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!
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