I got this shirt, I think, the first time I saw The Elms play at Club 3 Degrees in Minneapolis, MN. That must have been sometime in 2003, I think, but I’m not sure. It’s been one of my favorite shirts ever since then and I wear it often, so it has gotten worn out pretty well. The graphic on the front (above) is faded and the edges of the shirt are getting a bit ratty.

But this summer, The Elms announced a sale on their site on old shirts. I took a look and found that this shirt was available for only $10! So, of course, I bought another one and am wearing the new hotness today:

This shirt was originally made to support their 2002 release, Truth, Soul, Rock & Roll, which is still one of my favorite albums from The Elms and where they solidified their classic rock sound. The back of the shirt, towards the top, also has one of the song titles off of that album, “All The While Having Fun!” printed on it too:

By the way, earlier this month The Elms released a brand new album, The Great American Midrange, which is easily the best album of their career. Check out my review of the album on inReview.net and visit the band’s website for more information.

In April 2003 the University of St. Thomas Liturgical Choir went to Chicago for an extended weekend and it was lots of fun. Actually, we had so much fun, this touristy shirt was an afterthought purchased while loading up the bus to leave. It was purchased from the hotel gift/convenience store of the Holiday Inn we stayed at.

Despite the last-minute purchase, I do enjoy the shirt. It’s got a nice look at the Chicago skyline and looks great. I think the reason I don’t wear it too often is because it’s a bit small and the lettering is embroidered into the shirt and therefore the way the shirt bunches up around it feels odd while wearing it.

Although, speaking of Chicago, I’m planning on going to Chicago at least once this September. Over Labor Day weekend, my parents and I are going to hang out in the parks downtown and meet up with my sisters who live a couple hours away. Also, I’m seriously considering a September 16th trip to Chicago to catch one of the final U.S. tour dates of my all-time favorite band, delirious?.

During these trips, I hope to catch up with some of the things that I’ve yet to experience in Chicago or want to experience again. First, The R!OT and others have said that I have to get some authentic Chicago pizza, and most say Giordano’s is the place, so hopefully we’ll be able to do that. Last year, while in town for the Music Builds tour, we also found some fun Chicago places that we liked. My favorite was Epic Burger, a classy new burger joint that also had really good fries for a pretty good price. My sisters fell in love with Argo Tea, a very nice downtown tea shop as well, and although I don’t really drink tea, it just smelled nice in there. Of course, my family loves walking down by the water and hanging out in the myriad of park spaces along the water, especially Millennium Park and more.

The artwork has Derek Webb’s name and a bunch of black sleeves pointing to a target next to his name.  Also, in black lettering, it also says “The Ringing Bell” under his name, which is the name of his latest album.  The shirt is based on the album artwork for The Ringing Bell which was designed by Portland Studios and pictured below:

Wait, no, that’s the album cover, but the shirt is based on the cover of the graphic novel that Portland Studios made based on the lyrics of the album.  It’s a fun interpretation of the content of the album, and here’s that cover:

Derek Webb has spent many years as part of the band Caedmon’s Call, although he did not often write many of the popular songs that were on Christian radio. In the early 2000s Derek left Caedmon’s Call to start his own solo career, and he came out with guns blazing. She Must And Shall Go Free was a plea to the church to stop in-fighting and begin to be the church that Jesus called it to be. I See Things Upside Down, his second album, is probably my favorite because it is filled with big production values and lots of electric guitar licks, although many die-hard Caedmon’s fans didn’t like this style. He got back to the acoustic guitar-based songs and put in a more political bent in on Mockingbird. The Ringing Bell is one of my favorites as well, as more electric romps are included and it’s a little more whymsical at parts.

So, back to this concert. In fall 2007, Derek Webb and his wife, artist Sandra McCracken, did a short tour of the U.S. with a couple artists to fill out a band. I don’t know who booked the Varsity Theater down the street, but I knew I wanted to catch Derek with a band, because I love his sound compared to his acoustic sound. I know he doesn’t tour with a band often, so I had to catch it. Thankfully, it was on a Sunday evening with not much going on for me, so I went. It was a great time, Derek played lots of my rock ‘n’ roll favorites, and I got this T-shirt and the Sandra McCracken albums I didn’t already have. I loved how Sandra, after her opening set, had to go back to the bus to make sure their 4-month-old baby was sleeping or taken care of and then came back to play keyboards later in Derek’s set. It was great to see an artist that I enjoyed appearing at the local concert hall, and a lot of people came out to see the show. Ohh, and after that I went to the Chatterbox Pub in St. Paul with some friends for the first time, although they didn’t go to the concert.

