This article I wrote on R.E.M early T-shirt designs was recently published in the fanzine _394 Oconee_. Enjoy! Gary Nabors nabors@pobox.upenn.edu --------------------------------------------------- R.E.M.-WEAR 1981-1985 copyright 1994 by Gary Nabors, author of _Remnants_ Many of R.E.M.'s early T-shirt designs were quite enchanting, but don't bother looking for any direct references to R.E.M. albums or songs on them. A few people asked me while I was working on Remnants if I was going to cover T-shirts. "No," I would tell them politely, and went about my business. I was recently re-thinking why I chose not to write about T-shirts as collectibles in the book, and remembered that I came to the conclusion that T-shirts are, for the most part, actually worn, worn out, and discarded in that order, without much additional thought. Most people don't consciously "collect" T-shirts like they do records, CDs, promotional material, and all of the other ephemera one usually associates with rock bands. Also, with a few exceptions, one generally doesn't see T-shirts advertised as "rare" in the record collecting magazines, and even the "rarest" T-shirts don't command very high p rices on the collector market. Finally, it is relatively easy to copy a design off of a T-shirt and re-print it (especially if it is a one-color design), making authenticity a problem. Nevertheless, there are a number of interesting, creatively designed , and genuinely rare R.E.M. shirts around, and I guess it's about time they got the cataloging treatment. Fine, then. Consider the T-shirt. There are basically four categories of R.E.M. shirts as I see them: 1. Shirts that were made by the band and/or their early supporters in Athens prior to the establishment of "R.E.M./Athens, Ltd." 2. Standard shirts that are designed by the band (probably by Michael Stipe in most cases), and licensed to be sold by Nice Man Merchandising through the fan club. Most of these have the "R.E.M./Athens, Ltd." copyright designation on them somewhere, and include all of the shirts sold by the fan club, in record stores, through mail-order companies, and on the tours. Probably most of your R.E.M. shirts fall in this category. 3. Promotional shirts made by the record company (I.R.S. or Warner Brothers). 4. Special event shirts, which include "crew" shirts worn by roadies, etc., and shirts made by the band to commemorate some occasion (more on this later). Beginning with category one, I confess I only know of one shirt that actually belongs in this category. I further confess that I haven't even seen said shirt, but heard of it from a friend who was one of R.E.M.'s early fans in Athens, in 1981 or 1982. Apparently the shirt had a kind of multicolored, psychedelic design with only the letters "R.E.M." (possibly in lower case letters) written on it. Anyone who has one of these is welcome to expand on my sketchy description, but I am fairly certain that such a shirt exists. Or existed, anyway. Next comes the major category of shirts, the one that includes some fifty or so different shirts produced from the early 1980's to the present. One curious thing about many of the shirts that fall into this category is that the standard album cover artwork, or a design even approximating the artwork on the band's albums, rarely shows up on the shirts that celebrate the existence of that specific album. For example, the first shirt that I know of that falls into category two is the Murmur shirt (I don't know of any Chronic Town shirt that isn't a bootleg). This shirt used the strange design that appeared on some of the earliest fan club mailouts (1) with the simple caption, "R.E.M.," and an unintelligible fragment of a page of text on the back. Nowhere on the shirt does it say the word "Murmur," or use any graphics associated with the album. The next shirt commissioned by the band, the "Pilgrimage" shirt, used Howard Finster artwork (work #2,910), and appeared in late 1983 or early 1984. On the front of the shirt was the basic design that was used on the black bandanas that R.E.M. sold on t he Reconstruction tour (2), although the center of the design on the shirt read, "Pilgrimage 4' 25," instead of the handwritten "R.E.M." that appeared on the bandanas. This shirt was available in both sleeved and sleeveless styles. Moving on to 1984 and the album Reckoning, R.E.M. commissioned their first true tour shirts which were sold on the "Little America" tour that tied in with the band's second album. The raspberry-colored U.S. tour shirt used the bicycle design which appeared on the "Rockville" U.S. promotional twelve-inch single on the front (3), with tour dates on the back. A different version of this shirt was also available which read, "Little America" on the back, and used part of the same bicycle design, but did not list the tour dates. This shirt was later revived in 1990, this time in black with a yellow bicycle design. Fan club members and those who attended R.E.M.'s U.S. concerts in 1984 were also able to buy the "Little America" shirt, in gray short sleeve, or purple long sleeve. The shirt read, "Little America" on the back, and had a drawing of a map of the world (or "map 'o world" as the fan club put it) on the front. For the U.K. leg of the tour, the "Little America" shirt was burgundy, and used the bicycle motif on the front, and had the U.K. tour dates on the back. Another interesting shirt from 1984 was advertised by the fan club as the "7 Chinese Bros." shirt, though I don't think the shirt has any references to the song of the same name on it anywhere. The shirt used the child-like drawing of a head that was al so found on an early R.E.M. button (4), and was available only in black. The last of the shirts made in 1984 was the "Bill's Boat" design, which used the artwork