The year was 2008 and I was running a completely insane junk store in Worcester MA, called HBML. My idea for the store was that there would be used stuff and artist-made stuff, and also some things that were confusing, where it was unclear if it was an object d'art or just two pieces of trash that fell in paint, or maybe some type of animal nest.
That's a whole story but anyway one day I'm there, it's a Wednesday afternoon, and this kid comes in, I had never seen him before, he's like 11 or 12. He walks in and gets right to the point:
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"Do you have any Iron Maiden t-shirts?"
I say no, we don't.
"Oh. When are you getting them in?"
I'm kind of amazed by this leap in reasoning but I roll with it. I say Saturday, the truck with the Iron Maiden shirts is coming in Saturday. But, I tell him, the shirts look a little weird.
"What do you mean?"
Well... (and here I'm trying to think about what I'm going to do when I go home and make these shirts later) it says IRON MAIDEN in that font... You know what the font looks like right?
"Yes, it's pointy"
Yeah, it has the pointy font, and it has Eddie... You know who Eddie is right? (I'm stalling for time)
"Yeah, he's their mascot, he's like a zombie"
Yeah... it has Eddie, and-
"Is Eddie holding a big knife that's dripping blood????"
No... (now I have it) Eddie's like, eating an ice cream cone. That's right (now I'm psyching myself up) it says IRON MAIDEN, in the font, and Eddie's there, and he's eating a pistachio ice cream cone, and it looks sick as Hell!!!!
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The kid says cool, Saturday then. He leaves, I finish my shift, and when I get home I knock up a design and then the next day I print 2 or 3 dozen shirts-- one for the kid and the rest for any metalhead or monsterfan that likes ice cream. I also put a tag in there for the junk shop--
The kid comes in on Saturday and I'm like here you go, he's like cool, buys one, and leaves, no questions or comments and I never see him again. God, I think about this all the time!!!!! Did he ever look back on this moment as odd? Is this just a vague dreamlike memory??? I like to imagine him as a teenage metalhead getting stoned with his friends telling them that he had the one with the ice cream cone on it, and they're like what the hell are you talking about dude. "you know, the one where it's the Killers Cover but he's eating a pistachio ice cream cone".
Well anyways I printed up more for the 18 year anniversary, they're in the gift shop, to the right of the castle (stage left) and the link is below. I have sizes Small to 2XL, printed in black on "natural" color (unbleached) shirts (Gildan Heavy 100% Cotton). For the ice cream cone there are two colorways available-- pistachio and cookies & cream. I can't really manage backstock right now so I'm doing this pre-sale style-- I'm taking orders and printing what I need, no more. I'm going to print on Saturday and then again the next Saturday, and then I think I'll take it down from the storefront. So if you're interested, get that order in! Makes a great gift!
Cookies & Cream variant. I cannot stop you from getting this black and white version and coloring it in yourself, bound only by your imagination and the markers available to you. In fact I would love it, and I would humbly request pictures.
Furthermore
1.Iron Maiden is one of those bands where I see people wearing the shirts all the time and it kinda seems like the person in the shirt doesn't know the band at all. Honestly this doesn't really bother me, because Iron Maiden is so sick that if someone were to finally look them up, I feel confident that they would be like "wow, this actually rules". Maybe even "I didn't think I'd like this but I really do". Furthermore Maiden seems like actual nice people. No problemo.
2.
I realized after the fact that this hatchet-to-icecream pivot had a precursor, in the work of t-shirt pioneer and hot rod maniac Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, who became a Mormon later in life and edited the weapons out of the more violent of his designs. I definitely knew about this but I wasn't thinking about it consciously, I was just pulling thoughts out of the aether, at the scintillating knife edge of the moment. This blurry pic is via a book on E"BD"R that was on Google Books, which my 2008 roommate Nik Perry definitely had:
I'm not ashamed of this lineage, we love him! Anything touched by rockabilly turns declassé but honestly, Big Daddy Roth is a huge inspiration to me on a couple different fronts. At a minimum, he was the first guy to put a monster on a t-shirt, you gotta respect that.
3.
Way way later I realized that there is a hand gripping Eddie's shirt in the picture, which in the context of the original art looks like the murder victim, but outside of that violent context, some people[who?] think it kinda looks like something else. French cooking. Listen, would you rather your children see a drawing of a person getting killed or a drawing of a cartoon ghoul getting oral sex while eating an ice cream cone? OK, sure, but what if you can't say "neither"?? OK but what if it's tastefully done??
links / misc
- link to storefront [fujichia.com/store]
- Iron Maiden "The Number Of The Beast" (full) on YouTube [link]. Ugggggggh this riiiiiips!!!! UP THE IRONS!!!
- I've been building up a repository of pics of HBML, if you have anything please email me!!!! This is amazing to think about but I didn't have access to a camera until the last couple months of the project. So even though there's a lot of photos, it's only the merest glimpse of the true madness of the project. [link]
- The only video I have of HBML is this Russian Tsarlag instore performance :) [link]
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I'm working on something fun with this, with like, cool little icons. but for now all this does is allow you to sign your name in a way that identifies you as the writer, so no one can spoof you. And it turns your name gold. :)
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