I have said before about the
beauty of being your own commissioning editor, in this age of technology
writers and broadcasters no longer have to wait around for a television channel
or radio station to give us the green light as we can just run off and do it
ourselves. Today was supposed to be all about my latest podcast series (working
title: The Shoebox Demos) and getting something
like a plan in place. That isn’t exactly how things panned out.
One of my bugbears, and I have
a lot of them, is people wearing t-shirts displaying the classic logo of The
Ramones, when they have quite clearly never even heard a note by the band. Last
year I posted this:
Arturo Vega has died. He designed the iconic Ramones logo that people wear on t-shirts despite having never heard a Ramones song #RIP
— Steve Oliver (@SteveOliver76) June 10, 2013
Today I saw a woman in her early twenties approach the bus stop wearing that exact t-shirt. She asked me if this bus was going to some location I can’t remember, and I answered the question with a totally non-sequiturial “Ah wow you like The Ramones, what’s your favourite album?”. She looked at me like I was talking in a foreign language, and asked again about the bus. Once I had confirmed that the bus did indeed go to where she was going, I tried to talk to her about The Ramones again, asking weird questions that a fan would know, and she cracked. She told me with no hint of shame that she had never heard a Ramones song, and that she had never heard of the band. I casually referred to her choice of garment, pointing out that it bore the logo of the popular beat combo The Ramones, and she brushed it off by saying that it was “just a t-shirt”, and most annoying of all, “I bought it in Primark”.
I was lost for words,
(unusual), all I could do was allow my head to fill with candy floss and
pretend to send a text message just to be able to dismiss myself from this
conversation. As I went over what she said, I wondered about the implications
of her choice of t-shirt. Maybe she thought it was a fashion label? In which
case, didn’t she think it strange that she was able to buy it in a place that
sells disposable clothing you can only wear once before it gets ruined by
washing? I wondered about her taste in music, if indeed she had any. If I
decided to wear a t-shirt displaying a band that I had no connection with, or
didn’t even know who they were, what would people think? Would people try and
engage me, in good faith, about our supposed shared love of Abba?
Anyway, this gave me the idea
for a one-off podcast. I took out my notebook and pen, (I am old school) and
started to write down little bullet points. As soon as I got home I knocked
together the basis for something similar to Steve’s LP Box
but more in the style of a bluffer’s guide. After dinner I recorded it, and
next week I will release it. The podcast is called The T-Shirt
Wearer’s Guide To The Ramones, and I advise sharing it with anyone
who has the t-shirt.
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