Josh Meyers has donned what is certainly a vintage tee-shirt–not a newly-printed replica like some disgusting poor person might buy–from Madonna’s 1987 Who’s That Girl tour.
(FUN FACT: In support of her third album, True Blue (which had Papa Don’t Preach, Open Your Heart, Live To Tell, the title track, AND La Isla fucking Bonita on it), Madonna’s tour lasted 38 shows and made her $25 million; the Dead played 86 shows in 1987, and made about the same. Plus, Madonna didn’t have to split the dough with five other guys. On the other hand, Madonna didn’t go on tour and earn $25 million in 1988, whereas the Dead did. On another hand, Madonna continues to perform as she didn’t die too young, and in a strange bed. On word to your mother hand, Madonna has gotten sad. On Dr. Joyce Brothers’ hand, all the great ones get sad. Remember Dick Cavett prompting Groucho through his old bits, and Groucho was just tired and sparse and gray? Madonna’s like that now, but with more environmentalism. Hands, man. Got a lotta hands involved here.)
That paragraph became incoherent.
Dude, you can’t hear me when I’m in parentheses. It’s an aside to the audience.
It’s not.
I’m going back to my point, which is non-essential. At best, this piece of information is classified as “non-essential.” If you had to evacuate, you would leave this knowledge behind. Yet, here we are:
Josh is, of course, paying tribute to one of the most storied of all the Bobby Shirts, Madonna Tee-Shirt. Bobby wore this on 7/26/87 at Anaheim Stadium, along with his most famous shorts:
It was an iconic night for all of us.
Occupying the Pantheon along with Snake Tee-Shirt, Pink Polo, and others, Madonna Tee-Shirt instantly became a fan favorite, and by that I mean everyone made fun of Bobby and some people were angered. The word “faggy” was thrown about quite a bit, I’d imagine. Younger Enthusiast, remember that this was 1987, and irony hadn’t been invented yet. At least not wide-scale dissemination of it, and definitely not in shirt form. (That was my generation. We did that in the 90’s. We came up with the concept of wearing shirts with lame shit on them. That was Generation X. We did literally nothing else, but the shirt thing was ours.) Tee-shirt fronts were for sincerity. To wear the shirt of an unloved band was simply unthinkable. It was 1987, and there was no difference between one and one’s shirt.
How could Bobby wear that shirt, man? Moochie had a bad trip from that shit. Her forthright sexuality freaked Moochie out! Tell him, Moochie!
“…”
See!?
Deadheads were aghast at that bullshit, Younger Enthusiasts! Madonna? Madonna? Deadheads prided themselves on their catholic tastes in music, as long as they got to define “music” as “a noise made by a handful of shaggy white guys.” Madonna made music–if one could call it that–for other people. Girls, mostly. Sensitive boys. And morons, let’s face it. If the general public were intelligent, then the ’83 Lake Placid Sugaree would be #1 on the Pop charts this week, but the public are drunken fools, and so the newest slurry from Post Malone is #1.
A Deadhead could not consort with the Whore of Detroit, it simply wasn’t done. A Deadhead could be into metal, sure. Or complicated jazz. Or the right kind of country, maybe. A Deadhead might listen to all sorts of unpleasant foreign bullshit, especially if Mickey mentioned it once in an interview.
But Madonna?
It simply wasn’t done.
Oh, yeah: Bobby got the shirt directly from Madonna when he met her two years after he wore the shirt onstage. No one knows why Bobby used Time Sheath technology to perform at a rainforest benefit with Debi Mazar, but he did.
*Good decision, by the way. The common euphemism for Twitter is a “cesspool,” but I do not believe Twitter lives up the those lofty standards. A cesspool, you will note, keeps the shit in.; it doesn’t let the poison seep out and contaminate the surrounding world. Twitter fails at this task. Another difference is that a cesspool is a necessary item we all like to ignore, whereas Twitter is unnecessary and we can’t stop staring at it. I can do this all fucking day, Enthusiasts. Twitter is killing us all.
Never forgiven Bobby, but the Terrapin that day made it a little easier to deal with.
You know what is sad, and we don’t want to encourage GQ guy, even though you pretended to respect him on twitter(I saw that),…
Josh did not know about the Madonna shirt till the GQ article, because well he reads fucking GQ more that ToTD’s blog, and he therefore is ignorant about so much.
a few things: the author is mentioning gen x as “way back in the 90′”
also he is communicating thru twitter…
to set the record straight re: bobby’s t & deadhead fashion & mindset:
i think the author is likely a younger gen x’er and probably a gasp “touch head” (if even that early).
it reads like he saw stadium dead.
i disagree w the sentiments that deadheads were aghast at bob’s madonna t-shirt.
well SOME were as evidenced by a previous post that said they couldn’t “forgive” bobby.
this is the mindset of some SUPPOSED deadheads that is annoying.
madonna is a pop act and who doesn’t love good pop music?
we are supposed to be mad because she isn’t an old obscure black artist? not “heady” enough?
reminds me of some of the “dead heads” who were revolted by the violent femmes at buckeye in 91. there was 1/2 the crowd though that enjoyed them and obviously “got it” as music lovers.
femmes are basically a country, blues, gospel and folk band albeit a little wacked out.
also some “dead heads” were freaked out and turned off by tom tom club opening for the gd on nye ’88. again, 1/2 the crowd dug it and knew what was up.
i guess dance moves and girls pseudo-rapping was not “cool” to them.
for the record, it was jerry that wanted the femmes and he liked talking heads (and i assume tom tom club)
mickey and hornsby were side stage watching the femmes and enjoying the hell out of it (i was about 20 feet from them & had never sen any band members watch an opening act)
remember the gd played w the bangles too ! oh no ! more pop bimbos!
lol..so to some younger readers wondering about all this…
the boys were ALWAYS cool because THEY didn’t need to be cool.
re: deadheads and fashion:
the latter era (after in the dark) fans turned the whole thing into a 60’s wannabe costume party.
prior to that in the 70s & early-mid 80s tie dye was a mere smattering of garb.
people mainly wore “street clothes”.you can see this in the gd movie and the cap theatre 78 vid.
you had a biker element, the rocker dudes w jeans jackets etc, preppy kids (the GD was a huge preppy favorite) & the old school “real” hippies. mostly a jeans and t shirt/casual clothes crowd.
& the taper geek types.
it was mid to late 80s that liquid blue came in w officially licensed garish tie dye w equally tacky designs of dead iconography.
then in the dark and stadium shows and well, voila – the whole thing turned into a “look at me i’m a hippy deadhead” contest!
Right on brother totd! I had a ciccone youth t shirt a friend made that had a suitably indecipherable Rorschach test on the front and ‘Madonna nude? So what.’ On the back. Just read Kim Gordon’s book and was surprised to learn she actually likes Madonna thus the boombox cover of ‘into the groovy’. i do note that the spirit of research grabbed me and I concluded that no bobby couldn’t have picked up the t shirt in Toronto as the dead pkayed there a few days before Madonna in 87 but that WOULD have been an important deadology discovery n’est pas?