The past few weeks have been extremely busy because I’ve been moving house – not the easiest of things to do if, like me, you live in Singapore. So, here’s something light and frivolous.
It’s said that you become more conservative as you grow older. That’s because, people reason, of the material and financial possessions you acquire over the years – property, cars, shares – which make you increasingly suspicious of lefty governments inclined to levy high taxes on you and generally interfere with your accrued wealth.
Maybe that explains why I’ve singularly failed to shift rightwards in my politics as I’ve become wrinkly and decrepit. These days I’m a cranky old left-wing git, whereas formerly I was a cranky young left-wing git. It’s due to the fact that I haven’t amassed property, cars, shares, etc. Actually, from the look of my finances, it’s likely I’ll be spending my dotage stacking supermarket shelves.
One thing that brought this lack of acquisitions home to me recently was my discovery that, after moving into a new apartment, I could comfortably fit my entire collection of clothing into half a wardrobe. Well, half a wardrobe plus a shelf for storing a couple of folded trousers and one drawer in which I stash all my socks, underwear and accessories (basically a beanie hat, a sporran, and ‘anti-leech socks’ worn while trekking in the Asian mountains). My incredible shrinking wardrobe now contains a few work-shirts, a work-jacket, a sweater that’s never used because I live in sultry Singapore, a kilt and a bunch of mostly old and mostly black T-shirts. And that’s it.
Anyway, hanging those T-shirts in their new wardrobe in their new home inspired me to take a walk down Memory Lane…
Firstly, here’s one with your actual Godzilla on it. That’s the city-stomping, take-no-shit-from-anyone Japanese Gojira, not the wimpy Hollywood version who appears in buddy movies with King Kong. By the standards of my wardrobe, this item is an example of ultra-modernity, since my partner bought it for me last year.
Meanwhile, this was a Christmas present given to me by my partner’s mum. She heard I was a fan of County Suffolk’s greatest symphonic-black-gothic metal band Cradle of Filth and kindly procured this T-shirt for me featuring Nigel Wingrove’s cover artwork from their 1996 album Dusk and Her Embrace. It’s probably just as well, though, that her mum didn’t purchase for me the most famous T-shirt that Cradle of Filth have brought out.
She was also nice enough to buy me a T-shirt emblazoned with the iconic cover design for the 1984 compilation Bad Music for Bad People by that mighty psychobilly band The Cramps. In this case, the artist responsible was Steve Blickenstaff and he perfectly captured the band’s trashy punk-horror aesthetic.
Meanwhile, here’s a T-shirt bearing the name of evergreen (or ever-black) goth band The Cure. If I remember rightly, a friend bought this for me as a memento of the Marseille gig the band did during their 2008 European tour. I was thinking of attending the gig myself but, because of the expense and effort involved in getting to Marseille, wimped out. It’s now 2024 and I still haven’t seen Robert Smith and co. perform live, so I really wish I’d got off my bum and gone for it in 2008. Especially as it sounded like an awesome gig – they managed to play a dozen songs during the encores alone.
Around the same period, sometime in 2008 or 2009, I picked up this T-shirt in the famous market in central Norwich. Showing a ghoulishly-green deceased person and the tagline, ‘When there’s no more room in HELL, the dead will walk the EARTH’, it’s the poster from the seminal 1979 zombie movie Dawn of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero. (The remake, which Zack Snyder directed in 2004, is great during its first half-hour but after that gets a bit ‘meh’.)
And this is the inevitable AC/DC T-shirt, which I bought a few months ago in our local branch of that hardcore, uncompromising, heavy-metal hangout, Cotton On. I live in the tropics and it’s an indispensable part of my beachwear, along with a pair of black jeans and pair of Doc Martens. Come to think of it, an AC/DC T-shirt, black jeans and Doc Martens also constitute my streetwear, sportswear, casualwear, workwear, partywear and eveningwear.
No wonder I received this ZZ Top T-shirt – again from my partner’s mum, who really does spoil me. I’m clearly a Sharp Dressed Man.
