In a thoughtful move, Lorde took advantage of her Rolling Stone cover shoot to pay tribute to those legendary garage-punkers, the Cramps. I have no doubt that, upon the fifth anniversary of singer Lux Interior's death, on Feb 4th, Lorde will post a tender acoustic rendition of "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?"
Meanwhile, here are a few other rock stars who've used their torsos to plug relatively obscure bands.
I guess his CORPORATE MAGAZINES STILL SUCK shirt was in the wash that day. Circa Nevermind, Kurt Cobain brought mainstream visibility to Daniel Johnston, with an ensuing bidding war in which the most vehement A&R guy, according to Johnston, was Satan.
A couple decades later, Cobain's old drummer played on the first Tenacious D album, and wore his Sunno))) shirt for this awesome photo. (Ignore the pentagram, Daniel.)
How many teenaged hearts lurched in their brittle rib cages when Green Day, who until recently had been a goofy band on an East Bay punk label, used the video for their gonzo hit "Longview" to plug Tilt, their old label-mates? Mind you, this was 1994; the fact that Green Day was suddenly playing stadiums, and you could still see Tilt at your local teen center, was really too much to process.
Duff McKagen's Crimson Ghost shirt must've had head shops all over the country scrambling to bulk up on Misfits stock -- which saw much better sales than Axl's "Shit Happens" shirt.
Nice: the super smooth, Grammy-winning Frank Ocean repping the super brutal, hair-whipping Trash Talk. Sonic differences aside, the last Trash Talk album came out on the Ocean-affiliated Odd Future Records. And then there was the time Ocean and some fellow Odd Futurists really raised the aggro-bar at a Trash Talk show in New York.
