east coast vs west coast, part two

So this conversation started, as many good conversations do, in the parking lot of a Trader Joe's. We park, I'm talking about how freakin' excited I am about the Flogging Molly concert we're going to next month, he drops the bomb. And by bomb, I mean that he says, "Yeah, I just wish I had a Flogging Molly shirt to wear to the concert."And I look at him. He looks at me. Wait, what?

"You're kidding, right?"

"No. If I had a Flogging Molly shirt I would totally wear it to the concert."

"But...you're AT the concert. You'd be That Guy. You don't want to be That Guy!"

"What does that mean? That Guy? Because I'm wearing the t-shirt of the band I like to their concert? It shows I'm a fan."

"NO. It shows you're That Guy."

"Well, on the East Coast..." blah blah blah words.

Anyways, he goes on to say that on the East Coast there is nothing stronger than what they refer to as old-school fan pride. That is to say, if you've been a fan since the beginning of the band's creation, or first album, or whatever, you can show your pride and how much you like the band by wearing an OLDER t-shirt (this is key here, folks) from ANOTHER concert or tour to show that you've been a fan for a long time and thus you are cooler than all those hip wannabes that are just now finding out how much your band kicks ass. Point in case, when we went to the Metallica concert in Jersey together, there were a ton of older Metallica t-shirts being worn, and none of those guys looked embarrassed to be wearing them. Or that they wouldn't be able to kick my ass if I made fun of them.

And I am baffled by this. Because all my life, since I moved to California at the tender age of nine, through Smashing Pumpkins and No Doubt and Beastie Boys and Green Day and Depeche Mode and Rage Against the Machine and U2 concerts, it has been drilled into me: never.wear.the.t-shirt. Ever. Unless, as Krista pointed out, it's to be ironic, which rarely works. Mostly you just look like the person who's trying too hard. And if there's anything we abhor in SoCal...it's trying too hard.

Which brings me back to the fundamental difference between East Coasters and West Coasters. East Coast people are totally cool with how proud they are, almost rabidly so, of their sports teams, bands, neighborhoods, ethnicity, whatever. And if it's suddenly hot and trendy, but you liked it BEFORE it was trendy, then woe to the guy who tries to claim he's a bigger fan than you. Because fan pride is what it's all about, and being there before the band or artist "sold out" and got big is a huge claim to fame. East Coasters like to go against the grain, but in a "damn the man, save the Empire" kind of way (give yourself a pat on the back if you know what movie that's from). On the East Coast, you get made fun of for not trying hard enough.

But California plays it chill. We have so many different neighborhoods, ethnicities, restaurants, sports teams (hell, we even have two basketball teams!), up and coming bands, tv shows, and artists, that we float from scene to scene and pretend we don't really care. Trying too hard or caring too much about one particular band is the ultimate un-cool. So we scoff at those who wear the t-shirts and show off their 13 year-in-the-making fan pride. We try to turn it around like, "Yeah, I just got here, I don't even know the name of the drummer, and that actually makes me COOLER than you." Our detachment from ever truly loving, caring, and rabidly following something is what supposedly makes us cooler than everyone else.

But...I dunno. I got to say, since I started writing these two posts...maybe those prickly New Englanders are on to something. Maybe it IS kind of awesome to follow a band since its days back as the opening act of some lame music festival where we saw what it would take others decades to see, and to wear that band's shirt in pride, to show that we actually followed through and have cared about something long before it ever showed up on YouTube or TMZ.

So...I turn it over to you guys now. Yes, we can probably all agree that buying a t-shirt at a concert and then putting it on before you even get back to your seat is kind of lame, the trying-too-hard to end all trying-too-hards.

But what if you've been following a band for years, catching them in concert as much as you could, and you dig through your wardrobe, pull out that concert tee from 1995, when the album kinda sucked but man did they give an awesome show, and you wear it so that all the little fourteen year olds out there who don't even know who Kurt Cobain is anymore can be just a little bit embarrassed for jumping on the bandwagon when you built that bandwagon's damn WHEELS.

Thoughts? Comments?