Hey! If you want one of our new SECRET MISSION badges, zap us yer mailing address to:
secretmission.central@gmail.com
We'll send one of these BADGES OF THE DAMNED out to you via the good ol' US Postal Service!
As a reminder, we're now taking orders for custom screen printed t-shirts and 1" badges/buttons! Let us know what you need at secretmission.central@gmail.com, and we'll get right back at you with a price quote!
Hey hey hey all you Secret Missionaries out there (SECRET!).
We're back with a mouth-rant for you about a new service we're providing, as well as an update on our bread-and-butter job #1!
Let's start with the old stuff, shall we? Good ol' fashioned screen printing! The kind yer grandpa used to whittle out of a single block of wood every evenin' on the front porch!
Secret Mission is now taking YOUR orders for custom-printed t-shirts, tote bags, sweatshirts, hoodies, and what-have-yous! Hell, if it's flat WE can squeegee a silky smooth layer of 100% gin-you-wine ink on it! Up to 4 colors on a single print! If you're finally making a decision on whether or not to print up that awesome "Who Farted?" shirt, then LOOK NO FURTHER!
(Remember kids, our maximum "live" print area right now is 13x16"!)
Contact us with YOUR idea at secretmission.central@gmail.com for more info and a price quote!
And now for the new info!
As some of you may or may not know, I was once affiliated with a legendary shop in Atlanta, GA known as Crash and Burn. Crash and Burn was owned and operated by my good pal Frank Kocsisszucs. He did printing for a ton of great bands, record labels, and businesses! Frank was the guy that really showed me what it was like to own your own business and put in a solid day's work. He would be up by 530 every day and at the shop until 6PM. Dedicated, hardworking, and a good friend.
Frank closed Crash and Burn a few years ago and joined the United States Army at the ripe old age of 38! He's now serving our country with the Army Special Forces over in the Middle East. Thanks Frank!
Getting back to the point, I ran into Frank's wife Hilary at the Starlight Six Drive-In this past weekend and asked if she had any leftover stock in boots from the shop ( I been wearing out the same pair of Grinders steeltoes since 1999!). She said that all the shop stock was gone, BUT she said that there might be something I might be interested in!
Here it is! BLAMMO!
Its the trusty old Crash and Burn badge maker!
That's right! Now available from Secret Mission are those 1" round punk rock buttons that you all love to jab through yer leather jackets, denim, flesh, etc..
We can put YOUR design on a button!
Shoot us an email at secretmission.central@gmail.com for more info and pricing!
Check out these buttons that we slapped together earlier!
So about 8 or 9 years ago, I was exposed to a band called the Gories. They had broken up long before I had heard of them, and I wasn't old enough or in the right location to have caught them while they were still around.
Anyway.. On the back of their 1992 release, "Outta Here!" on Crypt Records.. Gories member Dan Kroha is wearing an AMAZING crew/work shirt for a drag racing car named EVIL SPIRIT. I have coveted this shirt from the moment I laid eyes on it..
The photo in question:
Obviously, you can see why I wanted it. Simple. Effective. Evil.
Flash forward to 2009. The Gories had re-formed to play some shows in Europe with The Oblivians. They did some warmup gigs in the US (Memphis, Detroit), but I was unable to attend.
Luckily.. They played the Bowery Ballroom in NYC in August 2010, and IT WAS ON. It was to be my last gig outing in NYC before moving to Tennessee. I was STOKED.
So we get there. Openers were good (CHICKENSNAKE!). The Gories gear is set up by the union stagehands, and then its on..
The band takes the stage, and Dan is wearing THE EVIL SPIRIT SHIRT! Holy shit!
18 years had passed between the taking of that photo and the gig!
Here's a shot, you can't really tell it's the shirt, but you can barely see the edge of the lettering:
So I had a slow day here at the shop and decided to finally nip it in the bud and print my own EVIL SPIRIT shirt..
Here's a shot of the artwork on vellum.. This is what we use to burn the screens for printing. The image is taped to a photosensitized screen, and then exposed to light. This "burns" the image into the screen and it is developed by spraying it out with a hose.
The original shirt looked like it was probably made using iron-on lettering instead of being screenprinted, so I left the kerning a little off to try and get that "hand-set" look. The E in "EVIL" is drifting a bit. I've had to hand-set lettering like this before, and its super fun.
Here's a shot of the screen after its been burned:
I had the wife pick me up a Dickies work shirt on the way to pick me up at the shop. They were outta black, but navy will do. Here's the finished shirt!
Two hits of white did the trick!
And just as a little eye candy for you folks, I printed the wife one on a women's shirt. FEAST YOUR EYES!
So there you have it. A custom, one-off job from Secret Mission. Doing It Ourselves because that's the only way we know how.
We'll leave you folks with a little song that's like a stick of dynamite in a Dixie cup! Grok this video of the Gories with "Nitroglycerine" from 1990!
