Not actually my shirt, but that is the one I currently have on.
Seeing somebody who more than likely doesn't listen to a band wearing a band's shirt and trying to needle them about their choice of shirt is something that the most basic rock bro loves to do. Case in point:
I guess that because you have devoted so much of your life to learning minutiae about a specific type of music, it feels good to identify and out somebody who is, in your estimation, a poseur. That will certainly make you feel big, but it also reflects more deeply ingrained gender dynamics in music, as especially rock music. How many of the people that he does it to in the above video are women? Does he gravitate to women rather than men because he assumes that most men will know? How many of those women were just panicking because they were put on the spot?
Being asked about the t-shirt that you're wearing is something that Rebecca has always worried about and that I had a hard time relating to. Becks hated talking about music and movies and their feelings about those things because there was such a history of men not believing their feelings were genuine. I couldn't believe that "Oh you like this band, name 5 songs" was a real thing, but obviously it happens all the time.
Who fucking cares what someone is wearing? Most male rock music fans are the type of losers who put any woman that listens to the same music as them on a unattainable pedestal anyways, so why are you purposefully trying to drive them away from that?
How that relates to my current shirt though is that the current fad of wearing vintage shirts is basically entirely built on wearing the shirts of bands you don't like.
Sidenote: Today, we were listening to Third Eye Blind's Self-Titled while driving. I wondered what type of merch 3EB has right now (it's all bad) and that led to me looking for their shirts on Etsy, where their 90s merch was going for hundreds of dollars.
A prime example of this is me right now. I don't really care about Kenny Rogers at all. "The Gambler" is a great classic rock staple and the MadTV skit was pretty funny, but other than that I have no tie to his music whatever. I like wearing the shirt because of commodity fetishism and because I love the aesthetic of old rock shirts. I can put on this t-shirt and because it's Kenny Rogers and it has the sewn-on stripes on the sleeves, it makes me look like Kelso.
Though at one time a celebrity wearing the logos of bands they clearly didn't listen to was grounds to roast them online, somewhere in the last 15 years the rock side of that argument lost so soundly that no one even noticed at all. Anyone bringing up that sort of argumentation now sounds like Abe Simpson in a bad way,* and we can see that reflected in current style.
*I find that "Ok boomer" got so tired after like a day. I get extreme chills of embarrassment every time someone uses it now.
Now, when someone wears a vintage t-shirt, like let's say an Instagram influencer wearing a Judas Priest shirt or something, it's about them acknowledging the spot that Judas Priest once occupied in music and pop culture discourse, rather than voicing your opinion of their music. What you're really saying by wearing your vintage shirt is "I know that heavy metal used to be dangerous and edgy and I like the aesthetic of the band". It's a post-modern way of interacting with popular culture, because we are now bringing the discourse and culture surrounding an idea or a band into our fashion choices, adding an extra, critical step in the choice beyond "I like the band, so I'm wearing the t-shirt", which I also still do.
I guess it's similar to other fashion trends coming back around again, like acid-washed jeans and hippie skirts, where a young person wearing them is doing so because the idea that it used to be cool is now cool enough to display that you know that.
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