The scissors and the damage done: vandalising my Buzzcocks t-shirt

More musical vandalism, I'm afraid. Not content with ruining (or at least rendering valueless with my "artistic" foibles) a probably-quite-rare Buzzcocks poster, with taking a Stanley knife to the clunky hessian sleeves of Joy Division's Still (out of nothing but sheer spite-cum-whimsy), and also virtually giving away a weirdly-rare Factory Records promotional ruler, my latest wheeze is to cruelly cut up this band t-shirt ...

 ... but which band t-shirt? Well, this one:

Cut out shapes in secondhand daylight: the butchered shirt

Oh dear, what I have I done? This t-shirt is (or was) a precious item from Buzzcocks' heyday, possibly an original t-shirt done by United Artists to promote the Orgasm Addict single in 1977, complete with Linder's famous collage design. Or maybe it was a shirt done as quick cash-in merch to go alongside Buzzcocks' growing success circa Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)? Dunno. Someone gave it to me in 1984 (I think). Reckoned he'd had it for "years", which seemed perfectly likely as it was looking quite tatty even then - holes at the front near the bottom, a sort of yellowing quality to the original white. In fact, the way it looks in these photos (er, imagine it un-cut-up) is pretty much how it was back then, a mere 39 years ago. And what did I ungratefully do with this gift? I just chucked it into a drawer and left it there. True story! Except ... about five or six years ago when I wore it precisely once (you tried it just for once, found it alright for kicks ...). Wild times. Anyway, why would anyone do such a pointlessly destructive thing? Cutting up a historic musical artefact? Well, it's all perfectly reasonable - or so I like to think. After all, what's actually the point of a yellow-y t-shirt that I'm not (so the evidence clearly suggests) very likely to wear? Not much. The t-shirt as a t-shirt has had its chance - 39 years' worth - so it was time to try something else. Yes, that's right: I'm using the Linder design in my very own home-grown artwork - exact design as yet undecided. Far better. Repurpose, remodel. It's what Pete Shelley would have wanted. Or if not him then Linda Sterling herself or Malcolm Garrett - or maybe not. Nevertheless, it's what I'm doing. And why? What's this about? Well, as I've said on this blog before (probably to a completely tedious degree), I think modern culture's whole over-solidified reverence for "classic" music - punk/new wave very much included - is so uncreative and uninteresting that petty little acts like this one are the least you can do. Smash it up - destruction as creativity. Or at least do something creative with your obsolete stuff. After all, if Richard Hell could put some rips and safety-pins into his t-shirt in his squalid lair in the East Village in the mid-70s, then the least I can do is get some big scissors out and attack the neglected hand-me-down Buzzcocks tee. Cutting up fabric is an old-fashioned practice which, you might say, connects Vivienne Westwood and the 75-77 King's Road scene with Jewish tailors who colonised New York's Lower East Side in the mid-nineteenth century. It's vintage behaviour, man. So yeah, I tried it once and found it alright for kicks. Maybe now I'll find that cutting my music stuff up is a habit that sticks ...