My Favorite Concert Tee

I recently blogged about the first concert I ever attended and a comment I received got me thinking about a related artifact, rarely seen outside of my home, but greatly revered and worn regularly: my favorite concert tee.

My favorite concert t-shirt has some holes in it now, and has grown soft from many trips through the laundry, but the band's name still burns as brightly as my memory of that night. It still fits me perfectly, and it still makes me smile every time I come across it in the wardrobe.

At the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, I had just moved to the Midwest from the West Coast and found myself floundering, that first year, feeling out of my element and looking to make new friends with common interests. It happened, quite by accident, when a beautiful senior girl (with an even more beautiful faux-hawk) turned around one day in class and caught my amateurish notebook sketch. "You like Suicidal Tendencies?" she asked, and right then, I knew we'd be friends.

We quickly dispensed with the formalities (getting me an ID, introducing me to the other club kids in town) and headed off to the now-defunct, but still infamous, Jockey Club in Newport.

The band playing that night was intense. Too shy to jump into the mosh pit, I volunteered to help collect pull tabs from beer cans to benefit dialysis patients (the sponsoring group in turn recycled them for cash and donated the money to the cause). I worked at a booth in the back of the club, sipping Foster's and actively soliciting tabs from passers-by.

By the end of the night, I'd managed to talk almost everyone in the bar to donate all of their tabs, and had amassed a bagful. Then I heard: "Thank you so much for all of your hard work. What's your name?"

I turned to find Keith Morris, the lead singer of my-then favorite hardcore punk band, the Circle Jerks. I introduced myself and he insisted on giving me an over sized Circle Jerks sticker, autographing it personally, again thanking me for my help. And then he reached behind the booth. And handed me. My favorite t-shirt.

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