In a mad fit of spontaneous spring cleaning this past weekend I turned my focus to one of my closets, organizing my collection of t-shirts as summer lurks on the horizon. I’ve got weird theories on clothing. I tend to think of shirts as pitchers – you’ve got a rotation with your big-gun, slide stoppers at the top and a collection of serviceable arms that all have some value in certain situations – these would be your back of the rotation guys, your long relievers, 7th and 8th inning guys, and maybe even your closer. And you can never have enough pitching. Never. Ever. It’s this odd-ball theory that explains why I have two closets and four large boxes full of nothing but shirts. A lot don’t even fit anymore, but pitching, uhhh, shirts are a precious commodity.
Pants are obviously your everyday position players. You don’t need as many, depth isn’t as important, you just need a solid, balanced lineup. Sweaters are a unique breed –they’re like the lefty specialists of the bullpen – they rarely get into the game, and even when they do, their whole objective is to get one particular guy out. They’re very situational.
But I digress. I’ve had some t-shirts since junior high and after years of clutching to this worn, frayed fabric, it’s time to put some of these out to pasture. Today we honor my Led Zeppelin t-shirt, an acquisition I made in 8th grade, that has been the
Cal Ripken, Jr. of my apparel team.
I was in the 8th grade in the 1994-95 school year. It was around this time that I attempted, futilely, to transition from the collection of shirts my grandparents always brought back from vacation featuring pelicans or wolves (
like this Napoleon Dynamite shirt) into something a little more hip.
Like I said, I failed miserably. But damn did I feel good wearing that Zeppelin shirt. That shirt burst onto the scene like Ryan Braun last year: it was on fire. It was my ace. I would sit down and plan my wardrobe for a week around making sure it would be freshly laundered for a big day at school. As for the picture, I think that was the cover of one of their boxed sets. The back was odd. It had all four of them standing behind a white wall. But it was a white shirt, so all you had at the top there were their pictures, and then the picture just seems to taper off. It’s unclear if the shirt is the result of an error at the shirt factory or what the hell. And what are they doing behind that wall or curtain?
Robert Plant is peering over the edge like an embarrassed, out-of-control masturbator who’s just been caught red handed jerking off behind the bleachers while the cheerleaders got through an after-school stretching session.
Bonzo Bonham is laughing like he’s got four underage girls fellating him behind that wall. And Jimmy Page looks lost and mildly confused as usual.
For years the Led Zeppelin t-shirt made its regular appearances in the rotation, dutifully thrust into play every 7-10 days. In its later years, it was moved into the bullpen to preserve its useful life, shifting from a regular performer to part-time piece. As it faded from years of faithful service, it often was used as an undershirt, always willing to take one for the team by going man-to-man on my pale, sweaty epidermis. For a time, it found a new starring role as a lightweight but absorbent shirt I wore under my hockey equipment during men’s rec league games. After time, even that seemed to be too much usage, so I cut the sleeves off as holes developed in the pits and used it when I was lounging around at home. In it’s final months, Led Zeppelin shirt was plagued by
holes around the collar and right in the middle of the pictures, rendering it almost unusable. Sadly, and much like humans, as it aged its soft woven cotton fibers became
almost translucent, like the pale opaque flesh of an elderly person. It was so threadbare it stopped being a solid mass entity long ago and sort of became a loosley bound vapor, hovering around my person. Now, Led Zeppelin shirt begins a new chapter in its existence as a rag in my dad’s garage. It will probably be cut up into several smaller pieces so that more than one oil spill can enjoy its services.
A Timeline of Highlights and Lowlights:
Summer 1995 – Led Zeppelin shirt is purchased at Music Biz in upper Alton. It’s my first music-themed article of apparel.
January-May 1996 - My 9th grade US Government class was comprised of about 25 juniors and seniors, me and two other freshmen. How I got stuck in there I don't remember. But for some reason I insisted on making fun of this kid’s Metallica shirt during the first week of that class. Stupid me picked on the one kid in the class who was like a third year senior. He was like 20 and had a moustache for Christ’s sake. He had nothing to lose. He said he’s insult my Led Zeppelin shirt if he could. He couldn't. Instead, he beat me mercilessly the rest of the semester. CM had these stucco walls in the halls that were sort of sharp and jagged. I became intimately familiar with these, often in my Led Zeppelin shirt.
Circa March 1996 - 9th Grade – the last year before CM went to "Block 8" scheduling. We still had a study hall. This dickhead used to pick on me. I once got shot so hard with a rubber band that I had a three inch cut on my arm and started bleeding what seemed like a lot for a little cut. I had to try real hard to not stain Led Zeppelin shirt.
