Friday, July 04, 2008

The Ugly backpatches

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of these patches because I only saw them once but I will try to convey how hideous they were. It was 1987 and there was a local record store which had recently relocated to being in part of a gas station. Yes, odd I know but the area I live was rather small back then so we were glad for any record store. Anyway at this time it was common to go to the record store and there not be anyone in the room so if you wanted to pay or needed help then you would have to go next door to the gas station part to get someone to help you. I worked at a grocery store nearby and I took my break to go to the record store one evening (of course). There was no one there as I browsed and I noticed an open box sitting behind the counter on a table. I probably wasn't supposed to go back there, but curiosity got the best of me so I went peeked in the box and saw backpatches. At first I thought that was cool, but then I began to flip through them and it was like I had fallen into some bizarro metal world because whoever did these things must not have had any knowledge of what the actual band logos and artwork looked like. There were Iron Maiden ones with letters that were not the official logo as they were all bent the wrong way and Eddie looked his face was melting off and not in a good way plus the color scheme was all off. There were Master of Puppets and Ride the lightning backpatches that looked they done by someone with broken hands and no concept at what "color between the lines" meant. There was a Dio patch with some awful looking lopsided warrior who was bent over like he had just eaten a two week old tuna salad sandwich, the Dio logo was wrong and the whole thing was done in bright orange, red and yellow. Once my eye site returned after that Dio patch I looked some more. There was a Slayer patch with letters that were not Slayer's and a demon looking creature that looked a bunch of rotten cherries only with eyes and a big green tongue. There was an Ozzy patch that was supposed to be Bark at the moon, but it looked more Phyllis Diller as drawn by a ten year old. Then there was a Motley Crue-Theater of pain patch that was even uglier than the real cover if you can imagine that. So I put the patches back in the box and left that night. I was there later that week and never saw the patches again and that store never carried back patches so I guess they sent those wretched monstrosities back to whatever tasteless, clueless vendor they came from. I actually wish I had some of those to send as gag gifts nowadays though.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Ray Van Horn, Jr. said...

Viva la Curry's!!! I worked at the same grocery store and originally Curry had his own music store that was actually pretty cool and was basically our hangout off the clock. I'm glad Kelly didn't throw us out since we were just a couple of goofs always coming in, but at least we bought shit most of the time.

I won't ever forget blowing Ron Curry off after him saying that Metallica would rule the world one day because I thought the name was stupid and I'd felt like I had a bum steer with GW's Shot in the Dark.

I remember you telling me about those backpatches, ugh. Too funny, because the baby was staring intently at my Megadeth Peace Sells backpatch that's on the wall behind my drum kit.

4:52 AM  
Blogger Metal Mark said...

Ray-Shhhh, I didn't want to name names just to protect the cheap.

6:34 AM  

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