Tee Till Death | dischord records

Over the years, ebay has been flooded with Dischord Records tshirt bootlegs. Very few originals ever pop up. I’m not kidding, go check for yourself. Most of those tshirts are not OG. Not even close. But a lot of that is going to change courtesy of an email I just read from Jeff Nelson. You may recall him selling a few “trifles on ebay a while back. Minds were blown, and you can expect a few tees going forward. But here’s the email, read for yourself.

Hello, everyone!

Jeff Nelson here. In past I have had many requests from people for Dischord t-shirts, and I wanted to let you know that after YEARS of talking about it, I finally did something about it. I printed 3 new Dischord Records t-shirts and re-printed the original shirt. Also got some Egg Hunt and Inner Ear Studios t-shirts printed. The whole process took months and months. After designing the shirts, I got a ridiculous number of test shirts done, to test all sorts of ink and shirt color combinations. I chose the best color combinations to produce in quantity (and I will be selling the other test shirts on eBay at some point). It took two weeks to put together the actual order, and I have no one to blame but myself for offering so many choices and making it so complicated – there are 198 different combinations of shirt design, ink color changes, shirt type (t-shirt/long-sleeve shirt, crewneck sweatshirt, hooded sweatshirt), and size!

After overseeing the printing of the shirts, I spent a good week sorting, folding, bagging and labeling the shirts and putting them in boxes. Then I spent a week building shelves to hold them all – 12 feet wide by 16 feet tall! Definitely the tallest shelves I’ve ever built. Finally, making good use of the ridiculously tall ceiling in the 3rd floor ballroom.

Of course the most obvious place to sell the shirts would be from Dischord, but as you may, my partner Ian is not a fan of merchandising (very different from me – ever since I was a kid I’ve loved companies and packaging and logos and advertising and promotion). So, I’m selling the shirts through my company Pedestrian Press, which I founded in 1988 to handle the avalanche of orders I was getting for the “Meese is a Pig” t-shirt (an interesting side note – I have started working with a filmmaker from Washington, DC who is putting together a documentary about the whole “Meese is a Pig” poster campaign. Being interviewed for hours on end awakened memories of how fun it was, trying to elude the authorities in slapping up huge posters needling attorney general Edwin Meese, and also of just how horrible the Reagan administration was).

After choosing some storefront software that even a luddite such as myself can use, I spent several weeks spent updating the Pedestrian Press website, and now I can properly proffer all the shirts (and 1 book) I have for sale. If you are interested in taking a look, here’s the website address:

www.PedestrianPress.com

I also have some Toledo-themed shirts on the site, and shirts from my band Fast Piece of Furniture, so you will have to wade through a mix of shirts. If you find anything that strikes your fancy, I will be happy to outfit you for both warm and cold weather. Please do me a big favor, and help spread the word.

Thanks very much. Take care….Jeff