Your Cart
Your cart is empty
Rare & VintageMore details below ↓
Sonic Youth T-Shirt
In Stock
$74.00
first-order discount · join the list for the code
Measurements Pit-to-Pit: 21" Length: 28"
Condition Shows character consistent with age.
The Details
The face under the halo is Traci Lords. Sonic Youth put her on the artwork for "Disappearer," the 1990 single from Goo, and the promo shirt of it — vintage dealers date it to 1991 — is one of the band's collected rarities, listed on Defunkd and logged on Worthpoint under her name. The halo is the whole argument: canonize the woman the culture had spent years treating as a scandal, right in the middle of her reinvention as a legitimate actress. The single's video came with its own chaos — Todd Haynes directed it, and Tamra Davis recut it after the first version was judged too confusing. The back turns utilitarian: SONIC YOUTH over a hand-scrawled list pairing song shorthand to guitars — ERIC–drifter, DIRTY–red jazz, KOOL–blue, EXP–black — which reads like a guitar tech's cheat sheet, precisely the paperwork a band touring a truckload of alternately tuned guitars would generate. Front: saint. Back: inventory.
Black heavyweight short sleeve cotton tee with Sonic Youth graphic. Single stitch.
Sonic Youth, the New York band who spent a career treating guitars as things to be retuned, jammed and abused. Portrait print front, hand-written track list reverse.
Alternate tunings and screwdrivers jammed under the strings.
Sourcing We source these shirts from thrift stores, estate sales, and directly from bootleg and overprint collectors.
$74.00