Lucky Contaminated Sand! Blink 182's Travis Barker Lets his hurley girlie tank and tiger-print shorts get aquainted with the beach.
Photo by Jeanne Rice
Girls in rock bands, I have no idea. I do know one girl in a rock band, and she says that guy groupies are “geeky and really kind of scary”—and there, we've already veered away from the sassy “up” attitude that should distinguish a fashion piece. So, please, try to put it out of your mind that these female musicians who struggle to make their statements are set upon by pale-skinned dorks clutching thin volumes of Sylvia Plath as well as scribbled notes about their ill-fated “after-hours glee-club rendezvous,” and just pretend that these girls get the best guys. Or girls. Nothing wrong with that. Now, why do these band guys and girls (wink, wink) get the best girls and guys? Could it be because their music evokes a passion, a yearning? Perhaps it's because they chronicle not only the unique tenor of our times but also the eternal quality of it, as well as the quality of our yearning: the blood and tears and heartache and the yearning, always the unique, eternal, bloody yearning of teary heartaches and yearning. Or maybe it's because they wear bitchen clothes. Either way, it's a pretty good life, being in a band. You get to go onstage and people cheer for you and you can say just any kind of nonsense about Emiliano Zapata or vegan diets and the people in the pit will still yell, “Woo!” And if you happen to die in the back of a tour bus choking on something that took a wrong turn at your stomach—say, a vegan diet—well, hey, man, it's all about the music! Woo! And on the plus side, there's the clothes, which in many cases are free. “Getting free clothes is one of the great things of being in a band,” said Cadillac Tramps guitarist Mike “Maddog” Combs. “It's not like you're making a lot of money. But if you can hook up with some free clothes, you know, that's all right.”
Tape it to the Limit! The Ziggens (Dickie, Bart, Brad and Jon) and Quicksilver prove asphyxiation can be fashionable.
Photo by Jack Gould
These days, Maddog gets hooked up by Santa Ana's Lucky 13, though he has gotten other brands, like Irvine's Mossimo, in the past few years. See, they do that kind of thing: give guys and girls in bands clothes to wear. Some of the biggest and smallest local surfwear companies do it, doling out swag to some of the biggest and smallest local and not-so-local bands. You'll find members Blink 182 in Hurley, and guys in Pennywise have been known to wear Volcom. So have the women of Relish. Perry Farrell goes for Etnies now and again; so does the Beastie Boys' Mix Master Mike. Gouge has given out clothes to bands for more than a decade, outfitting the likes of Korn and Bad Religion and now Voodoo Glow Skulls. O'Neill does Common Sense. They give it out for the same reason that athletic shoe and apparel companies tie up big-name athletes: they want the people whom other people admire to be seen wearing their stuff so that—and this is the key point—PEOPLE WILL BUY THEIR STUFF. “I think it really works,” says Daniel Park, who performs as DJ Daniel solo and with Dial-7. “People watch what we wear. I get people coming up to me all the time after a show and asking me what I'm wearing.” Still, there are some key differences between the Nikes and the Volcoms of this world, let alone Huntington Beach's World Industries, which outfit the Long Beach Dub Allstars. No. 1, unlike athletic-apparel companies, surfwear companies rarely if ever sign exclusive deals with bands. Which explains why someone like Park will show up wearing free Hurley one night, free Ambiguous the next and free Vans the night after that. No. 2, surfwear companies don't want people to know that they actually want people to buy their stuff. They ride a fine line in marketing, serving a demographic all too willing to buy but refusing to be sold on anything. Surfwear ads tend to be very light on text and soft on salesmanship. They focus on lifestyle, not product. Rock stars fit right into that pitch—you know, quasi-rebellious while still intensely aware of what is fashionable. “I think it's a natural fit,” says Jim Alfaro, who owns San Clemente-based Gouge clothing. “In a lot of ways, I'd prefer to get involved with a band instead of a [surfer/snowboarder/ skater]. I think with musicians, you get a lot more exposure. You know, a lot of kids who are into surfing aren't necessarily into skating. Or snowboarders aren't necessarily into surfing. The common ground for all of them is the music. They all listen to the music, and they all watch the bands.” More Fashion
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