If you’d like to check out Derek’s music, you can use this NoiseTrade widget. And by clicking through to the NoiseTrade site, you can even download the album for free, given that you tell your friends about it.

Mars Ill is my favorite hip-hop group, although fans of GRITS, 50 Cent, and the like may be less than impressed. ManChild and Dust, the emcee and the DJ, respectively, are more closer to classic hip-hop but still have a certain style that’s southern and all their own. The shirt features their logo at the bottom and a diagram of a turntable with Japanese annotations on a light brown Tee.

For more information about Mars Ill via an interview a friend and I did as well as a sampling of their independent releases, check out their episode of the inReview.net Podcast.

For those who are not so well-versed in the Homestar Runner canon, the Bad Graphics Ghost first appeared in sbemail 48, where Strong Bad’s old Apple II-style computer haunts him.  The ghost is replicated in beautiful blocks on the front of this shirt, with an amazingly simple BASIC program below it:

Let’s see… Geeky. Check. Homestar-related. Check. Halloween-related.  Check.

Another fun shirt, and if you’re not up to speed with Homestar Runner and Strong Bad, get into it.

Plus, I got it during one of the best mini-vacations ever – a whirlwind weekend to Chicago to hang out with two of my sisters and see a bunch of my favorite bands!  In late August, my sister and I traveled to Chicago to meet my sister who goes to college in nearby South Bend, Indiana.  (We took the Megabus from Minneapolis, which is a very cost-effective way to get to Chicago from many places in the midwest.)  That evening, we caught a stop on the Music Builds Tour, which featured Jars of Clay, Robert Randolph & The Family Band, Switchfoot and Third Day, possibly one of the most amazing lineups in my rather short music history.  It was great to see the Jars guys rockin’ it onstage since the last time we’d seen them was in 2002.  Robert Randolph and hte Family Band rocked the place like only they can and brought a bit of Gospel flavor as well.  Switchfoot, of course, put on an amazing and inspiring show and all the bands came back for a synergistic encore.  Oh, and did I mention that it was outdoors on Lake Michigan on a beautiful August day?  That too!

The shirt, as you can probably tell, is gray and has the outline of the word “Jars of Clay” on it with some little bird figures.  It’s rock and roll and kinda pretty at the same time.  And now, I support one of my all-time favorite bands via my favorite art form: T-shirts.

Yes, the words “GAME OVER” are printed in a large, pixelated font destined to remind classic gamers of their favorite Atari or original NES games.  And then, it also says (in standard white text) the creators of the shirt: thinkgeek.com, the central place for all products geeky and cool.

For those who don’t know, ThinkGeek has lots of great products, although they usually are a bit pricey.  Back in the day, I outfitted myself with this shirt as well as a couple others.  Also, you can get ties, mini-copters, airsoft guns, marshmallow guns, action figures, knives, sporks, squids, lots of clocks, batteries, tape players, caffeine, phones, and much more.  It’s tons of geeky fun.

Andrew Osenga is an independent singer-songwriter and is the former leader of the band The Normals, everyone’s favorite band from Normal, Illinois.  He also currently plays as a member of Christian folk super-group Caedmon’s Call, who I like to think of as the Main Street Singers of Christian music.  (I won’t keep the A Might Wind analogies rolling, because I think it’s a bit too early to call Amy Grant and Gary Chapman the genre’s Mitch and Mickey.  Just to clarify, if you get all those references, you’re too much of a Christian music geek, just like me.)

The shirt has an interesting history.  Apparently, a couple years before the shirt was made, Andrew Osenga lost a toe while mowing the lawn.  That’s hardcore!  And he had enough spirit to make an awesome-looking, random, “vintage” T-shirt out of it.

