. Merch Market, organised by the Charlatans’ lead singer, Tim Burgess, takes place on Sunday May 25, from 11am until late, at a number of venues across Manchester and offers bands and solo artists the opportunity to sell their merchandise directly to fans, without having to give venues a cut of the sales. There will be DJ sets, live performances and onstage interviews featuring established artists such as New Order — but the real star of the show will be the recording artists’ own T-shirts, hoodies, limited edition vinyl and keychains.
Burgess says he founded the event after growing frustrated with the cuts many UK venues demand from bands’ merch stalls. “I’d kicked off a couple of years back about venues taking commission at gigs,” he explains. Now the singer aims to axe those fees, not only to help hard-pressed bands, but also to nurture an overlooked part of contemporary culture, where music, socialising, memories and style all meet.
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Growing up he remembers the subtle signs of approval a well-chosen bit of merch might bring. “I loved the idea that you could be wearing the T-shirt of an obscure band and some older kid would come up at a gig and you’d get a nod of approval,” he recalls. “I had Buzzcocks, New Order, Crass and Chron Gen T-shirts that I wore a lot — all from the back of the NME when I had birthday or Christmas money.”
These days young fans may not be mail-ordering from the classified ads of the weekly music press, but many recording artists still rely on merch as both an income stream and a means of artistic expression. “Merch has always been a massive crowdfunder,” says Rebecca Hawley of the Liverpool band Stealing Sheep, who are also appearing at the Merch Market. “We self-released our fourth album, Wow Machine, and merch paid for the recording of that.” For Hawley and her bandmates, merch means more than just money. “It’s a way to create a universe around an album,” she says, “I remember collecting a lot of Spice Girls stuff — it let us embody that group.”
Currently her band offers hoodies, pin badges, embroidered patches and fridge magnets, alongside posters, T-shirts, CDs, vinyl records and tote bags via their site. Much of the screen printing is done in Liverpool, and “each piece tells a story about the band”, Hawley says.
These screen-printed shirts join a wild array of things that include everything from cat headphones (a limited edition product from the Canadian DJ Deadmau5) to sewing kits (courtesy of the White Stripes), bath bombs (thank you, Fall Out Boy), tarot cards (something Burgess created as part of his solo career) and Christmas ornaments (the Flaming Lips and Kiss, among others).
The T-shirt, however, remains the central focus, producing an income stream and stories long after it has been bought, worn and discarded — with vintage band versions rising up the billing from charity shop bins to high-end retail.
“In the past few years the price of band tees has gone up like the price of gold,” says Natasha Advani, the British-born, LA-based fashion buyer and founder of Not/Applicable (@itsnotapplicable), a vintage clothing business that specialises in band and recording artist merch. She sells everything from washed-out Wu-Tang Clan, Tupac, Nirvana and Pearl Jam T-shirts to contemporary stars such as Travis Scott and Demi Lovato, via dedicated concessions in stores such as Selfridges in London, H Lorenzo in LA and Dover Street Market in New York. “H Lorenzo also stocks vintage Rolexes and Cartier watches, and our tees were selling for more than the watches,” she says.
Advani moved to LA in 2016 and switched from buying for stores such as Harvey Nichols to trading in vintage clothing. She was surprised to see how closely the two markets aligned. “People started to peel away from logos and chose to pair a vintage Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath or Pearl Jam T-shirt with, say, a $5,000 pair of Proleta Re Art jeans.”
Today she can sell a well-worn, hard-to-source Wu-Tang Clan or Biggie Smalls T-shirt for up to $5,000, and often sees the stock she has sourced appear on the chests of current music stars, as well as in the “tunnel ’fits” of prominent athletes.
Interestingly, Advani says the truly valuable merch isn’t the items sold by a band’s official vendors, but instead comes from the bootleg sellers who used to flog dodgily produced, unofficial items outside concert venues. These T-shirts tended to be made in larger sizes (bootleggers couldn’t keep many sizes in stock, so everything was an XXL), had more creative designs, and were bought by the younger, hardcore fans, who may not have been able to afford the official prices.
In June and July Advani will bring a specially curated selection of Not/Applicable T-shirts to Selfridges, Oxford Street. Her team are still finalising details, but there’s likely to be quite a few Oasis T-shirts on her racks, and prices will be in the region of £700-£1,300. That might sound high for a bobbly Liam and Noel tee, but as Advani sees it, these are sought-after, totemic items that “hold character and history”.
Peter Saville, the graphic designer and art director known for his work with bands such as New Order, Joy Division and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, as well as collaborations with designers including Raf Simons and Yohji Yamamoto, thinks there may be another reason why vintage shirts have found such a treasured place within contemporary outfits. “The key issue is styling and irony,” he says. “AC/DC T-shirts, say, are employed as a styling device in the fashion context. It has got nothing to do with liking AC/DC, it’s the ironic resonance of incorporation of that band into a look.”
Sometimes even he finds these merch choices a bit surprising. “I was catching up on White Lotus over Easter and one of the young girls in the first series was wearing a great Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Junk Culture T-shirt,” he says. “That album was made in 1984, and it’s in a fashionable series 40 years later. That T-shirt was produced, minimum, 20 years before that character was born. It’s ironically cool.”
Saville helps to oversee the graphic legacy of New Order and Joy Division, and is repeatedly asked to review new merch designs. Often, however, he finds it hard to decide on some new merch proposals. “I have to ask myself, is this bad, or is it just modern?” he says.
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A few of those proposals have come from H&M, which, at the fast-fashion end of the market, sells a vintage-looking Oasis T-shirt for £12.99, as well as Def Leppard, Soundgarden, Nirvana and Beatles tees, among others. Emelie Von Schedvin-Ekman, commercial adviser for external partnerships at H&M, says the high street retailer has been in the merch biz for longer than many may realise. “As early as the 1980s we started offering band and recording artist T-shirts,” she says, “with one notable example being a full merchandise collection for the Rolling Stones world tour in 1990.”
Unsurprisingly she has noticed tastes changing. “The Ramones [tee] was very popular for a very long time,” she says, “and our more recent Ariana Grande merch collection was extremely well received by our customers.”
It seems mean-spirited to suggest that many of those H&M Ramones T-shirt buyers are probably not as knowledgeable about that band’s back catalogue as some traditional punk rock fans would like. Advani, for one, says that, in contrast to the 1980s and 1990s, no one is insisting that a T-shirt wearer be intimately familiar with a band’s output. “Name your top five songs? No one says that any more.” Burgess agrees. “I’m not sure about gatekeepers going round asking kids to name four B-sides,” he says. “That makes them weirder in my book.”
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There have, of course, been moments, when he has been tempted to question certain prominent band-tee arrivistes. “I did see a picture of David Beckham in a classic [anarcho-punk band] Crass T-shirt a few years ago,” Burgess says. “He came to watch us at Glastonbury, but I wasn’t going to ask him about his favourite track on [Crass’s album] Penis Envy.”
While Burgess won’t be flogging his worn-out merch for four figures this summer, he was impressed by the approach taken by the Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl’s mother, Virginia, who turned her son’s old band tees into cushion covers once he was done with them. “Mrs Grohl sadly dieda few years ago,” Burgess says, “but if any other parents of rock stars have been repurposing their offspring’s merch, then they only need to get in touch and we can guarantee them a stall.”
Merch Market takes place in venues around Manchester on Sunday, May 25, helpushelpbands.com