from the "So. Central Rain" picture sleeve (5), although the design was printed upside-down, perhaps so that the wearer could see it right-side up. "Bill's Boat" was available in black or white. In April 1985, R.E.M. departed on the marathon Reconstruction tour, two months before Fables of the Reconstruction album was released. A number of shirts were made for the Fables tour, the most memorable of which was the shirt that depicted a monkey and a parrot riding a bicycle down a mountain path, with the caption, "We are having a heavenly time" (6). This shirt had the tour dates for either part I or part III of Reconstruction printed on the back in black, over a green bicycle. T-shirts were also prepared for Reconstruction II, the European leg of the tour, which took place in October 1985. One of these designs showed a nymph holding aloft a bicycle, and used individual photos of each band member on the back. The other U.K. Reconstruction shirts were dark gray, used a Fables press kit photo on the front (7), and had either a blank back, or showed the European tour dates, printed over a pink bicycle. A version of this shirt was also available in the U.S., but the U.S. edition had Michael Stipe's handwritten song titles from the Fables LP on the back (8). Many of the designs in the Fables tour book and on other R.E.M. merchandise in 1985 came from the catalogs of Good Impressions, a company that specializes in rubber stamps with curious designs, many of which originate from the Victorian era. Three of these designs made it onto R.E.M. T-shirts: the "Fighting Man" (9), the "Guys Falling off the World" (10), and the "Gravity Bike" (11). The peach "Fighting Man" shirt used the "Guys Falling off the World" design on the back, while the reverse of the blue " Gravity Bike" shirt simply read "R.E.M." in large letters. Dale Michels from Good Impressions was later asked to design a logo for the Work Tour in 1987, and the design that he came up with (12) eventually appeared on the band's first sweatshirt. Entering into T-shirt categories three and four is tricky business, because it is difficult to excavate details on the various promotional and special edition shirts that have been produced over the years. The band has made a number of different shirts to commemorate special events, case in point the "Bowl-a-Rama" shirt from 1989. Following a Green World Tour concert in Atlanta, members of the band and crew decided to go for a late night bowl, and a T-shirt was printed to celebrate the event. The blue shirt had a photograph of the band members at the bowling alley on the front with the caption reading something like, "R.E.M. Bowl-a-Rama 1989." Following the end of the Pageantry tour in 1986, the band produced another unique shirt that celebrated the end of the three-month tour. The black "End of Pageantry" shirt depicts the Fox Theater in Atlanta in gold on the front with "R.E.M." on the theater marquis. The reverse reads, "The Fabulous Fox, End of Pageantry, Atlanta, Ga., November 25, 1986." Another special-edition shirt was made in March 1991 for the band's pair of secret shows at the Borderline in London, when they performed as "Bingo Hand Job." The front of the white "Bingo Hand Job" shirt, worn by Bill Berry the night of one of the performances (13), shows a hand of cards, and read, "Bingo Hand Job"/"Shaken, Not Stirred." Two of these shirts, along with a pair of "Bingo Hand Job" hand towels, were auctioned in Athens for the benefit of a local charity. More recently, shirts were printed fo r the Automatic For the People listening party that took place in the fall of 1992, at the 40 Watt Club in Athens. These shirts had an orange star on the front (supposedly hand-drawn by Michael Stipe), with the reverse reading, "R.E.M., 40 Watt Club - A Benefit For Community Connection Athens," and "Automatic For the People Pre-Release Listening Party, October 5th, 1992." If this run-through of older R.E.M. T-shirts has peaked your interest, I regret that I don't know where to send you to look for them. The first order of business would be to check with the fan club to see what older shirts are still available. You might also try writing a few of the dealers that advertise T-shirts in Goldmine and Discoveries magazines and ask them what they have in stock. R.E.M. T-shirts offer the fan the easiest way to show the great musically-unwashed around you that you are infinitely more musically hip than they. It would certainly be a daunting task to locate some of the older shirts, as most, if not all, are out of print, and no longer available anywhere. If you are successful in finding some of the older designs, more power to you. The only drawback is that one day you might have to explain to your kids what a "Gravity Bike" is. c1993 by Gary Nabors. References 1. Remnants: The R.E.M. Collector's Handbook and Price Guide, p.205 (upper left). 2. Remnants, p.205 (upper right). 3. Remnants, p.104 (upper left). A Few Chords and a Cloud of Dust, p.12 4. Radio Free Europe (fanzine), vol. 1, issue 2, p.14. 5. Remnants, p.76. A Few Chords and a Cloud of Dust, p.4. Remarks - The Story of R.E.M., p.125. 6. Fables of the Reconstruction tour book, back cover. It Crawled From the South, center photo section. 7. A Few Chords and a Cloud of Dust, p.3. 8. Fables of the Reconstruction tour book, p.19 (lower right). 9. Remnants, p.133. Fables of the Reconstruction tour book, p.13. 10. Remnants, p.71. Fables of the Reconstruction tour book, p.19 (second image from right). R.E.M. Bootlegs volume 1, p.36 11. Remnants, p.155. Fables of the Reconstruction tour book, p.19 (third image from right). R.E.M. Bootlegs volume 1, p.48 12. Work Tour book, back cover. 13. R.E.M. Audio Visual interview CD, inside front cover. From the Borderline bootleg CD insert.