Half the reason I purchased this shirt is because I love supporting independent artists and I’ve always liked Andy’s music.  But, the other half is because I love innovative Internet marketing, and buying a domain like ILikeAndy.com and pointing it to your site is fun marketing.  Whenever someone asks what the shirt is about, I always direct them to go to the site and check out his music – there’s tons of free Andrew Osenga on there, including the free Letters To The Editor EP.  So, seriously, check it out.

It’s a pretty nice shirt.  I don’t usually buy those shirts with all the tour dates on them, because it severely dates the shirt.  However, this one was a bit better because it just lists the cities and not the dates, plus it had the coolest front of any of their shirts.

I got this shirt at last fall’s St. Paul, MN stop of the Appetite for Construction tour.  I remember enjoying this show alot because Relient K played for a good hour or more and it was so good that I almost forgot that I still had Switchfoot left to go.  Of course, Switchfoot brought just as much excitement, variety, and rock ‘n’ roll as Relient K, if not more.  It was a great tour and a great pairing of some of my favorite bands.

Also, it became another meetup of one of my friends, Kim, who works a lot on the inReview.net website.  Kim started helping out at what was then cMusicWeb.com in 2001 by doing our first interview with Switchfoot, and she’s been doing interviews ever since.  She was in town to visit family last fall when the Appetite for Construction tour came through, so she joined me for the concert.  It was fun to hang out and enjoy some live music again, something we hadn’t done since we finally met in person in April 2006.  Without Kim’s constant help, there definitely wouldn’t be a website.

Kim also encouraged me to get a really cool book of photos taken by one of Switchfoot’s roadies, and she even introduced me to the photographer and we got it signed by them.  Then, after that, i decided to go through the signing line after I found this hilarious poster and absolutely needed to get it signed:

For those who have not seen Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, this photo is a parody of a photo of the characters from that movie.  Throughout the photo, each member of Switchfoot is represented one or more times.  It’s hilarious!

Just in case it’s not immediately apparent, this is an actual soccer jersey made by a company in Brazil.  (This is one reason why I don’t wear it often, because that type of fabric feels weird to me.)  It has a UK logo and a red stripe on the front as well as the “delirious?” and “d:” logos, plus a “DELIRIOUS?” and “5″ on the back.  This is one of my most prized shirts, partially because I bought it directly from the UK webstore for a bit more money than I usually spend on a shirt, and partially because it’s my all-time favorite band.  (I also don’t wear it much because it’s a bit small for me, to which one of my roommates remarked, “Dan, most of your shirts are a bit too small for you.”)

I mostly wear this shirts to concerts, mostly because those are special events.  I wore it last week to the Music Builds tour in Chicago, where Switchfoot, Third Day, Jars of Clay and Robert Randolph & The Family Band rocked the ampitheater.  (Incidentally, I also got another shirt which looks like it’ll be rather tight on me, my first T-shirt ever from Jars of Clay, who are one of my favorite bands as well, but that’s another blog post.)  The show was great, and I got to spend the weekend with my two youngest sisters.

However, today, August 30th, is also an important day on the delirious? calendar.  Here’s a clip from their biography on h2g2:

The next major event, although horrific, shaped the history and gave us Delirious? as they are today. On August 30, 1995, Martin was driving his wife Anna, and Jon (Anna’s youngest brother) home from a late night gig. They’d almost reached Littlehampton when they had an accident – as a result of tiredness from the long journey, Martin fell asleep and drove the car straight into a wall just around the corner from his house. Jon and Anna escaped with minor injuries but it took the rescue workers a few hours to get Martin out of the car, and it took a couple of months for Martin to rehabilitate in hospital as he had suffered a broken leg. During this period he spent a lot of time on his own thinking things through. He also read Bill Flannagan’s U2 at the End of the World, and this inspired him into a decision, to which the others agreed. They found a bassist – Martin’s brother-in-law Jon (In fact, he’s Tim and Stew’s brother-in-law as well. Confused yet?) – and on April 1, 1996, Delirious?, and their own independent record label Furious? Records, was born.

A song based on this part of the delirious? history is the song “August 30th” and is on their King of Fools album.  It is a rather terrible event to remember, but it’s likely that without that experience the band would probably never have became a full-time band and would have just stayed a church worship band.