Circa October 1996 – sophomore year, sitting in Biology class. One kid in a Pink Floyd shirt is sitting next to a kid in a Smashing Pumpkins shirt (
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness came out months prior, in late 1995) when they ask the teacher, Mr. Grazier, which he prefers. He calls Pink Floyd “hippies”, says the only pumpkins he likes are in pie, and turns and points to me in my Led Zeppelin shirt and says, “this is more my kind of music. I can go for that.”
Circa November 1996 - 10th Grade, riding in Kyle McVey’s van to lunch with about 12 other people (it was like Mexicans crammed into a crate to sneak across the border, all in the name of getting to Taco Bell) - someone decided to pick on me by dumping an entire bottle of Pina Colada air freshener on me. I had PE after lunch and wouldn’t you know it, it was one of those days where you didn’t dress out, we just sat around on the bleachers. I must’ve had a good 20 people ask me why I stank so much. I ended up changing into my slightly less stinky PE shirt for 4th period Foods 1 class. This is the only time Led Zeppelin shirt took a backseat to anyone while still in it’s prime.
Tuesday, November 17th, 1998: My one-man-band’s third album,
Useless, is “released” and the cover is a picture of me in Led Zeppelin shirt leaning up against a tree. BTW, of the 14 “albums” of original material I wrote and recorded,
Useless was easily one of my absolute worst. The cover was a black and white picture of me taken in my Photography class my junior year. Photography class was a massive scam, it was an excuse to wander the halls and school grounds for an hour taking pictures…or not. One period I went over to the baseball diamonds and fell asleep on the visitor’s dugout bench in the shade. Mr. Reinhardt’s stupid 1998 Dodge Dakota totally ruins the background of this cover.
Circa April-May 1999 - Senior Year: In Accounting-Level One class, there were stacks of these old, old Macs lined up along the wall from the keyboarding room next door. They kept getting in the way of me putting my feet up. So my hockey buddy Brett dared me to steal an entire computer. Why? No idea. We were bored and figured they were worthless. I decided to do it piece-by-piece. I got the keyboard out one day under a long sleeve shirt by carrying my books in the crook of my wrist, arm fully extended at my side. The length from my armpit to wrist was like the exact length of this keyboard, so that was easy. Led Zeppelin shirt comes into play the day I was trying to get the monitor downstairs and out the door on the backside of the building. I was going to set it outside and come back at night to pick it up. Mrs. Bradley is gone for like 20 minutes. Everyone’s egging me on. I confidently unplug the cables and take off with this monitor. The classroom behind us was empty that period, so I go through it and into the hall back by the English offices. The stairwell is right there. I’m down one of the two flights of stairs when I turn a corner and see one of the keyboarding teachers, Mrs. Smith, coming up the stairs. I panic, run back up stairs, through the empty office and, fearing I’d turn a corner and run into Mrs. Bradley coming back, I just decide to ditch the monitor. Get rid of the evidence. This is one of those old boxy monitors, it weighed like forty pounds and I’m running around the halls with this bitch. In my panic, I launch this thing onto the floor right before I get back to my classroom…right in front of Mrs. Smith’s office door. I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. The thing rattled stuff in the surrounding four classrooms and crashes over on its side. I run into my seat sweating and panting and totally exhilarated. The whole two back rows are snickering. I thought they were amused at my goof. It takes me a good fifteen seconds of letting what just happened sink in before I realize Mrs. Bradley is at the front of the room and staring at me. Somehow I talked my way out of that one. Think I just said I went to the water fountain. So glad I didn’t have to try to explain what I was doing. Did she not press me because she knew I was up to no good or because I was looking sharp in a Led Zeppelin shirt? The world may never know. But within a week the old machines are gone, apparently moved into storage.
Footnote: This still cracks me up to this day, but I took the keyboard home, smashed it in the backyard with a sledgehammer, and picked every splintered little plastic fragment, every key, every spring and put them in a small plastic bucket. Immediately after graduation, I’m whipping out of the parking lot in my gown and cap, try doing a burnout in my 4-cylinder Ford Ranger while I dump the smashed keyboard out into the parking lot and yell “fuck you motherfuckers…fuck you motherfuckers…fuck you motherfuckers.” The sound of all that plastic being poured onto asphalt still makes me giggle.
Oh, how we’ll miss you Led Zeppelin shirt.
