Recently I took my 20 year old nephew to see U2 at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. Through the course of the evening, with many observations of all the sights and sounds we had a great time coming back to one topic. A topic that the general population (i.e. those with real lives) doesn't really care about, or even think about. The topic of what people wear to concerts, specifically "The Concert T-Shirt".
The Dilemma? What T-Shirt do I wear to the show? Or, do I wear a regular shirt? I went through this dilemma before leaving the house, and ended up with a regular non-musical t-shirt for the night, none of the prized shirts in my collection seemed to be appropriate for U2.
I subscribe to the theory that if you're wearing a concert shirt to a concert it should be another band that somehow relates. Unless of course it's a Rush show, these unwritten rules don't apply to the Holy Trinity, if you are going to a Rush show you wear a Rush shirt, the older the better.
Apparently I was wrong, here is what we saw:
1. The first shirt we saw, just as we got out of the car was the purple girly symbol Rush shirt, you know, the one from the Time Machine Tour. This threw me off, I eliminated all of my Rush shirts immediately when choosing my attire.. the night would prove me wrong as we saw this same shirt on yet another girl. (Proving yet again, Rush isn't just for boys) We also saw one other gentleman sporting his Time Machine shirt later on. That's 3 for Rush!
2. Kenny Chesney? Don't know how that really fits in with the U2 crowd. Maybe he won free tickets?
3. Avenged Sevenfold, hmmm, not really sure how that one fits in either. Not really sure of the whole A7X story, except somehow Mike Portnoy is involved. FYI, didn't see any Dream Theatre shirts.
4. Next up, Kings of Leon. This one seemed a little less out of place. U2 is a hugely popular band for the last gazillion years, KoL is a kind of popular band for the last few years.. I'm guessing Bono could handle the pigeons a little better though.
5. Kansas? Yup, Kansas. I'm guessing that 55 thousand of the 60 thousand that were there don't even know who Kansas is.. props to this guy for not giving up on his 70's Prog. I'm right there with ya buddy.
6. Josh Groban, yep that's another puzzler. I got nothing to say on that one. I guess maybe he was just a few weeks early for the Josh Groban show, and in the wrong venue.
Honorable mention goes to the guy in the Ramones shirt, nice choice.
Just goes to show you, U2 is much more universal than I had thought. I guess I should have been paying more attention to them and their music for the last 20 years. Lesson learned? Go ahead and pull out an unrelated concert shirt when you are going to a show. You could end up being part of someone's meaningless blog entry. When it comes to Rock n Roll, it's all good.
Maybe my Metallica/Guns & Roses shirt from the 92 tour would have been appropriate after all.
