Via Urban OutfittersA while back, some of Fugazi’s cleverer fans wore T-shirts reading “This is not a Fugazi T-Shirt.” The seminal D.C. band and its label, Dischord Records, famously refuses licensing deals, or really any commercial opportunity that isn’t an all-ages show with with $5 admission. (Not really, but one appreciates the baseline aesthetic.)
But as it turns out, you can get a T-shirt bearing the logo of one of Ian MacKaye’s other bands and wear it with his official blessing. Annoying clothing retailer Urban Outfitters will sell you a Minor Threat T-shirt for the not-so-hardcore price of $28. The shirts are produced by Tsurt, a California-based manufacturer that specializes in band T-shirts.
MacKaye tells Washington City Paper that he approved Tsurt’s selling of his old band’s logo because he was sick of all the bootleg merch floating around in the world:
“It’s fucking absurd the amount of bootlegs are out there,” MacKaye says, and “my time is better spent doing other things.”
“It’s not a political thing for me,” MacKaye says. “I just don’t give a fuck about T-shirts.” At some point, the former Minor Threat frontman said to the band, “This is crazy. I spend so much of my time” chasing down bootleggers. He found that when he contacted the responsible parties about their bootlegs, they just gave him hell. “They get in your face… or they deny it,” he says. “It’s a complete waste of time.”
But this new adventure in licensing doesn’t mean that MacKaye, who declined to follow up with DCist, doesn’t have a thing or two to say about a store like Urban Outfitters or its clientele of would-be hipsters and people in their late 30s who still wish it was the early 1990s. “Motherfuckers pay $28, that’s what they wanna pay for their shirts,” he tells City Paper.
